Carl surprises Jesus with a gun. He assures Carl he is just waiting for his mom and dad to get dressed. Moments later, Rick and Michonne appear. Awkward. They gather with Maggie, Glenn, Daryl, and Abraham, and Jesus promises they are on the same side: “the living side.” His settlement is looking for others to trade with, and he wants to show them. Maggie asks if they are trading with other settlements. “Your world is about to get a whole lot bigger.” Jesus offers to take them to his settlement.
Before heading out, Rick swears that he was going to tell Carl about him and Michonne, but it just happened. Carl is cool with it. He is going to stay back; “someone needs to keep this place safe.” Rick, Michonne, Daryl, Maggie, Glenn, Abraham, and Jesus pile into an RV and head off towards the Hilltop.
The group comes across a bad car accident and pull over to check it out. Jesus recognizes the car as one from his community. Fearing that this might be another trap, they leave Maggie outside with a handcuffed Jesus while everyone else goes inside the nearby building. They rescue a few survivors, though Abraham nearly brains one who has been injured and is not well. One of the survivors is Harlan, the Hilltop’s doctor. In his previous life, he was an obstetrician, which excites Maggie and Glenn.
The group continues on, until the RV gets stuck in the mud. No worries, Jesus promises. They are here. The group approaches the gates, and a pair of guards with huge spears on the lookout tower stops them. They won’t open up unless Rick’s team discards their guns – something they aren’t about to do. Rick wants Gregory, the Hilltop’s leader, to come out to meet them, but Jesus calls a truce. Rick’s people come into their camp, but they get to keep their weapons. “I trust you,” he insists. “Trust us.”
Inside the gates, the Hilltop resembles an old timey village: livestock, crops, a blacksmith. At the center stands a huge brick house, at least 100 years old, and several trailers from FEMA camps. According to Jesus, this used to be a material yard for a power company; that is how they had material to build the walls. The house at the center is called Barrington House, given to the state decades ago and turned into a museum. The high windows allow them to see for miles around them. Inside the Barrington House, most of the rooms have been converted to living spaces. They have plans to build and expand, and there are babies being born. Gregory comes out of his office and suggests – sternly – that Rick’s group wash up before he will meet with them. Rick whispers to Maggie that she should be the one to talk to Gregory. He is way too suspicious, and it is time she “starts doing these things.”
So Maggie meets with the smarmy Gregory. Jesus told Gregory that Alexandria’s food supply was “challenged” but knows they have a good arsenal. Greg is happy to help, but can’t give things away for free. He suggests they work at the Hilltop in exchange for supplies. One gets the feeling that Gregory expects sexual favors to be included in the “work,” and Maggie puts a stop to it. She wants to trade; he dismisses her. “We’re doing fine; are you?
Jesus tries to assure the group that Gregory just wants the best possible deal. They came all this way; Rick expects some food. Jesus promises to work this out, he just needs a couple days. Michonne agrees, and a guy comes in, worried. “They’re back.”
The group heads outside, where they are met by Ethan and a couple of others Who had just come back from meeting with Negan. Negan said they were “light” on their delivery. They killed several members of the team, held Ethan’s brother, Craig, as hostage, and sent the other three back with a message: Ethan stabs Gregory in the gut. Rick and his team jump into action, and a bloody fracas erupts. Ethan pins Rick with a knife to his neck, but Michonne distracts him, allowing Rick to jam a knife into Ethan’s neck. The spear-guards come running, and Jesus breaks it up, insisting that Rick and his people saved them from Ethan’s rampage. Gregory is injured, but not fatally.
Gregory is taken inside to get patched up, and Jesus assures Rick that stuff like that doesn’t usually happen. When Rick asks, Jesus explains who Negan is. Negan leads a group who call themselves the Saviors. The Saviors showed up one day and met with Gregory. They made a lot of demands and threats, and beat a 16-year-old kid to death because they needed to “understand.” Gregory, not great at confrontation, made a deal: half of everything they have goes to the Saviors. In return, the Saviors don’t attack the Hilltop. He doesn’t know how many Saviors there are, but he has seen groups of up to 20. After his last meeting with the Saviors, Daryl isn’t scared and offers to kill them all. Jesus will take the offer to Gregory. Rick’s group doesn’t have food or supplies to trade; all they have is themselves. Jesus returns and says Gregory has agreed to talk – but he will only talk to Maggie.
Gregory is laying in his antique wood-carved bed like some monarch of yore. He wants to know why Maggie and her group think they can do what they couldn’t. He also doesn’t know if Craig is worth the trouble. He is weak and Gregory doesn’t think he wants him back. Maggie makes it simple for him: give us supplies, and we will save Craig and kill Negan and his Saviors. Gregory doesn’t quite trust her because they weren’t willing to “work” for their keep before; why now? (Because this kind of work doesn’t involve prostitution.) He finally concedes, and Maggie realizes that she is now in a position of power, so she makes another demand. Negan is expecting more and more supplies from them, and pretty soon they will have nothing left and the Saviors will attack. She wants to leave with half of everything they have or the deal is off. Gregory agrees. But she has one more ask of him. We don’t hear what it is, but if you have read the comic books, you know what she wants.
The group loads up the RV with supplies, and Rick asks Andy, one of the liaisons who would drop supplies to the Saviors, to come along. Andy agrees. Jesus also wants to go with them. Before they leave, Glenn and Maggie get an ultrasound.
Also: Abraham seems to be having a midlife crisis. He is having fun with Rosita, but he continually finds himself thinking of Sasha – including when he is being choked to death by one of the Hilltop people. After this choking incident, and it is Sasha he sees, not Rosita, he realizes who he wants. If it wasn’t clear to the audience, when he stands, a necklace that Rosita made for him has fallen into the dirt, forgotten. In addition, he asks Glenn about why he and Maggie decided to have a child in this sh*tstorm of a world they now live in. He cannot imagine doing so, but after he sees the picture from Maggie’s ultrasound, you can almost hear his biological clock speed up.
You can watch a preview for the next episode, titled “Not Tomorrow Yet,” using the player below.
