In ‘The Walking Dead’ recap, Sasha and Rosita go after Negan as the Saviors arrive in the Hilltop looking for a special someone…
By Damon Martin — Editor/Lead Writer
The slow build towards a famous storyline from ‘The Walking Dead’ comics called ‘All Out War’ has taken a lot of time during the second half of season seven.
The crawl to a walk as Rick starts to build his army to face off with Negan and the Saviors was never going to happen overnight, but these past few weeks have started to feel more and more like ‘The Walking Dead’ would be better off with 13 episodes instead of 16. Still, the previous episode where Carol gets her groove back and Morgan nearly snaps was one of the best of the season.
The latest offering on Sunday night wasn’t nearly as strong outside of an emotional breakdown between Daryl and Maggie as well as Sasha and Rosita finally storming the Sanctuary compound in an attempt to assassinate Negan that ended rather anti-climactically with no resolution whatsoever.
Of course, ‘The Walking Dead’ continues to chew through ratings like a zombie through brains, but with only two episodes left it certainly feels like a lot will have to happen if next season will culminate with on all out assault and battle between Negan’s Saviors and the three communities arming up to stop him.
With that said, let’s recap the latest episode of ‘The Walking Dead’ titled ‘The Other Side’…
Life on the Hilltop
The episode begins with a largely silent montage of life at the Hilltop where the people are being trained in the art of war. Maggie is watching her baby grow bigger and bigger by the day. Enid has become an indispensable part of her life, almost like a little sister. Daryl is brooding and Sasha is helping to train the Hilltoppers while still mourning the loss of her beloved Abraham.
The montage ends with Rosita’s arrival from Alexandria with a plan to gun down Negan, which actually took place a couple of episodes ago.
Rosita shows up under the guise of helping to train the people of the Hilltop for the oncoming war, but she’s quietly plotting a course to take out Negan along with Sasha in the very near future. They’ve both gathered as much intel on the Sanctuary as possible from Daryl and Jesus and the day will soon come when they will leave the Hilltop and prepare to assassinate their target.
After a touching conversation between Maggie and Jesus, where he finally reveals that he grew up in group homes while quietly mentioning that he’s also gay, he stumbles upon his own trailer and Sasha inside rifling through one of his books. It’s not just any book, however, because the inside has been hollowed out and that’s where he’s stored the few remaining bullets he has kept hidden from the Saviors.
Jesus gladly offers the ammunition to Sasha but begs her not to go after Negan this week because it’s surely a suicide mission. Sasha says this is her decision before offering her goodbyes to which Enid gives her 10 minutes to get to wherever she needs to go before she tells Maggie what’s been going on behind her back.
Sasha heads out the door, grabs Rosita and the two of them prepare for the journey to the Sanctuary. Their exit couldn’t have come at a better time because the Saviors arrive for a surprise visit, which forces the dynamic duo to flee through a secret passage that takes them out of the Hilltop and out to the other side — thus the name of the episode — while the invaders come through the gates looking for their latest take.
On The Road Again
After exiting the secret passage under the Hilltop, Sasha and Rosita begin the journey to the Sanctuary while trying to find a car to hotwire to make the trip a little less exhausting. While Sasha tries to talk to her partner on the way, Rosita quickly shuts her down and tells her that this isn’t a sojourn for the zombie apocalypse version of the sisterhood of the traveling pants. They aren’t friends. They aren’t partners. They are together for one purpose — killing Negan — and if that’s not what they’re talking about then there’s no need for conversation.
So the silent pair stalk through the wasteland looking for a working car until they finally come upon an abandoned service station that provides them the necessary vehicle.
The only talk on the trip involves Sasha strategizing that the best course of action would be to take a shot at Negan from a distance with a sniper rifle. She promises not to miss and this would also provide a course of action that they might survive. Rosita disagrees and counters with the plan to get in close and take out Negan in a more personal manner — and also one that will likely end with both of them tortured and killed.
The trip finally ends at a building just outside the Sanctuary where Sasha and Rosita begin plotting for the attack to kill Negan.
They spot Eugene outside ordering people around and securing the perimeter, but Rosita can’t believe that he’s actually switched sides and instead must be working on some sort of con until he can escape. While there’s still no sign of Negan, Rosita finally opens up to Sasha while they wait for a clean shot on the man they both so desperately want dead.
Rosita explains how she knows so much about cars, explosives and other neat tricks.
It seems when the zombie apocalypse erupted, Rosita shacked up with several men who all decided she needed protection. One guy taught her about bombs, another about cars but all the while Rosita was just using them to learn a certain set of skills for survival in this new world. The sex was just an added bonus but as Rosita says in this kind of world everybody should at least get their rocks off.
Finally, Rosita says she met Abraham but he didn’t look at her as some kind of damsel in distress. Instead, Abraham saw her as an equal, as a woman who could take care of herself and that’s when she decided to stick with him and accidentally fell for him at the same time. Truth be told, Rosita says she should have been happy for Abraham when he found Sasha and truly fell for her because her entire relationship with him was started by each of them using the other for something they needed at the time.
The conversation gets cut off when the trucks arrive back from the Hilltop with a special guest in tow…
Doctor in the House
The Saviors arrival at the Hilltop sends everyone scrambling — especially Maggie and Daryl, who aren’t even supposed to be there.
The group is led by Simon and while it appears at first that he’s showing up on another hunt for Daryl, it turns out he’s come for another request. After Negan fed the Sanctuary’s doctor to the smelter, they are in need of another physician so the Hilltop is going to need to give up Dr. Carson so he can stay close to Negan.
Of course, this leaves everyone concerned because that means the Hilltop would have no doctor and most importantly Maggie would lose the physician caring for her unborn child.
Still, Simon insists on taking Dr. Carson with them but as a reward he leaves Gregory and the Hilltop some extra medical supplies — a gigantic crate of aspirin.
Gregory almost shows some guts when trying to convince Simon to leave the doctor at the Hilltop but instead he reverts back to his weasel status when confiding that certain forces inside his own community might be working against him. Simon tells Gregory that if anything pops up that he can’t handle to come to the Sanctuary and he will take care of it personally.
That reassurance gives Gregory all the courage he needs to allow their doctor to be taken because now he believes he has backup when Maggie inevitably moves to take over in his role.
Meanwhile, the rest of the Saviors begin foraging around the Hilltop for supplies while they are visiting with one particular goon going down into the cellar where Maggie and Daryl are hiding. Despite Enid’s best attempts to throw him off track, he goes down into the basement where he starts looking through the fruits and vegetables they have stored.
Daryl is nearly ready to jump out with a knife to skewer him but Maggie stops it from happening. The random Savior gets what he came for and then exits the cellar.
After he leaves, Maggie wonders why Daryl was so prepared to kill him, which would only inevitably end in more bloodshed with the Saviors found out that one of their own was dead. That’s when Daryl finally breaks down and confesses that he blames himself for Glenn’s death after punching Negan, which then resulted in him taking another life with his barbed-wire wrapped baseball bat.
Maggie tells Daryl that his guilt is unfounded because Glenn would never blame him for what he did and if anything he would say that the lone remaining Dixon brother is one of the best things left in this awful world. Daryl cries, Maggie consoles and we all roll a tear for that touching moment.
Finally, the Saviors gather up their new doctor and head back to the Sanctuary where they arrive with Negan there to greet them. Back at the Hilltop, Daryl exits the cellar before running into Jesus when he asks where are Sasha and Rosita?
Little does Daryl know that they are perched in a building just waiting for an opening to kill Negan.
As far as the Hilltop goes, Gregory hands out work details to Jesus for the newcomers and says that they need to start pitching in or he’s going to pitch them out. Gregory’s bold proclamation sounds a lot like a threat, which is really just his new found confidence now that he believes the Saviors truly have his back.
Suicide Squad
Dr. Carson’s arrival is met with jubilation at the Sanctuary and he’s welcomed with open arms. Over the radio, Sasha and Rosita hear Eugene giving orders that include security details while Negan is otherwise indisposed in the boudoir. Because Negan is surrounded by Eugene and Dr. Carson while he’s outside, Sasha can’t get a clean shot which means they will have to put Rosita’s plan into action instead.
They are going to have to get close to kill him.
Sasha and Rosita storm into the compound, cutting through a fence while trying to find an opening that would free Eugene from his captivity. When Eugene spots them, he tells Rosita and Sasha that he didn’t ask for them to come rescue him and they should go now. Eugene turns and runs inside, which earns him a traitor label from Rosita.
Meanwhile, Sasha finishes cutting through the fence but tells Rosita to stay on the lookout behind them just in case any of the Saviors arrive from the rear. With Rosita’s back turned, Sasha slips inside and then locks back the fence, which prevents anyone else from coming through — including her partner on the other side (once again a reference to the title of the episode).
Sasha tells Rosita that it’s not her time before turning around and firing away at the guards outside the main building. Rosita is shocked but she turns to leave while Sasha runs in through the door before gunfire and screams are heard a second later. For those unaware, Sonequa Martin-Green was cast in the new ‘Star Trek’ series on CBS in the lead role so it’s been rumored that her character on ‘The Walking Dead’ would die this season. Perhaps this open ended episode leaves the possibility that she somehow survives, but it wasn’t the most graceful exit considering she was the person arguing for a way to survive this assault earlier in the episode. Still if this is the last we see of Sasha, she went out in a blaze of glory.
Rosita runs away but finally breaks down in tears just outside the Sanctuary when she realizes that Sasha just sacrificed herself in an effort to kill Negan while simultaneously saving her life at the same time. When Rosita rises to her feet, she looks to her left and spots a man standing in the shadows holding a crossbow on his back.
Did Daryl arrive from the Hilltop in an effort to back up Sasha and Rosita? My theory is that it’s not Daryl at all but instead it’s Dwight, who might just be the only person this side of Maggie who holds more disdain in his heart for Negan than anyone else on Earth.
Only two episodes of ‘The Walking Dead’ left to go this season with the next episode debuting on Sunday night at 9pm ET on
