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‘The Walking Dead’ Review: The King, the Widow, and Rick

Warning-Spoiler Alert: Do not read further unless you’ve seen the latest episode of The Walking Dead!


When we picked up last week, we found Gabriel seemingly on the brink of a terrible illness and Negan reuniting with his saviors to pick up the pieces and regain their strength.

'The Walking Dead' Review: The King, the Widow, and Rick
Gene Page/AMC

This week we bounced back to Rick’s crew picking up their pieces, with Maggie leading the way at Hilltop and Carol keeping what’s left of The Kingdom in good spirits.

Now Pen pals, Rick writes a letter between the two of them describing his side of the fight, sounding extremely positive and optimistic. Maggie’s letter is a tad less positive, and Carol’s is almost hopeless as she tells Rick that her, Ezekiel and Jerry are the only ones who made it back to The Kingdom.

Rick leaves it at this: “We meet in 2 days at The Sanctuary to end this and win it all.” Now, there are a couple problems with this-but we’ll touch upon that shortly.

This leads to Rick arriving at the junkyard AGAIN, where he meets with Jadis and her people. Meet can be used lightly-they more like held him at gunpoint while he tried to convince her to fight alongside him. She is still obviously against him. “Shot you.” She says, reiterating her point.

She then takes Rick to the dumpster, has him tied up naked and locks him there alone in the dark.

(Thus, Rick telling Carol and Maggie to meet in 2 days is going to be quite difficult now.)

It’s difficult to not think back to what Negan said to Gabriel in the trailer last week “I don’t GET people killed.” This seems to be a big mistake that might cost Rick.

Back at Hilltop, Gregory tries to convince Maggie that “his motives are pure”. Does anyone still believe anything he says? He tells Maggie she shouldn’t let Jesus bring in all the saviors he spared.

“You can’t have wolves wandering around amongst the sheep. It’s as simple as that.”

Maggie later says she used to live on a farm and already knows all about sheep and wolves. She kicks him in with the saviors.

Michonne needs to see the site of the Sanctuary to ease her mind, and Rosita for her own reasons, so the two of them go over and run into 2 rogue saviors they then get into an impromptu game of hide and seek with. This might have been the best scene in the entire episode because Rosita drops her weapon and then finds a FLAMETHROWER and shoots it inside of a building. It was the most bad-a** thing Rosita has ever done and it was awesome.

Daryl then proceeds to save the day by ramming a truck into the other’s car, ending that problem swiftly.

Meanwhile, Carl tracks down the guy from the car park (Now we know his name is Siddiq) a few episodes ago and actually brings him food and water. He references Lori and tells him,

My mom told me you gotta do what’s right. sometime it is sometimes it’s not.

Loved this! He also tells him that he’s doing it to set and example for his dad.

Young Henry catches up with Carol in the woods and it was interesting to see her face fall when he expresses such passion for fighting and getting revenge for his family. He is around the same age as Lizzie and Mika, but he is very different already. He’s definitely strong.

The most heartbreaking part of the episode was hearing Ezekiel in despair. It seems that Shiva’s death was the last straw to make him want to carry on.

I played a part. I knew. And yet I smiled. I can’t do it no more. I can’t be what they need. So please just leave me alone.

He also says what fans have been anticipating for a while, when Carol asks about why he kept visiting her. “You make me feel real. Not a fiction.” to which she responds, “You are real. To me. You inspired them to believe in something. You have to help them grieve. To move on. To end this. You owe them that.”

He still says he can’t.

So needless to say things are in a somewhat hopeless state, with Rick locked up, Ezekiel in a funk it seems Maggie is going to have to rally Michonne and Daryl to lead whatever happens next.

Do you think they’ll figure out that Rick is in trouble and go after him?

Catch The Walking Dead Sundays at 9 PM ET on AMC.