Spoilers Ahead!
When one moment of waiting ends, to meet Negan, another begins to see who it is he kills. In a season where the plot twists have left fans panicked over would be deaths, like Glen’s Dumpster fall and Daryl’s gunshot last week, there will be six months of debating who it is that receives the beating of a life-time at the hands of the most diabolical man ever to face Rick and his group.
Rick and several other member’s of Alexandria, set out with a sick Maggie to the Hilltop community to get her some help. While Rick loads up, Eugene, Abraham, Aaron and Sasha force Rick to take them along. Carl and Enid reveal their may be some teenage love story in the works for the two, but Carl looks to protect her from the clash with the Saviors by locking her in the closet.
Morgan is still hot on Carol’s trail, finding the horse the unknown survivor was looking for last week, before eventually finding Carol herself curled into a fetal position on the stoop of a gated house. Of course Carol is not welcoming with Morgan, even though she has been wounded in her gut. In their conversation we find that as suspected Carol left Alexandria because she cares too much about the people in the community and will be forced to kill to protect them. A point that is personified when Carol is attacked by the Savior she wounded last week.
Facing her death and shot both in the leg and arm, Morgan proves her point by shooting the assailant just before she is executed. The one character who refused to kill, is forced to kill out of love for his friend. In that same sequence we are also introduced to a new group of survivors, one Rick shot. A group that is sure to surface more next season.
The RV packed with Alexandria’s finest head out for the Hilltop community, and find out they have severely under-estimated the Saviors numbers. As they head North, they are first greeted by a small group of Saviors blocking the road, after a short tense discussion they retreat while the Savior tells them, “there are plenty of ways to get where you are going.”
Of course this is because they have blocked off every access road to their destination. Another route yields a line of zombies wearing the clothes of Michonne, Glenn and Daryl. Rick knows that the Saviors purposely missed shooting them, which means they are waiting for them ahead, which proves to be true with the next swarming road block. Instead of engaging they retreat again.
Eugene suggests that they trek forward on foot, as the Saviors don’t know the amount of people in the RV, in his most heroic scene yet Eugene appears to have sacrificed himself for the group. However it all seems to be part of the plan as the group is surrounded by the Saviors anyway and forced into a place in the wood where the Saviors await them greeted by, “Welcome to where you are going.”
This is Rick’s most vulnerable moment in the series, outwitted and outgunned they are stripped of their guns and their courage. Jeffrey Dean Morgan makes his debut, stepping out of the RV with what might be the other most important character in the episode; Lucille. The famous barbed wire bat of Negan, which will soon be used to bash one of the group to death.
Negan although clearly insane, is charismatic and witty. Pulling Glenn, Rosita, Daryl and Michonne from a van there is a bit of a reunion, but there will be no hugs as the are all forced to their knees. Negan informs them that Alexandria “Now works for me,” and that half of all their belonging also belongs to him assuring them he wants them alive because dead they are no good to him.
But first they must pay the price for killing all his men, which he remarks “is not cool,” one of them will face Lucille, of course we see the beating first person but are left without knowing who it is. After a sadistic game of eeny-meeny-miney-moe, Negan stops pointing his bat at one character but we will have to wait for next season to find out who it is.
The likely choice would be Eugene, having handed over the gun producing recipe to Rick and already given a memorial type of scene it seems likely. His death would leave Daryl wounded, Glenn morally wounded and Rick and the rest of the bunch blood-thirsty for revenge. We will have to wait for fall to see who is actually is, a disappointing end to a tumultuous season.
