Man, this has been an amazing season so far, but this is probably going to be my shortest recap ever, because a whole lot of stuff happens but really nothing happens. Here’s the tl;dr version: We go back to the group that was herding the Walkers in the first episode. Everyone from Alexandria dies, except for Heath and another new black (!!!) guy whose name I don’t recall. And Glenn dies. Sorta. Maybe. Probably?
Uh, spoiler alert. You don’t still need spoiler alerts for these things, do you?
A couple quick bullet points and then we’ll get into the important bits:
- Basically everyone spends the episode trying to redirect the herd and get back to Alexandria. There’s a lot of splitting up and a whole lot of people get killed.
- This episode maybe coulda had some more mercy shots, because all but one of the Alexandrians who get killed by zombies get torn to shreds. There was one guy who Michonne really could have sworded to the head and she just let him get eaten.
- Rick injures his hand, which could be leading to something but probably nah, since we’ve already seen one survivor get cut by a knife covered in zombie blood and nothing happened.
- Amazingly, other than Rick and Abraham, Sasha, and Daryl, who don’t really have anything to do, the only people who definitively survive the episode are Michonne, Heath, and the other Alexandrian, who is also black. He’s got a bullet in the leg but he’s alive.
- Every single time I write one of these I have to double check to see how many Rs are in Daryl. You’d think I’d know by now.
- There’s more than a few teleporting zombies, where Alexandrians are safe one second and getting munched on by a zed nobody saw a second later.
- At the end, Rick has killed off five Wolves, including the one who stole the gun (great job there, Chekhov) and found some baby food in one’s pocket. So, uh, there’s really only one place nearby where he might have found baby food, and Rick’s kinda frantic about it, except oops the Winnebago he’s in won’t start because Winnebagos don’t do that and also he’s completely surrounded by zombies now.
- Seriously, that’s not Dale’s Winnebago, right? Where’s Dale’s Winnebago?
Okay. Yeah. On to Glenn. This happens:
They’re cornered, standing on a dumpster, and note that there’s a barbed-wire fence behind them. Nick’s about to shoot himself in the head. Then he’s gonna fall off the dumpster, only because Nick really can’t ever do anything right he’s gonna take Glenn with him, and he’s gonna fall on top of Glenn. And then this happens. This image is a little more gruesome than what I usually post but I feel like it’s kinda necessary:
My theory: Glenn is alive. And that’s bullshit, because Glenn should be dead, but next week is a 90-minute Morgan episode and they are sure as hell trying to capitalize on tension and Glenn should be dead.
In bullet points:
- Remember, Nicholas fell on top of Glenn. We never get a clear shot of him other than the one above, where he appears to be crying more than he appears to be in pain.
- Also, it appears that his intestines are being pulled out of his chest, which is kinda weird.
- Glenn was not listed in the “In Memoriam” portion of The Talking Dead after the show.
- Steven Yeun was not present on The Talking Dead after the show, and they always bring major cast members on after they die.
- Glenn rather incongruously calls Rick “Dumbass” at one point over the radio. When was the last time Glenn called Rick a dumbass? When Rick was hiding under the tank in the first episode.
- Steven Yeun has been photographed in costume and on set since this episode was filmed. Granted, flashbacks are possible.
- Nicholas died too, meaning that no surviving cast member saw Glenn die. Which is not how this show rolls. They couldn’t leave Beth just missing and it led to the worst storyline in the show’s history; there’s no way they’re gonna leave Glenn’s death ambiguous, and I don’t see his reanimated body making it out of that mob to conveniently walk past a cast member. Nobody alive even knows where he is.
- Glenn’s death in the comic books was one of the biggest deals the series has ever done, and while I’ve always felt that moment had a good chance of being given to Daryl, it’s surprising that they’d kill him off so ignominiously when they’ve been teasing us with baseball bats for two seasons.
- There is also a fan theory that the whole bit is a hallucination, because supposedly Nicholas has already fired his gun dry before shooting himself in the head. I don’t buy this theory but I’m mentioning it for completion’s sake.
So, basically, the theory goes that he’s gonna roll under that dumpster, and that he’s already covered in blood and guts (don’t they have to be walker guts?) or maybe he’s gonna pull one under with him or something and somehow he’s gonna survive. I mean, on the one hand, it’s Glenn. Dude once killed a zombie while tied to a chair. Glenn is the best survivalist on the show, hands down. If anybody can get out of this, it’s him, and I like the character a lot, and I want him to be alive, but… yeah.
Next week, Morgan becomes a Ninja Turtle. The week after that, zombies attack Alexandria, so I’m betting it’s at least three episodes from now before we find out what happened.
So… uh… is it November 15 yet?
