Latest TWD episode gives viewers the chance to see our group through the eyes of strangers.
Talk about Girl Power!
The episode begins right where last weeks left off, Maggie and Carol are having an argument. Carol’s motherly instincts are coming out and she wants to protect Maggie. Carol has to live everyday knowing she lost her daughter and doesn’t want Maggie to risk her or the babies life. Carol understands the importance of having children in the world they live in now and thinks Maggie shouldn’t be out there with them.
The alarm is sounding in the background and Carol draws her gun on Maggie, quickly revealing a man approaching from behind her. Carol has the headshot lined up but lowers and shifts the gun to wound the man and not kill him. Maggie is stuck on wanting to kill him and wants to finish it but as she stands over him with her gun aimed at him, Carol insists they leave but others surround them with guns drawn. A women with red hair (we find out later on her name is Paula) puts her gun to carols head and tells Maggie to stop or she’s dead. Right away you can tell this lady means business and took command of the situation. She seems to be the leader of this group and the others look to her to do the decision making.
As Paula is scanning the perimeter with her binoculars she sees Rick fighting one of her men named Primo and quickly takes action. She takes the walkie and tells Rick to lower his weapon along with the others. The group starts to assess the situation counting how many people are there and if they can take them. We know they have done this before and with bigger groups but she plays it safe and rightly so. Right away Carol begins to play the weak old women role to hide what she’s capable of and to keep them underestimating her. It looks like these people always get their way without to much trouble.
This episode has a kind of The Twilight Zone feel to it. This group feels familiar and I think it’s because our group members are a lot like them. They share a lot of the same personality traits and even similar struggles. If you didn’t know who Rick and his group were it would be very easy to classify them as villains. Like this group, our group has had to do bad things and also kill people to survive. At this point in the world everyone alive has done bad things and are considered survivors for a reason.
Carol is laying it on thick and Molly sees the prayer beads in carols pocket but Carol grabs at them pretending to be using them and praying for her life. They believe she’s afraid to die but Carol tells them she doesn’t care what happens to her but just wants Maggie and the baby to be safe. They are reluctant and don’t believe she’s pregnant but Maggie let’s them know she may only be two months far. Paula seems to be on the same side as Abraham when it comes to having children in the world they live in now. Maggie reassures Paula that having children throughout history was a scary thing but is necessary. “It’s cute, babies are the point, children are our future. Making bite sized snacks for the dead. The point is to stay standing” (zing!) Maggie doesn’t agree and says no that’s what walkers do and that she’s choosing something.
Molly lights up a smoke and Carol has a problem with it because of Maggie’s baby. Molly laughs about it but puts it out. Carol says that smoking will kill her but Molly answers that it already has, showing the handkerchief she coughed into, revealing blood. Seems like cancer hasn’t gone away in the apocalypse and Molly tells Carol, “I’m a dead women walking, which puts us in exactly the same boat.”
Donnie’s arm is on fire and he needs medical attention fast. Molly tells him not to touch it or he’ll bleed out. Paula tells him that the scout team is half hour away but Maggie let’s them know he will loose his arm or even life if he doesn’t get it looked at it soon. He begins to freak out at Carol and wants her to pay for what she did. He wants to shoot her in the arm to make it even but Paula says they aren’t doing anything till the others get there. Donnie lashes out and hits Paula and Maggie quickly leg sweeps him to the floor but he gets up quickly and grabs Maggie. Maggie head butts him knocking him back and Carol grabbed onto his leg and he started hitting and kicking Carol. Paula knocks him out finally with her gun and calls Maggie stupid for risking herself.
Michelle takes Maggie out of the room to interrogate her. “You have nice clothes, time to make babies. You’re hold up somewhere good. Tell me where.” Maggie refuses to answer her. “You’re not the good guys, you should know that.” It’s weird but in a way she’s not wrong and if you are an outsider looking in, it would look bad.
Back in the other room Carol interrupts the women from talking to thank them for helping Maggie and herself. Carol begins to tell them about Ed and her old life but Paula cuts her off and says she knows she’s pathetic. Paula doesn’t think they are the same, Donnie is just a warm body in her bed and she could kill him in his sleep and wouldn’t be bothered. Carol is clenching the rosary and Paula asks if she believes in that crap and carol says that faith got her through the death of her daughter.
Michelle is wrapping her stub of her finger which is freshly cut off and Maggie asks what happened. She explains that she stole gas so that she could take a car and find her boyfriends body. She said she found him but he was blown up. Maggie notices a word written on her arm of a name “Frankie” and Maggie asks if that was her boyfriend but she answers it was her fathers name and that’s what she was going to name the baby. It seems like Michelle lost her baby and Maggie says she’s sorry.
Donnie appears to be missing part of his finger as well and it shows that Negan punishes those who do him wrong and doesn’t follow his rules.
Rick impatiently radios Paula asking if they thought about it. The walkie connection seems full of static and very choppy, showing that there’s a distance between walkies. Paula plays hardball with Rick and says that she rather take her chances. Carol pleas with her to listen to Rick but Molly says they have to fight because her people killed hers and they have to do it. Carol let’s Paula know that they only defended themselves when Paula’s people ambushed them on the road. They know now that it was them who blew up T and his group and she asks Carol why they stopped there. Carol brings up Negan and Paula questions what she knows about him. She tells them that he sounds like a maniac and that they want to be safe and stop him. Molly tells Carol, “We are all Negan.” Carol wants to know what that means but they won’t answer her. Carol caves and asks Molly for a smoke and Molly is surprised since she was not approving of it before but gives her one.
When they said “We are all Negan”, it kind of gives reference to the movie SPARTACUS when all his fellow gladiators all claimed to be Spartacus so no one knew who he really was and never gave up their leader and friend.
Paula continues to pace the floor as she analyzes Carol. Again she calls her weak and asks Carol what she’s so afraid of. She’s so scared she can’t stick to her own principles. Paula begins telling Carol her story. She was a secretary before the walkers happened and didn’t like her job. She used to read inspirational emails to make her feel better about herself and she remembers a particular one. A young women is having a hard time and tells her mom she wants to give up. Her mother goes into the kitchen and boils 3 pots of water. She put a carrot in one, a boiled egg in the other and ground coffee beans in the last one. After boiling for some time the mom says look they all went through the same boiling water. Carrot went in strong came out soft. The egg was fragile and came out hard. The coffee beans changed the water itself. Your suppose to wanna be the coffee beans. Paula mentions her boss drank a lot of coffee and it never seemed like enough for him. She was at work when the army took over Washington DC and they weren’t allowed to leave until the important people were evacuated first. She wasn’t able to go to her husband and 4 daughters. As Paula mentions her daughters her lip quivers slightly and she holds in her tears. She continues her story when she says her boss was weak and stupid and was going to take them both down. She explains he was the first person she killed so she could survive and she stopped counting after she hit double digits. She stopped feeling bad about it and says she’s not like Carol and that she’s still her but better because she lost everything and it made her stronger. She loves life and Carol interrupts her asking with those people with those killers?
“Your people are killers Carol, it makes you a killer.”
Carol thinks Paula is the one that’s afraid to die and that she will if she doesn’t work this out. Paula give Carol a crazy death stare and without blinking Paula asks Carol if she’s going to kill her and carol says she hopes not.
Paula radios Rick to set up a meet up for the trade. She says there’s a large field by a sign that says God is dead down on I-66 and says it would be the best place to meet. Rick agrees and wants to meet up in ten minutes. Once she gets off the walkie she’s concerned. It sounded to easy and the walkie had less static meaning he was closer. She thinks they are already here and knows they are capable of tracking. She begins to panic and thinks as soon as they walk out the doors they’ll be killed. Carol assures her that Rick is a man of his word and he wouldn’t put Maggie or her in danger. Paula radios to her people on another channel to see how far they were and they are only ten minutes away. Paula begins making their plan. She knows they have to go and go now and be ready to leave fast. They leave Carol alone as they start preparing for Rick and the others to show up.
Carol takes a deep breath and you can slowly see her confidence and determination come back to her face as she starts to sharpen the cross on the ground. Carol breaks loose and looks for Maggie while being quiet and unseen. As Carol walks in, Maggie is trying to free herself as well. Carol helps her and gives her a hug. Carol tells Maggie they are spread out so they can get past them and get out but Maggie wants them dead, no loose ends because well you know…
They head back to where Donnie was lying unconscious and see that he died and is turning. Maggie untied the tourniquet on his arm and set up a walker trap of her own. They need a gun and she has a plan how to get one. When Molly comes back into the room, Donnie lunges on her and takes a chunk out of her arm. She kills him and says, “Where are you Magnolia!?” Maggie comes from the hallway from behind her and quickly takes her gun from the holster and hits her in the head with it and then continues to bash Molly’s head in to a bloody mess, in a fit of rage.
Paula comes back to find her people dead and goes looking for Maggie and Carol. Maggie and Carol are looking for a way out but they set up a walker trap to keep them in and the others out. Carol and Maggie begin to kill the walkers and from behind Paula starts shooting at them. Paula runs out of bullets and Carol wants her to run but Maggie wants her to kill her. Paula says do it, they killed her friends and ruined her home but won’t leave. She keeps walking towards Carol and Carol keeps the gun pointed at her but tells her just to go. Paula already lost everything so she doesn’t care if she dies, a walker gets free from a spike it was lodged on and goes for Carol, pushing her into Paula and causing Carol to shoot her gun off. Maggie quickly stabs and kills the walker but the gun shot alerted Michelle.
Michelle calls for Molly and Paula but Maggie catches her off guard and knocks her gun out of her hand. They get into a scuffle and give each other a few shots but Maggie pushes her off. Michelle pulls her knife on her and slices at her, cutting Maggie’s shirt missing her stomach. Maggie panics as she checks herself making sure she wasn’t cut, Carol walks up and shoots Michelle in the head.
Maggie picks up the knife to go to finish Paula off but Carol says she’ll do it.
“You’re good, nervous little bird.”
Paula now sees she was faking it and compares herself to Carol. Paula is shocked and asks why was she so afraid if she was able to do all of this the entire time. Carol slowly approaches with her gun aimed at her and says she was afraid of this. Paula quickly lunges at her and makes Carol drop the gun and Paula tries to get the upper hand on Carol. Carol pushes her finger in Paula’s fresh gun wound and throws her into the spike the walker got free from and a walker takes a chunk out of Paula’s face as she screams in agony.
The walkie goes off and Paula’s people have made it to the perimeter. Carol looks regretful of what just happened and Maggie looks both impressed and shocked by what Carol just did. Carol picks up the walkie and gains her composure and tries to speak just like Paula would, “meet us on the kill floor.”
As Maggie and Carol wait for the Saviors to come Carol confesses to Maggie that she may have killed 20 people and that she should have killed Donnie in the woods. She admits she had a clear shot but didn’t take it and if she would have they wouldn’t have ended up there. Another reason why it’s important to kill people and not let them have a chance to come back and hurt you.
The reinforcements arrive and Carol lights up one last smoke. They go to the kill floor but realize the door is locked. Quickly Carol runs up behind them and slams the door quickly, flicking her smoke inside and igniting the gasoline they poured on the floor before they arrived. Trapped inside the Saviors scream in terror as they burn to death. This isn’t the first time Carol has used gas and fire to kill people. When the sickness in the prison was going around Carol killed Karen and David in hopes of stopping the flu from spreading by lighting them on fire.
The death toll is really starting to take its toll on Carol. The screaming stops and Maggie and Carol head for the exit.
They pass by Michelle who totally is Tara’s doppelgänger laying on the floor, dead. Foreshadowing? They pass by the walker trap and Paula has changed into a walker. She turned very quickly compared to others and Dr Jenner mentioned sometimes it takes minutes others hours. Shane was another person who changed into a walker fairly quickly and I’m wondering, the more evil you are the quicker you turn?
Maggie kills the walkers, stabbing and stomping anything in her path and head of the door. Maggie opens the door to find Glenn and the others on the other side. Glenn hugs Maggie and Daryl goes to Carol and asks if she’s good but she says no and Daryl hugs her. Maggie tells them they are all dead and Glenn asks if she’s OK.
“I can’t… anymore..” Maggie can’t do these kinds of things anymore since she’s going to be a mom. She realizes that now.
Rick tells Primo his people are dead and no ones coming for him and he should talk. Rick asks about the bike and where they got it and he says they found it. Rick asks if Negan was at that building last night or if he was here. He answers “Both, I’m Negan” Rick backs up and says he’s sorry it had to come to this and pulls the trigger and kills him. Carol is taken back and squeezed on to the rosary so hard that her hand begins to bleed.
Things we’ve learned this episode… Don’t admit to Rick you are Negan and Carol is such a badass that she fears herself.
This episode was filmed almost all in one location and most of the people in the episode were females. This is one of the first episodes the story revolved around the women of the group and what they are capable of.
It seems to me Paula was an important member in the Saviors and I’m sure someone is going to be looking for those responsible.
Only three episodes left and Negan’s arrival is imminent.
