Eric and Idalia decide to try to take refuge at the house of an elderly woman, Doña Alma. She agrees to give them food and let them stay the night but insists they must leave the next day. Over dinner, Eric pushes the issue and asks to be allowed to stay for good, but Alma orders them to leave on the spot. She suddenly falls and hits her head, dying instantly. Though Eric is satisfied now having the well-protected house to themselves, Idalia is uncomfortable taking over the deceased woman's house. Idalia experiences various hallucinations and visions as she hears the voice of Alma insisting the house belongs to her. Eric is dismissive until he too begins seeing things, including believing the walker of their friend Maria is actually her back from the dead. The two become hostile with each other as the hauntings persist, but when they try to leave, they are chased into the basement by Alma's ghost. The pair are driven to stab each other and find themselves pulled into branches and walkers of people they met.
La Doña follows the same logic as Blair-Gina: bringing a concept that doesn't fit in The Walking Dead's mythology. If there we had a time loop, here we have a more mystical story about a cursed house and a ghost, also containing light elements of religion typical in Latin horror narratives. I understand that the writers want to have a differentiated and surprising approach, and I even applaud the creative courage, but there must be some cohesion with the principles of this universe, otherwise, it ceases to be a TWD tale.
This automatically makes the episode bad for me. But La Doña's execution, within its precepts, is not so dreadful, although it contains nothing special or memorable. The story follows two apocalypse survivors who find refuge in the house of a mysterious old woman, probably a kind of witch. She prepares a dinner for the couple but doesn't want them to stay in the house, making one of them nervous. In a strange accident scene, the homeowner ends up dying, and the two survivors decide to stay on the premises.
The rest of the episode shows the characters being haunted by the house and La Doña, suffering a series of hallucinations. Deborah Kampmeier's direction has some scenic ideas, with some camera movements that seemed inspired by Sam Raimi (some zooms; many spins; and even a scene of a hand coming out of the ground that reminded me of a classic Raimi moment), but the filmmaker is extremely limited, not taking advantage of spaces or the threats of the house.
There's a lack of composition in the hallucination scenes, happening randomly and very quickly, always with an abundance of clichés. Some jump scares here and there, some objects coming to life, blood dripping down the walls, and figures from the past appearing to haunt them, in a succession of tired horror elements. The way they repeat themselves without any escalation of tension or a sense of danger makes the narrative become boring, culminating in a very anticlimactic ending.
I confess that a more over-the-top approach with humor had more potential, exploring elements like the parrot, the figures coming to life, and the witch herself in a more comedic way. But, well, the direction chose a serious tone that doesn't bring much novelty, offering the audience a ghost and cursed house story that we've seen a million times.
Furthermore, as is common in the series' scripts, there are many dramas and clashes between the protagonists. I even like some dramatic elements, like the survival issue versus the guilt of taking the old lady's house, but all the trust-distrust game between the couple sounded tiresome to me, considering that both were having hallucinations. It would have been much more interesting to see the two simply terrified together than having discussions about lack of trust. A disappointing ending for another mediocre TWD spin-off.
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