It’s Sunday, so it’s time for another episode of The Walking Dead!

Last week, the show delved into the origins of the relationship between Alpha and Beta, as well as the rise of the one called Gamma. If you want to read my recap of that particular yarn, head on over there before continuing.

This week, the group finds themselves on the receiving end of a walker onslaught. Given Alpha’s attitude towards her border, could she be the one responsible for all of this? Let’s find out.

“Is it safe?”

Over the course of more than twenty-four hours, Alexandria is experiencing an onslaught of walkers. Michonne begs the question: since these walkers are reportedly coming from the border, is this the doing of Alpha? Wave after wave, the exhausted Alexandrians kill the approaching dead. It takes everyone.

At Michonne’s house, her attempt to rest for a while is interrupted by a call on the radio. She heads to the a vantage point and spots at least two huge herds coming at Alexandria from two directions.

“I’m so tired.” 

Eugene does his math and estimates that the first herd will arrive in an hour, and the second in two hours. Daryl points out the futility of trying to move them away which elicits an angry reaction from Michonne, but she quickly apologises. She’s tired, and so is everybody else.

Gamma approaches them and tells them to make their way to the northern border, where they will lay down their weapons and wait for Alpha to come to them. Gamma insists that the walker herds are not the Whisperers’ doing.

The Council convenes a meeting, where they’re discussing the threat of Alpha. Lydia claims that these walkers are indeed not the work of her mother, who would instead send her entire horde and be done with them rather than drag the thing out. The Highwaymen, the group that briefly terrorised the Kingdom last season, demands justice for the deaths of many of their own. Michonne calms the meeting down, informing the group of the reality of the situation: if Alpha sends the entire horde, which Daryl estimates to be around ten thousand, then they’re all done. They need to listen to what Alpha has to say.

Gabriel is arguing with Aaron about bringing Negan along; Aaron doesn’t want to, and Negan would prefer to stay behind since tensions are high and he feels he’ll be an easy target for everybody’s anger. Gabriel shuts the discussion down: Negan is going.

“We are always watching.”

Michonne, Daryl, Carol, and a few others arrive at the designated meeting spot. A group of walkers make their way towards them but Alpha and some Whisperers break away and approach the Alexandrians. She reiterates that they should never cross the border into Whisperer territory, which Michonne states only happened once when the fire caused by the satellite threatened both sides of the border. Alpha corrects her; it was three times, which alerts the group. They’ve been watching them this entire time. She implies violence, but backs down as she claims she considers context for these transgressions. There must be some form of punishment, however. The borders will be changed and this move will expand the Whisperers’ territory, which infuriates Carol. She says that this move will cut them off from their hunting grounds. Carol’s resistance intrigues Alpha, who approaches her and goads her into some sort of response. She brings up Carol’s adopted son Henry, who Alpha killed and beheaded at the end of the last season. Carol tries to shoot Alpha but Daryl interrupts, and Michonne profusely apologises for Carol’s actions. Alpha forgives them yet again, but tells them to run as they pick up the sticks signifying the border and begin to move forward.

“Behind you.” 

Aaron and Negan are having the time of their lives, defending a choke point near Alexandria from the walker threat. Negan finds a crowbar to help him fight them but Aaron orders him to put it down. When Negan is forced to use it when overwhelmed with walkers, Aaron throws him some rope to tie his hands together so they can go back to camp.

They have a bit of a standoff. Aaron brings up Eric, his boyfriend who was killed by Negan’s men. Negan tells Aaron a simple, universal truth, that men have a duty to protect what’s theirs no matter the cost. In response, Aaron brings up Negan’s dead wife. She died hating Negan, he says. Just then, two walkers ambush Aaron and in killing them, he gets some blood in his eyes and is unable to find Negan.

“You’re right. Doesn’t mean I’m wrong, though.” 

Michonne approaches Carol to apologise for this whole situation, but Carol walks off before she can say much to her. Carol finds a secluded spot and notices three Whisperers looking at her. She shoots at them but trips when she gives chase. Daryl and Michonne come to check on her and they begin to spread out to find them.

Later, Daryl informs them that he can’t find a single Whisperer track. Michonne asks Carol about the pills she’s been taking, but she brushes it off and tells her she takes them like coffee. Daryl suggests they find a place with walls to crash in for the night, so they find a nearby school to hold up in.

Once inside, Carol finds a textbook with a family on the cover and hallucinates seeing herself and all her dead children, both biological and adopted, on the cover. She snaps out of it when Daryl calls to her. She volunteers for the first watch and is joined by Daryl when her watch nears its end. He tells her a story of his dad, of how in his trucking days he thought he ran over a girl on the highway but couldn’t find any evidence of her when he looked. It turned out he was just seeing things, which tends to happen when people don’t sleep. Carol goes on the defense but eventually backs down.

“Parched?”

A blinded Aaron comes stumbling into a random house in the wild, but he fails to spot Negan sitting on a couch behind him. He’s stumbling around in the dark which attracts a pair of walkers to the house. He fails to defend himself against them which is when Negan chooses to intervene. He tells Aaron that a certain flower that grows on the walkers has blinded Aaron, but it may not be permanent. Negan decides that they’ll spend the night in this place and will head out in the morning.

“I’m gonna need you all to leave.” 

Carol is exploring the school when she finds a dead body. She suddenly hallucinates that Henry is behind her, as well as a shadowed figure about to stab her.

She wakes up from the dream and finds Daryl there. She tells him that she isn’t like his trucker father but this confuses Daryl… his father wasn’t a trucker! Dun dun dun! She imagined that entire conversation. Or dreamt it. Anyway, she tells Daryl that she wants another hour of watch which he agrees to.

She finds herself in a gym and spots a very creepy Whisperer who slinks off into the darkness. Carol walks and steps on a trap, which hangs her upside down from the ceiling. The Whisperer approaches her and blends into a group of walkers that just entered the gym. She kills a few and frees herself, calling to Daryl for help. We suddenly cut to Carol standing over multiple bodies.

It probably happened, as Daryl and Michonne drag her back to Alexandria to see Siddiq. He and another doctor are about to patch her up but Siddiq begins flashing back to that night the Whisperers killed so many of them, which has been affecting him as of late. The doctor takes over and helps Carol out.

“Can you see me?”

Aaron wakes up and his eyesight seems to be normal again.

Back in Alexandria, Eugene and Rosita come home to rest after a really long night killing walkers. Eugene makes his intentions known again, that he loves Rosita and wants to be with her. She’s extremely exhausted, so her truth just comes out: she and Eugene will never happen in the way he wants it to, which brings him some clarity. He realises how much he’s been pestering her about this notion of his and leaves her alone.

Outside, Siddiq is joined by Michonne who asks how he’s doing. He brushes everything off, saying that he’s a father now (he and Rosita had a baby together) and is always tired. He is then joined by the doctor from earlier, who tells him that he used to be a field medic in the Iraq War, that he went in as one person and came out of it a different one. He was a mess after the war, constantly going in and out of VAs and such.

“She doesn’t believe me. Do you?”

Carol wakes up and heads downstairs, where Daryl’s frying up some eggs. Carol realises that they’re out of jam and Daryl hands her some cash so she can head to the store. Henry suddenly appears at the table, and then she really wakes up. She speaks to Michonne after this who is still doubtful that Carol ever saw those Whisperers tracking them.

She finds Daryl and asks him if he believes her despite what Michonne thinks. He nods.

Back at the forest, a Whisperer with a bullet wound in her gut wakes up.

The End

And thus ends another episode of The Walking Dead. It was pretty great, despite the near constant Carol dream fakeouts. Seeing her like this is tough considering all that she’s been through, but I imagine she’ll power through and get her revenge soon enough.

Catch me here next week for my recap of episode four, “Ghosts”.