YMMV / The Walking Dead S10 E16 "A Certain Doom"

• Anti-Climax Boss: Beta being quickly taken out by Daryl can be disappointing to those who were hoping for a bigger fight with Negan and Daryl against him.
• Arc Fatigue: Rachel and Beatrice being hostile against Lydia for being Alpha’s daughter feels like old ground being run again, as does Dianne and Bertie’s hostility against Negan to a lesser extent.
• It's Short, So It Sucks!: Some complaints against the episode argue that it could’ve benefitted from a longer run time since some key events like Maggie’s return and the final fight with Beta happen very quickly.
• Like You Would Really Do It: An unfortunate example occurred due to real-life events. A few weeks before the episode aired, a spin-off focused on Daryl and Carol was announced to be in development. Thus when Carol was preparing to throw herself off the cliff to commit suicide and bring the horde down with her, not many fans (aside from a minority who have suggested the series announcement was misdirection) felt too concerned for Carol’s life.
• Narm:
  • The first shot we see of Eugene’s group is of them hurrying in their bikes, and the next scene of them... is Eugene after crashing into the side of a bus. It’s very abrupt considering they were just fine a scene ago.
  • Minor Hilltop resident Bertie returns to give Carol side-eye for releasing Negan so he could later partake in the attack on Hilltop, and then later greeting Nabila. For a character who most viewers probably wouldn’t recognize unless she was specifically pointed out, the two brief scenes are just odd in how they focus on such an irrelevant character.
• Overshadowed by Controversy: Downplayed, but the episode will likely be remembered for having been delayed several months due to the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. A lot of reviews and reactions contended with whether or not the episode was worth the unintentional wait since the previous episode.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • There were quite a few fans who wanted to see Aaron be the one to finish off Beta as he did in the comics, especially since he'd lost friends like Jesus, Tara, Enid, and Mary to the Whisperers and because the show had already stuck to the source material in giving Negan the Alpha kill.
  • We also never see how any of the Whisperers reacted to finding out Lydia is alive and realizing Alpha lied. Would they have had a change of heart and turned their backs on the Whisperer lifestyle like Gamma did? Or were they so far gone mentally by this point that the truth wouldn't even matter to them anymore?
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Downplayed. Beatrice being mistrustful of Lydia took away a few sympathy points when she ended up being the only heroic casualty of the Covered in Gunge mission. The death didn’t really resonate for some since it came for a minor character who hasn’t done anything notable in two seasons except being hostile to Lydia. Even more baffling is that until Beatrice's death, Oceanside hadn't lost anyone to the Whisperers meaning that she had no reason to be distrustful of Lydia in the first place.