The Walking Dead: Still Gotta Mean Something

First Aired April 1st, 2018

Jadis (played by Pollyanna McIntosh) is shown surviving the Scavenger massacre by pretending to be dead, the story than picks up with her holding the Negan (played by Jeffrey Dean Morgan) hostage. At the Hilltop, Ezekiel (played by Khary Payton) wants to look for Henry (played by Macsen Lintz) but Carol (played by Melissa McBride) refuses, believing him to be dead.

Tara (played by Alanna Masterson) informs Daryl (played by Norman Reedus) that she’s not sick so Dwight (played by Austin Amelio) didn’t shoot her with an infected arrow; Daryl doesn’t take that as proof Dwight is still on their side. Michonne (played by Danai Gurira) breaks down while reading Carl’s (played by Chandler Riggs) letter and but can’t get Rick (played by Andrew Lincoln) to read his. Morgan (played by Lennie James) decides to go alone and find the Savior prisoners who escaped and Carol joins him. Morgan sees a hallucination of Henry and is convinced Henry is dead, they later find a walker impaled with Henry’s stick. Despite initially believing Henry dead Carol wants to look for him but Morgan is determined to find and kill the Saviors. Overwhelmed by grief Rick goes after the prisoners too with information from defector Alden (played by Callan McAulffe) who asks Rick not kill them if possible. Negan is tied up and unable to convince Jadis he didn’t order her people killed, she prepares to torture/kill him but Negan gets ahold of a gun and a flare threatening to destroy pictures of her people. Negan tells Jadis he named his bat Lucille after his wife, a helicopter appears but flies away before Jadis cans signal them.

Tara is alive and well (like we knew she would be) but there’s no gesture big enough for Daryl. Unless Morgan is now a medium his hallucinations aren’t proof Henry died; whether he is dead or not is irrelevant except for how it relates to Carol and Morgan. They both lost children and have different ways of dealing with it but since Morgan is talking to imaginary people he’s decidedly handling it worse. Rick at least is being proactive in his grief process, he doesn’t seem to take Alden’s request seriously although he should. Their people are severely down in numbers and if some Saviors turned maybe others would too.

Jadis made the cliché error of toying with her captive and using elaborate means to kill him, really this fails every time when will people learn? It’s nice to see a softer side of Negan and learn more about his character but it’s telling how even his sentimentality is laced with violence. Jadis missed her ride so now we have to figure out if these people are potential allies or a new threat, with the Saviors still major antagonists it wouldn’t make sense to introduce new ones.

A furious Jadis prepares to burn Lucille but Negan begs her not too and says he can settle what happened leaving Jadis in tears. Negan leaves and asks Jadis to come with him but she chooses stays alone with only her pictures. Rick runs into Morgan who nearly attacks after temporarily not recognizing Rick; but he ignores Rick’s suggestion of going back, they continue on and get jumped by the escaped Saviors. They wake up in a warehouse and see some Saviors were bitten and cut off their limbs but are in bad shape.

Rick makes them an offer to join the Hilltop with Alden and the others who stayed and warns of a coming herd of walkers. Gavin (played by Joshua Mikel) shuts him down and nearly shoots Morgan but is stopped by someone who wants to take Rick up on his offer. The herd breaks in and several people are killed, Gavin runs when his remaining people team up with Rick and Morgan. After fighting off walkers Rick and Morgan kill the Saviors, Gavin nearly kills Morgan but is left trapped and devoured by walkers. Carol finds Henry trapped by walkers and saves him and they have an emotional reunion and she brings him back to Hilltop.

Solitude is usually a guarantee of death but Jadis is in a unique position where she has no choice, Rick doesn’t trust her and Negan’s people massacred hers. Carol managed to save Henry and in a small way I think she feels like she made up for not saving her daughter. Rick and Morgan actually made progress with some of those Saviors but they made the wrong (and brutal) choice to massacre them. Gavin was one thing; he clearly wasn’t going to defect, had no issue with killing the wounded and was almost giddy at the idea of killing them. The others not only turned on him but they saved Rick and Morgan and watching them in turn kill the Saviors was cold. It’s been done before but watching those Saviors save Rick and Morgan’s lives a few times before they were killed made it that much more brutal. They acted out of vengeance and while it may not come back to bite them it does show that Carl’s dying wish for everyone to build a new world is a long way off.

Carol admits to Ezekiel her fears that everything she has can be taken away from her again but her resolve that if it does she can recover like she has before. Morgan and Rick return and Morgan tells Henry he killed the man who murdered his brother. Negan picks up someone he recognizes on the side of the road and returns to the Sanctuary but orders the Savior who greets him to keep it quiet. Rick thanks Michonne for giving him the strength to confront his grief and reads Carl’s letter.

Rick finally confronted his emotions in a healthy way, I was hoping to see what it said and if maybe that letter made Rick regret his actions. There wasn’t much of a reaction to Henry being told his brother’s death was avenged it felt anticlimactic. Carol’s words seem like she’s preparing herself to lose more people in the coming fight (she’s probably not wrong). Negan is back at the Sanctuary but he knows some of his people disobeyed him, he’s got some fireworks planned and it’s going to be fun.

Quotes/Thoughts

“There’s not a lot that’s worth much these days. But a man’s word, it’s got to mean something right?”

Morgan is listening to the ghosts of dead people more than people like Rick or Carol, he really shouldn’t be allowed to carry a gun.

“You save people, I watch them die. I have to, I’m supposed to.”

There were a lot of people opening up emotionally this episode, looked like it helped more than killing people did.

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