In “The Walking Dead” recap, Aaron and Father Gabriel go hunting for food but end up finding more than they bargained for when encountering a mysterious stranger…
By Damon Martin — Editor/Lead Writer
The six bonus episodes for “The Walking Dead” season 10 reached a midway point on Sunday night but for the first time, this particular installment didn’t really offer anything to the overall series.
While the first episode focused on Maggie’s return and the enemies she brought with her while the second episode documented Daryl’s isolation and eventual relationship with a woman we had never met before, the third episode offered so real consequence to the rest of the show unless Aaron and Father Gabriel will soon be hunted down by triplets.
With food supplies running short in the wake of the fight against the Whisperers, the survivors send Aaron and Gabriel out hunting — without any real means to carry something back but that’s besides the point — but instead of finding a truck filled with Ramen noodles or some other food, they instead encounter a dangerous stranger played by the great Robert Patrick.
It’s a shame that the episode featuring Mr. Patrick was largely wasted just because outside of some disturbing interactions with the survivors, he was stuck behind prosthetic makeup and really ended up playing no major part in the show and that’s a shame. He seems like the kind of actor built for “The Walking Dead” but alas his appearance will only end with a single episode.
Truth be told, not a lot happened in this particular installment so let’s get to the recap for the latest episode of “The Walking Dead” titled “One More”…
Hunting Season
Following the final fight with the Whisperers, the survivors need supplies so Aaron and Father Gabriel head out into the world to try and find something, aided by maps provided by Maggie. The idea is that hopefully they’ll discover unused supplies stashed away versus the depleted coffers that likely surround Alexandria and the other communities.
Along the way, Aaron and Gabriel encounter a field full of zombies and they are forced to eliminate all of them. They find abandoned cars filled with zombies and they dispatch them. They even come across a convenience store but it has nothing but zombies and empty shelves inside. In other words, they find no food and certainly no supplies.
A walk across a muddy bog ends up with Gabriel dragged down into the muck by a zombie but thankfully Aaron is there to help save him. Sadly both are then covered in mud just as a rain storm comes along to make the day that much better.
Finally, Aaron and Gabriel come across a warehouse that wasn’t marked on Maggie’s map and they decide to take a look inside to see if there might be anything worth saving or using.
While searching the building, Gabriel finds a pile of bibles with many of the pages ripped out. He also discovers a bottle of aged whiskey hiding inside a desk drawer that might make this trip worth the long suffering days and nights. Just then he hears a scream from Aaron and he rushes to the other side of the building to find him.
That’s when he spots Aaron with a bloody mace attached to where his arm used to be and a dead boar laying on the ground.
It seems there was a boar hiding in one of the offices and Aaron was forced to kill it when he opened the door and found the animal inside. It’s a fortunate turn of events, however, because now Aaron and Gabriel have an animal to cook for dinner and some delicious whiskey to wash it down.
After a lesson on whiskey, they decide to play cards and Aaron finds out that Gabriel is a bit of a hustler in his spare time. Following too many drinks, Aaron and Gabriel share war stories from before and during the zombie apocalypse.
Gabriel tells Aaron about Reverend George — the man who taught him how to truly preach the gospel while giving him life lessons on things like whiskey along the way. Of course those days are long since gone and good people like Reverend George don’t really exist anymore.
Aaron argues that there are still plenty of good people out there but Gabriel — a man of faith — counters by more or less telling him to take the blinders off and realizes the harsh, cruel world they’ve been facing and will continue to face in order to survive.
“Evil people aren’t the exception to the rule. They are the rule”
~ Father Gabriel.
That’s enough to sober Aaron up and go to the bathroom as Gabriel passes out for the night. When he awakens, he finds Aaron still gone so he goes looking and that’s when he encounters a stranger standing in the shadows, lurking at the other end of the building. He’s carrying an AK-47 but his bigger concern right now is what Aaron and Gabriel have been cooking — because he’d like to taste some of that boar.
Russian Roulette
Gabriel fixes the mystery man a plate and he begins to chow down on the boar while sharing a conversation with the holy man. Along the way, the stranger finally reveals that he’s been listening to Aaron and Gabriel’s conversation and that he’s not too happy these intruders drank all of his whiskey and killed the boar he trapped for dinner.
Gabriel counters by telling him they meant no harm and that’s when the man pulls out a duffel bag to reveal Aaron’s prosthetic arm with a mace on the end of it inside. That kind of weapon means no harm?
The stranger then reveals Aaron tied to a chair and he wheels him out before pulling out a revolver and dumping the bullets down onto the table. He then puts one bullet back in the chamber, spins it around and slaps it back into place before setting it down again.
He commands Gabriel and Aaron to play a game of Russian roulette except the rules of this version are a little bit different. Each pull of the trigger can accompany the gun placed to their own head or pointed at the man sitting across the table from them.
The exercise is essentially set up to find what Aaron and Gabriel covet most — the people they care about or themselves. Begging doesn’t help much either and so with that the survivors begin pulling the trigger to see which of them is destined to die.
Gabriel goes first but the chamber goes click and the same can be said for Aaron on his first pull as well. The second pull of the trigger for Gabriel once again reveals an empty chamber but when Aaron clicks back on the hammer, the strange man says he knows the difference in the sound — the bullet is now loaded.
Will Aaron knowingly kill himself or will he kill Gabriel in order to return home to see his daughter?
It seems the stranger understands the nature of man after he encountered his own experience with the family that he once protected when the zombie apocalypse first began.
He tells the story about how he looked after his brother and his family once the world fell apart and he saved them more times than he could possibly count. But late one night, he found his brother trying to steal the last of his food — and he realized that perhaps in the most dire of circumstances, there is no loyalty much less caring for another person because it always comes down to personal survival.
In the end, the man killed his brother and his family for trying to take what’s his and that was more than enough to tell him there was no good left in the world.
Aaron tries to convince him otherwise — he still believes there’s things worth fighting for and living for, even in this horrific time. Finally, the man takes away the gun and stops the game of Russian roulette before introducing himself as Mays.
It appears the survivors may have met a new friend — and that’s when Gabriel bashes his head in with the mace as the blood splatters all over Aaron.
While Aaron is shocked, Gabriel says there’s no way they could have brought back a dangerous man like that with them to the camp.
Still stunned by watching Mays being killed, Aaron has a revelation — where was this man hiding in the warehouse that he could hear their entire conversation?
The pair then discover an upstairs storage room where they find a cot, some supplies and Mays’ brother still very much alive but he’s handcuffed to a steam pipe. The brother is taken back after likely setting eyes on somebody else for the first time in years but as soon as Gabriel frees him, the man grabs the gun from his waist belt.
Gabriel and Aaron try to talk him down but the man looks down at the floor and sees the corpses of his rotting family there and he turns the gun on himself. On the way out, they see photos of Mays and his brother as twins along with what we have to assume was the brother’s family from before the zombie apocalypse.
Outside, Gabriel and Aaron spot a water tower in the distance — it was the last marker on Maggie’s map. At every stop, Aaron was ready to just give up and go home but Gabriel kept insisting one more try.
This time around it’s Aaron looking for a little bit of hope after this deadly encounter with Mays and his brother and he tells Gabriel “one more” as they begin the walk towards the water tower in hopes of finding something to bring back with them.
All in all, not the strongest episode of “The Walking Dead” but it still had Robert Patrick and maybe that’s enough!
“The Walking Dead” returns for the fourth of six bonus episodes next Sunday night at 9 p.m. ET on AMC.
