Tonight’s episode was beautiful, dark, and intense. One of the best of the season, maybe even the best. Here’s Not Here was pretty great, but I like Maggie and Carol a lot more than I like Morgan.
We pick up where last week left off, but this time, from Maggie and Carol’s point of view. A human man comes out of the woods, towards the ladies, and Carol shoots to injure. Maggie wants to finish him off, but three women show up and take them hostage. Paula (Alicia Witt), the leader of this mini-group, is the one who talks to Rick over the walkie-talkie. Rick offers a deal: they will return Primo, their hostage, in exchange for Maggie and Carol. Paula needs to think about it. Carol and Maggie have their jackets thrown over their heads and are taken to a car, where they are bound with duct tape. Paula makes coded calls over the walkie.
They are taken to a “safe house,” which Molly, an older woman with lung cancer, is not pleased about. She doesn’t feel safe there, and sure enough, there are walkers in the building. Not many though; Paula clears them easily and takes her hostages to a room and makes them sit. One of the women drags the dead zombie out of the room, and a rosary snags on Carol’s shoe. The Saviors leave their hostages alone for a few minutes to clear out walkers from the building. While they are gone, Maggie tries to cut through her binds and Carol pockets the rosary. When the gunfire ends, Maggie remains still and Carol starts hyperventilating.
Paula and her crew return, and Maggie begs them to remove Carol’s gag. Molly does so, while the younger woman, Chelle, holds a gun to her. They realize that Carol was trying to get to her rosary, which Molly allows. They wonder how she made it this far, and when the rosary seems to calm Carol, Molly realizes she is “one of those.” No one questions Carol’s “faith;” she slides right back into the role of a meek housewife easily. “Are you actually afraid to die?” Paula challenges her. “It doesn’t matter what happens to me. Just don’t hurt Maggie. Don’t hurt the baby.” The women don’t believe Maggie is pregnant, but she confirms she is only about two months along. “You’re stupid to get knocked up at a time like this,” Paula sneers. Maggie points out that, through most of human history, childbirth was a death sentence for women, but people still had kids. Paula doesn’t like the whole “the will to carry on” speech, and grumbles that babies will just be bite-sized snacks for the zombies.
Donald is freaking out. His bullet wound is burning. The evac team is still about thirty minutes away, and Maggie tells them he doesn’t have thirty minutes. He will lose his arm, if not his life. She encourages the Saviors to talk to Rick. Paula wants to wait. Donald gets angry, struggles to stand, and sets his sights on Carol. He is mad that she is “right as rain” and wants to kill both women. Paula reminds him to be smart, to wait for the others. Donald suggests shooting Carol in the arm, an “eye for an eye” kind of thing. He and Paula argue, and he hits her. Maggie kicks Donald; he knocks her back, then returns to kicking Carol. Paula knocks him out and sends Chelle and Maggie to another room, to “see if she knows anything.”
Chelle thinks that Maggie must have a good camp if she has the time to make babies. Maggie vomits, a lucky “proof” that she is pregnant. Even still, Chelle reminds her that they are not the good guys. Chelle tends to her finger, which was recently severed. Maggie asks what happened, and Chelle, surprisingly, admits she was caught stealing gas from this safe house, because she wanted to go look for her boyfriend’s body. The tattoo on her arm, “Frankie,” was not her boyfriend (who was a d*ck who got blown up – clearly one of the crew that Daryl got), but her father. That is what she was going to name her baby. It’s weird, because clearly the pregnancy thing was supposed to “bond” the women, but Chelle seems completely unmoved by Maggie’s condition. I don’t like the idea that women will automatically bond over pregnancy and babies just because we all have uteruses, but in this case, it makes sense. I think that is what the producers were going for, but it didn’t play well.
Anyway, Molly patches up Paula and Carol thanks them for helping Maggie. She starts in about Ed, but Paula doesn’t want to hear it. She knows that Carol is a pathetic, weak little bird, and isn’t surprised that her husband abused her, but her relationship with Donald isn’t some domestic violence thing. He is just a “warm body for her bed.” Trying to score some more sympathy points, Carol says that her faith got her through the death of her daughter. Paula and Molly are unimpressed.
Rick comes over the walkie, which angers Paula: “I said I’d contact you!” He wants to make the trade, and offers her some supplies to make it more fair. Paula rejects this, even though Carol promises they can trust Rick. Molly points out that Carol’s people already killed all of their people, and Carol points out that her people were ambushed on the road. “That’s fair,” Paula says, “you were just defending yourselves… but your people killed them on the road? Why not stop?” Carol claims that they said they were working for Negan, and he sounded like a maniac that had to be stopped. “We are all Negan,” says Molly. Carol doesn’t know what that means.
Paula wants to know what Carol is so afraid of. She goes into a diatribe about her old life. Paula was a secretary working in D.C. Her boss was a selfish, needy man, and when the army moved in, they had to evacuate the “important people” first: politicians. She wasn’t with her husband or her four daughters when the zombie apocalypse started; she was stuck with her boss. He was the first person she killed, so she could live. Paula stopped counting how many kills she had when she hit double digits, and she stopped feeling bad about it. “I lost everything and I am stronger for it. Your people are killers, Carol. That makes you a killer.” Carol promises Paula that she will be the one to die if she doesn’t work this out with Rick. “Are you going to kill me?” Paula asks. “I hope not.”
This seems to have sparked something in Paula, and she radios Rick to arrange a trade. They will meet in a large, open field in ten minutes, under a sign that says “god is dead.” (Perhaps this is a spiteful slight towards the “religious” Carol?) After she gets off the radio, Paula doesn’t like it. It was “too easy” and there was no static over the walkie – Rick’s team is close. She thinks they are waiting outside, ready to kill them the moment they step out. Paula checks in with her team – still ten minutes out. She wants to leave, and goes to gather her people.
Left alone, Carol sharpens the rosary on the floor and cuts her way free. She slips through the halls, careful to avoid Molly, killing a zombie, before she finds Maggie, trying unsuccessfully to cut through her own binds. Carol frees her and the two hug. Carol wants to escape, but Maggie has a murderous look in her eyes. She doesn’t want to leave them alive. The ladies return to Donald and remove his tourniquet. It quickly becomes clear that he has been dead for awhile, and is in the middle of his transition. Maggie ties the rope to Donald’s belt.
Donald is tethered to a pipe when Molly comes in. He bites her and she kills it, but Maggie jumps her from behind and bludgeons her to death. She takes Molly’s gun and leaves the corpses there. Paula comes in to retrieve her captive, but finds she is too late.
Maggie and Carol hit a dead end. Zombies have been set up on spikes, or had their legs cut off, to keep the captives inside and their rescuers outside. Paula finds them, guns blazing, and Maggie and Carol take cover. Carol tells her to run; initially I thought she was talking to Maggie, but it is later clarified that she wanted Paula to run. Maggie begs Carol to shoot her. A walker breaks free of its spike, startling Carol and causing her to fire. She shoots Paula. Chelle shows up (not sure where she was this whole time) and starts to fight with Maggie. She swipes at Maggie’s belly, which snaps Carol back into cold-blooded killer mode. She shoots Chelle in the head without hesitation, then returns to Paula. “I told you to run.” Paula still has some fight left in her, but getting impaled on a pipe and fed on by a zombie is what does her in. A male voice comes over the walkie; Carol tells him to meet them on the “kill floor.”
While they wait for their “rescue,” Carol laments that she should have just killed Donald. She figures she has killed 18 people; maybe 20, which would explain the number 18 she circled in her journal last week. The rescue team enters the building, but this isn’t Rick; it is Paula’s team. They go straight to the kill floor, and Carol shuts the door. Before it locks, she drops a lit cigarette inside, which ignites the spilled fuel. The four Saviors burn to death. Carol and Maggie walk out of the building, Maggie stopping briefly to kill walker Paula and a few other zombies.
The ladies open the door and come face to face with guns – being held by Glenn and Daryl. Carol admits to Daryl that she is not okay. He hugs her. Maggie tells Glenn that she can’t do this anymore. He hugs her. With no one left to save him, Rick asks Primo where he got the bike. He’s not going to share, and when Rick mentions Negan, Primo spits out, “I’m Negan, sh*thead. Let’s talk.” Rick shoots him dead, and Carol clutches her rosary so tightly she bleeds.
There is a lot of great stuff to unpack here. Maggie is becoming more violent. I assume that is her “mama bear” instinct kicking in, and Maggie is frightened by it. On the other end of the spectrum, after 18 or so kills, Carol is ready to leave it behind. It is eating away at her, and she doesn’t like the person she has become – or is becoming. I think Paula helped seal that in for her. She doesn’t want to be like her.
In addition, I am starting to think that Carol wants to have a baby. Maggie’s pregnancy made her realize that. Ever since she found out about Maggie, Carol has changed. She has lost her taste for killing (of course, keeping a tally in her journal and seeing that the number of dead increases every time probably doesn’t help), and she has become super-protective over Maggie.
You can watch previews for the next episode, titled “Twice As Far” and airing on March 20, using the players below:
