In “The Walking Dead” recap, Daryl proves his loyalty to the Reapers, Connie and Virgil find themselves trapped in a house of horrors as Kelly searches for her sister…
By Damon Martin — Editor/Lead Writer
It’s been quite some time — perhaps as long as it took Lauren Ridloff to film ‘The Eternals’ for Marvel Studios — since we’ve seen Connie after she was first believed to dead after being trapped in the cave where Alpha was keeping her herd of zombies.
Somehow, some way, Connie survived but since escaping that cave, she’s been unable to make her way home but she did manage to run into another weary traveler named Virgil, who previously appeared in Michonne’s final episode before leaving his island of solitude in order to make his way back into the world.
Connie and Virgil have now been surviving together, although their reappearance in the latest episode is definitely a strange one, all things considered.
Meanwhile, Daryl is back at the Reaper camp after proving himself to their leader Pope in order to join their ranks rather than being tortured or perhaps burned alive.
Of course, Daryl doesn’t just get free passage because he knows Leah or because he helped pull her from a burning building during one of Pope’s tests. Instead, Daryl has to continue to prove himself as the Reapers search for Maggie and the other survivors who escaped their fight a few nights earlier.
With that said, let’s recap the latest episode of “The Walking Dead” titled “On the Inside”….
Not Alone
When the episode begins, Connie and Virgil are already on the run from some kind of unseen terror that’s hunting them through the woods. They eventually come upon an old abandoned house that looks safe enough, although Connie is still nervous about staying anywhere for too long after being on the run ever since she left that cave.
Connie and Virgil are forced to fight off a group of zombies at the doors, which puts them back into another fight to survive. Thankfully, Virgil keeps the undead from getting to Connie before she can finally break through the doors to save them both.
Once inside, Virgil searches through the house and doesn’t find anything and he begs Connie to rest and get some sleep after she’s been hiding and or running for days without really stopping. But Connie refuses to close her eyes because she believes whatever is out to get her will surely arrive in those few moments when she’s not alert and awake.
While Virgil can barely keep his eyes open at this point, Connie decides to give another look around the hosue and that’s when she begins peaking inside rooms and looking through boarded up windows. It’s there Connie sees an eye staring back at her — but not the kind that belongs to somebody who’s already dead.
Connie runs back downstairs to tell Virgil that they’re not alone and they need to get out before things get even worse for them.
Despite placating Connie up to this point, Virgil still doesn’t believe anybody is in the house with them so he goes upstairs alongside her to look through the same boarded up window but he doesn’t find an eye staring back at him. He’s essentially given up and convinced that Connie is just seeing things.
Virgil turns to walk and he follows Connie out of the room but just as they get separated, a door slams shut, breaking them apart and a moment later something comes darting out of the dark.
Connie is then disturbed to see a half-naked person, running on all fours, just sprinting after her. She runs as fast as she can to get away from this strange creature before getting into a room to shut the door just as the thing chasing her slams into it.
She’s horrified by what she’s just seen but who or what exactly is chasing her isn’t clear just yet.
What Connie knows is the room where she escaped is covered in bones and human remains because it appears these people have been surviving the zombie apocalypse as cannibals.
Meanwhile back at Alexandria, Carol and the others are plotting a course to go search for Connie but trying to figure out the best way to do it. Magna and Rosita both volunteer to help with the search but they are soon disturbed to find Kelly has already gone missing — it seems she wasn’t willing to wait on an organized plan to go save her sister.
Out in the woods near the cave where Connie supposedly escaped, Kelly finds a campsite that was recently abandoned. She finds a backpack and a few supplies along with a slingshot — her slingshot — and she realizes this was definitely where Connie had slept.
Kelly also finds a note pad filled with a conversation that involved Connie and a person who knew Michonne, which only confuses her more but she needs to find her sister so none of that matters much for now. Kelly continues the hunt until her horse is tired and she can’t seem to pull the animal by sheer will any longer.
After falling into a mud puddle, Kelly is exhausted and utterly frustrated but thankfully her friends catchup as Carol, Rosita and Magna arrive to aid in the search for Connie.
Prove Your Worth
Back at the Reaper camp, Pope and his men are torturing Frost — one of Maggie’s followers— after he was captured at the same time as Daryl following the fighting at Meridian. Frost is refusing to give up any information even as his fingernails are being yanked off so Pope calls on Daryl to get some answers for them.
After telling Pope that he’s done worse for less during the zombie apocalypse, Daryl is unleashed to get the answered needed and he has a choice to make — do as he’s told and perhaps survive or refuse and both he and Frost will be killed.
So Daryl does his job — he chokes Frost, he punches Frost and eventually he snaps off one of Frost’s fingers to get some answers out of him. Frost finally concedes the rendezvous location where Maggie and the others were supposed to meet if they got separated.
Pope puts Leah in charge of the mission to find the house and see if the prisoner was telling them the truth.
The group of Reapers and Daryl arrives at the local neighborhood where Maggie and the other survivors were supposed to meet. Thankfully, Frost told them the next house over, which gives Daryl enough time to rattle some fallen electrical wires in order to signal Maggie that trouble is coming.
Maggie, Negan, Father Gabriel and Elijah see the wires shake, which gives them enough heads up to hide in the house in order to avoid the Reapers coming for them.
After searching the wrong house, Daryl does his best to convince them that the people there must have already moved on but one of the Reapers named Carver just isn’t buying it. He doesn’t trust Daryl and he certainly doesn’t believe that the survivors from the fight at Meridian have just disappeared into thin air.
But Leah is leading the mission and she decides this house isn’t going to give them any answers — but she’s also not willing to just walk away. Instead, Leah says that they should search the rest of the neighborhood houses just in case the survivors scampered away to one of those as the Reapers arrived.
That’s when the group gets inside the real house where Maggie and the others are hiding but they got his previous signal so they are now in a basement that’s underneath a trap door in the living room. Daryl does his best to push the Reapers away from searching the house too thoroughly but once again he remains at odds with Carver over every move he makes.
Knowing that Maggie and the others are down in the basement, Daryl essentially gives them as much information as possible about the Reapers while having a conversation with Carver. He lets them know that the Reapers are 20 deep with weapons and walls surrounding the little town they’ve taken to call their own.
That gives Maggie at least some idea of the enemy she’s going up against.
Still, Carver refuses to trust anything being said to him right now and he finally lashes out at Daryl, which forces him to come clean in a way.
Daryl admits that he’s not there out of some sense of loyalty or brotherhood to the Reapers — he’s there for Leah and nobody else. But he also admits that Pope scares the shit out of him (which very well may be real) and the last thing he wants is to end up with his face in the fire with a boot on his neck holding him there — like what happened to the Reaper who lied to Pope in a recent episode.
Just before leaving, Carver spots the opening in the floor and he reaches to look for what’s inside. Daryl readies his knife because if Maggie and the others are down there, he’s going to give them every chance to survive but thankfully when Carver opens the door, the entire basement is empty.
Maggie, Negan, Gabriel and Elijah managed to escape through a back door from the basement and they hurry through the other side of the neighborhood in order to avoid a confrontation with the Reapers.
As for Daryl, he’s managed to survive another day with this psycho group of soldiers but tomorrow isn’t guaranteed after he arrives back at their camp. When Leah’s group gets back home again, Pope is there waiting to greet them with news — it seems he continued torturing Frost after they left and he gave up a little bit more crucial information before finally expiring.
Daryl then sees Frost as a walker, tied to a pole on the outskirts of the Reapers’ town as Pope embraces Carver and the two of them share a laugh before heading back inside.
What exactly did Frost reveal to Pope before he died? We’ll have to wait until later to find that out.
The People Under the Stairs
Back at the house of horrors, Connie is trying to evade the feral people chasing her through the hallways and she manages to avoid them before coming to another room where she can see Virgil on the other side.
She starts banging on the wall and tearing through the plaster and dry wall in order to get his attention but then he becomes even more frantic when spotting one of the feral people living the house starts to creep up behind him.
Just when it appears that Virgil is going to stab the wall where Connie is standing, the feral cannibal leaps after him and a fight ensues. The cannibal is nearly choking Virgil to death when Connie’s banging on the wall gets its attention — and the distraction is just enough for Virgil to grab his knife and stab his attacker in the gut.
The cannibal starts bleeding and flees from the room.
As for Connie, she’s still stuck behind the wall, which leads Virgil to start stabbing at it, thinking that one of the cannibals is trying to get through from the other side. Thankfully, Connie is finally able to put her hand through in order to alert him that she’s the one standing there and he helps break through so they can be reunited.
Sadly even together they are still in peril because the cannibals are coming for them.
So Virgil fashions a plan where they will make a run for it in order to get through the front door but he also makes it clear that he’ll sacrifice himself in order to save Connie. When they finally escape, the two of them make it through the house with the cannibals chasing after them but just as they reach the bottom floor, one of the feral females tackles Virgil and starts stabbing him in the back.
Connie is able to fight her off but after pulling Virgil back to his feet, they are trapped against the front door with nowhere to go. As the feral cannibals begin to circle and close in on their prey, Connie quickly rips open one of the zombies laying dead on the floor and she covers herself in the guts.
Connie then pushes Virgil behind her and she opens the front door to the house — and all the zombies outside start pouring in.
The feral family are being eaten alive by the pack of zombies, which gives Connie enough space and time to get outside while trying to drag Virgil to safety. But Virgil is hurt too badly to get back to his feet so she can’t drag him any further and Connie soon sees that the last remaining members of the feral family are coming after her.
But before any of them can reach her, arrows and rocks coming flying to take out the feral cannibals.
Connie looks up and there she’s lays eyes on her sister Kelly for the first time in months — Rosita, Carol and Magna aren’t far behind as they take out the last of the feral cannibals. Connie then embraces her sister as the sibling start crying after finally being reunited together.
It was a fitting end as Connie finally makes it home again and we have to assume the survivors will give Virgil the care he needs to recover from the knife attack he just suffered through. At least now, Connie has been found and now she will rejoin Kelly in Alexandria while Daryl is just trying to find his way back there along with the rest of his group as the Reapers seek to eliminate all of them.
“The Walking Dead” will return with a brand new episode next Sunday night at 9 p.m. ET on AMC.
