In “The Walking Dead” recap, Maggie plays a deadly game of cat-and-mouse with Leah while Daryl prepares to stop Lance Hornsby at any cost…
By Damon Martin — Editor/Lead Writer
As “The Walking Dead” continues moving closer and closer to the series finale later this year, the latest episode — and a second mid-season finale — set up the last battle to be fought between the survivors and the hierarchy of leadership at The Commonwealth.
Last week saw Maggie shut down an investigation looking for the supposed killers who wiped out Lance Hornsby’s self-chosen hit squad after they went looking for a cache of weapons stolen from them. Little did Hornsby know that neither Maggie or the group she was protecting, which included Negan and his new pregnant wife, actually had nothing to do with the weapons that were hijacked.
Instead, Hornsby later discovered that Leah — the rogue military survivalist — had killed his men, taken the guns as she began preparing to strike back against Maggie for wiping out her entire team.
Of course that didn’t stop Hornsby from painting Maggie as a traitor because ultimately what he wants is to takeover the Hilltop, Alexandria and Oceanside to transform the communities into satellite extensions of The Commonwealth that he would run. This has always been a power play for Hornsby and he’s willing to kill anyone and everyone who gets in his way to take it.
Meanwhile back at The Commonwealth, Eugene has realized that there’s something much more sinister happening behind the scenes at this seemingly idyllic community. After he was tricked into believing a woman named Stephanie had fallen in love with him so he would reveal the locations of the communities where he came from, Eugene has been determined to expose the system that manipulated him so egregiously.
Now with Max’s help, Eugene and the others including Connie and Rosita, are starting to find out exactly what’s happening at The Commonwealth with hopes that they can finally put a stop to it.
With that said, there’s a lot to dig into this week for the mid-season finale so let’s recap the latest episode of “The Walking Dead” titled “Acts of God”…
The Hunt Is On
For continuity sake, the recap will be going in chronological order to prevent confusion.
That said — Maggie knows that she only fended off Lance Hornsby for so long as he continues to hunt for the people who once lived in the apartment building where his men were killed. Initially, Hornsby was convinced those people stole The Commonwealth’s weapons but he later discovered that it was Leah who perpetrated the crime.
Rather than exact revenge on her, Hornsby decided to put Leah to work by employing her to go after Maggie, who she was already planning to kill after the massacre that left all of her friends in the Reapers dead and buried. Of course, Daryl allowing Leah to escape set this all up to actually happen but that’s a story for another day.
But with Hornsby hellbent on maintaining control over the region, Maggie knows that the Hilltop is no longer a safe haven for the people she loves, especially her young son Herschel. So with plans to fight back against whatever forces Hornsby will eventually sent after her, Maggie decides to take Herschel deep into the woods where she hides him with Negan and his people, who have taken over a hiding spot that once belonged to the Whisperers.
Negan has taken his wife and the rest of the people from the apartment complex there to escape Hornsby and the Commonwealth army and as much as he would like to help Maggie eliminate the problem, he also doesn’t want to leave everyone else undefended. Maggie tells Negan that this is her fight to finish but despite Herschel’s misgivings about spending time with the man who killed his father, she’s actually beginning to trust him.
That’s why Maggie is willing to leave Herschel with Negan because she knows he’ll protect the boy.
Meanwhile, Daryl, Aaron and Gabriel are part of the team that Hornsby has sent out to search the area for the people from the apartment building who escaped. Daryl realizes rather quickly that this mission isn’t going to end well for them because Hornsby’s distrust has only festered since questioning them a day earlier.
So Daryl conspires with Aaron and Gabriel to get as far north as possible before eventually finding a way to escape from the Commonwealth soldiers in the same group as them.
Plans change after Daryl hears the leader talking to Hornsby over a walkie, which convinces him that something bad is about to go down.
As they head out for one last look before heading home, Daryl notices that the soldiers are circling around him and the other survivors from Alexandria, essentially putting them in a position where they will be cornered to either get killed or captured.
Before he allows that to happen, Daryl opens fire on the soldiers and along with Aaron and Gabriel backing him up, they’re able to overwhelm their opposition. The leader of the group is the last one left alive, who can’t help but spot the swarm of walking drawing near from the gunfire that just erupted in the area.
Knowing he’ll be eaten alive if he’s left there, the commander tells Daryl that Hornsby was positioned about 10 miles out from that spot and he was preparing to “clear the field.” Daryl puts a bullet into him rather than let him die horrifically from zombies literally ripping him part but then his problems only get bigger because Aaron knows that “clear the field” means Hornsby is going after Maggie.
When Hornsby calls looking for an update — undoubtedly making sure that Daryl and his friends are dead — he hears a different voice on the other end of the walkie than he expected. Daryl tells him that his commander is no longer here and he drops the walkie back on the dead body.
Hornsby now knows that his plans to wipe out the survivors from Alexandria along with the thorn in his side from Hilltop are falling apart.
Speaking of Maggie — she’s known all along that Hornsby was going to come gunning for her so rather than continue protecting a crumbling home at the Hilltop, she decides to set a trap for the Commonwealth army that is almost certainly coming for her. Along with support from Elijah. Lydia and Marco, Maggie has rigged the main house at the Hilltop with explosives.
When Leah arrives to lead her hit squad into the Hilltop looking for Maggie, one of the soldiers opens a door that triggers the explosives, which were tied to the barrels of fuel that was given to her from the Commonwealth. The entire house explodes in a ball of fire, all of the soldiers are incinerated and Maggie finally takes a breath as it appears she’s struck a blow against the people out to kill her.
Sadly that celebration is short lived when Marco’s head is blown off as Leah emerges as the sole survivor from the house explosion. Maggie recognizes that Leah is still alive and coming for her so she orders her people to flee into the woods as she does the same.
When Hornsby arrives, he’s beyond enraged that not only did Maggie escape but she sacrificed her own community to stop him. Now he wants her dead more than ever before.
The Uprising
Back in the Commonwealth, Eugene is waking up after spending the night with Max and he’s truly found happiness for the first time in his life. He’s finally found a woman to love and who loves him right back but as enthralled as he might be about being with Max right now, Eugene also understands their work together is far from finished.
Max has agreed to steal documents from Governor Pamela Milton’s office to hopefully begin figuring out that list of names that were handed over to Connie anonymously, which might explain why a former soldier was ready to take hostages during the Halloween celebration and why Sebastian has been allowed to send people do their deaths to steal money for him without anybody even batting an eye at his actions.
At work that day, Max is understandably nervous, which Governor Milton picks up on right away but she’s able to play it off. Before betraying her employer, Max first informs Governor Milton that the finance team has informed her that the upcoming Founder’s Day celebration has a surplus of $50,000 in the budget.
Max pitches Governor Milton on the idea of using those funds to start a scholarship for underprivileged children in the community. Almost as soon as the words come out of her mouth, Milton is furrowing her brow and shooting down the idea while telling Max that those funds need to be put back into the Founder’s Day celebration because it’s the biggest day of the year for the Commonwealth.
But Governor Milton does applaud Max for her outside the box thinking even if her plans will never be enacted.
So after she leaves for dinner, Max finally gets into the file cabinet to steal the paperwork needed but that’s when Governor Milton’s son arrives looking for his mother. Sebastian is all but demanding some time with her but Max attempts to tell him that she’s already gone to dinner and won’t be back for the rest of the night.
As Sebastian continues being creepy and overbearing, Max accidentally drops the paperwork she needs to steal but he doesn’t get a good look at what she’s clutching so close to her chest. Sebastian eventually leaves the office after his attempts to see his mother have failed and Max is able to leave with the paperwork.
Back at the apartment, Connie and the rest of the group, which now includes Magna as well, start digging through the paperwork. There are more than 200 names on the list including the woman who was killed in the heist that Sebastian attempted while trying to steal money from a nearby home and the soldier who erupted at the Halloween ball was also on there as well.
The only problem is the names all have numbers by them — perhaps it’s coordinates where the people live or have been taken — but there’s no way to decipher what it means right now without a code.
For now, Connie says she’ll write about Sebastian’s heist and hang Governor Milton for either allowing or being blind to her son’s actions that has led to so many people dying. A knock on the door alarms everybody but Magna reveals that she’s asked Ezekiel to help the cause and through his makeshift hospital for the less fortunate people in the Commonwealth, he’s got an entire network ready to spread the word.
The next morning, Max returns the documents to the file cabinet and when Governor Milton arrives to the office, she’s enraged by newspaper headlines that read “Governor Milton is lying to you” with details about the heists her son has been carrying out in the community.
The uprising has started but where exactly will it end?
Everyone You Love
With Maggie being hunted by Leah, Daryl, Aaron and Gabriel arrive in the area to lend support and hopefully cut off Hornsby before he’s able to kill everyone he finds from the Hilltop.
Maggie does her best to lead Leah away from the hiding spot where Herschel is staying with Negan and his people as she prepares to do battle with her for one last time. While Maggie’s abilities are tested, she’s still no match for a seasoned soldier like Leah, who eventually gets the drop on her in the woods.
When Maggie wakes up, she’s back in the cabin that Leah once called home.
Maggie is tied to a chair and as she attempts to loosen the knots holding her arms, she tries to bait Leah into just killing her and being done with it. But Leah can’t let this go with just Maggie being dead.
Instead, Leah says she’s going after everyone Maggie has ever loved and she plans on leaving a trail of bodies in her wake. The volatile conversation appears to reach its apex with Leah pointing a gun at Maggie as her first act of revenge is carried out.
But just before the trigger is pulled, Maggie breaks free of the ropes and she lunges towards Leah as they engage in a hand-to-hand fight. While Maggie does her best, Leah eventually pulls a knife to stab her in the leg and finally bring the fight down to the ground.
From there, Leah gets the upper hand, beat the crap out of Maggie and then picks up the knife to finally finish the fight. Just before the blade stabs Maggie dead, a bullet rips through Leah’s head and she slumps down to the ground.
Maggie looks up and finds that Daryl has arrived to save the day.
Daryl takes a moment of solitude as he essentially says goodbye to the woman he loved, who he probably should have finished already but either way she’s dead now. Just then, Daryl hears movement from outside and he sees that Hornsby and his troops have arrived to pick the bones.
Daryl fires a shot outside that actually scrapes Hornsby’s cheek as he grabs Maggie and they escape out of the back of the house. When Hornsby gets inside as he’s nursing his wound, he finds Leah dead and no signs of Maggie, which means she’s still very much alive.
With his enemies growing in numbers and his plans to take over now exposed, Hornsby just puts everything into motion once and for all.
He sends his troops to Oceanside and all of the survivors there are arrested before a flag of the Commonwealth is raised to show this community has been conquered. The same flags are soon flying outside the walls of Alexandria and what’s left of the Hilltop as Hornsby’s takeover is finally completed.
Hornsby has been seeking power since the first time he was introduced and now he’s flexing his muscles by usurping control of the communities that were counting on him for help. It remains to be seen how Maggie, Daryl and the others will try to strike back, especially now that all of them are fugitives on the run without a house to call home.
“The Walking Dead” will return for the final eight episodes of the series later this year.
