In ‘The Walking Dead’ recap, Ezekiel faces a new kind of horror after his people are slaughtered and Carol fights back against the Saviors…
By Damon Martin — Editor/Lead Writer
From the first time Carol laid eyes on King Ezekiel, she saw through his phony accent and false royalty despite the fact that everybody living inside the Kingdom called him ‘your majesty’.
Still when Carol actually sat down and talked with Ezekiel after first arriving at the Kingdom, she began to understand his appeal and why people were so willing to put faith in him. It’s because Ezekiel gave them hope — a beacon of light if you will — and the people who followed him believed he could lead them back out of the darkness.
Perhaps it was a little foolish and maybe even a little crazy to call some random guy a king in the middle of the zombie apocalypse, but when all is lost, you look for the smallest glimmer of hope in an otherwise desperate world and that’s what Ezekiel provided to his people.
Unfortunately for all his inspiring speeches and promises to keep on smiling while the bullets and blood were flying all around them, Ezekiel saw how the other half lived in the latest episode of ‘The Walking Dead’ as he witnessed dozens of his followers cut down by gunfire and then he was left all alone to fend for himself.
After serving as the symbol of hope for so many people who built the Kingdom, Ezekiel was left as a king without a crown and it looked like despair was going to be his new best friend after being captured by one of the Saviors, who intended on using him as leverage to finally score points with Negan.
Of course, Ezekiel may have seemed lost but that didn’t mean the people around him were giving up quite so easily — and when you have Carol on your side, you’re never really out of the race. You just need a little bit of extra time and a few more bullets to catch up.
With that said, let’s recap the latest episode of ‘The Walking Dead’ titled ‘Some Guy’…
King for a Day, Fool for a Lifetime
The episode begins with King Ezekiel preparing to go off to war in a flashback to the day the attacks on the Saviors were launched as he rallied his troops with a rousing speech. Like all great leaders, Ezekiel spoke with passion while trying to instill hope and courage into the people who were about to follow him into war.
As he said at the end of almost every line — no matter the struggle, the setbacks, the blood spilled or the lives lost ‘and yet I smile’ because hope still exists and where hope survives so do the people of the Kingdom. It was inspiring but those same words that Ezekiel said to his people were now echoing inside his head after waking up with a pile of his followers laying on top of him after they had all been gunned down by a sniper inside one of the Saviors’ compounds that they had been tasked with taking.
As Ezekiel burrowed out from under the pile of bodies, he looked around and saw dozens of the people who called him king were now dead and slaughtered on the ground. With an injured leg, Ezekiel tried to crawl to safety but so much time had passed that many of the dead were rising back up again and looking for flesh to feast upon.
Ezekiel was scratching and clawing to survive until finally one of the few people left in his charge that hadn’t been shot appeared and cleared out the walkers nearest him to help them both escape. Ezekiel was saved at least momentarily as the soldier from the Kingdom assisted him back to his feet despite an injured leg as they started to hobble away together until another gunshot rang out.
The bullet ripped through Ezekiel’s soldier and a moment later a man emerged who can only be described as the best Jeffrey Dahmer cosplayer to ever appear on ‘The Walking Dead’ popped out and took the king hostage. His name was Gunther — although he never actually says that during the show — and he’s going to take King Ezekiel with him back to the Sanctuary where he hopes to score points with Negan.
As Ezekiel points out, Gunther is a nobody in the hierarchy of the Saviors but returning with one of the three prized jewels of this war — Rick, the widow or the king — he’s almost certainly going to become a rather important person now. While Ezekiel’s powers of perception about Gunther are on the money, it turns out the Savior also knows a thing or two about a pretend monarch trotting around calling himself king.
Gunther mocks Ezekiel and says that he’s just ‘some guy’ and nothing special yet he’s found a way to make all these people follow him and now they’re dead. Despite his choice in hairstyles and glasses, Gunther is pretty perceptive about Ezekiel’s path from zookeeper to king in the zombie apocalypse.
In fact, Gunther’s words ring so true that Ezekiel begins to question himself while trying to hobble towards the gate of the compound where his captor hopes to get transport back to the Sanctuary.
Unfortunately there’s a chain keeping the gate closed and Gunther doesn’t have a key so he might not be able to return his prize to Negan still alive. It doesn’t matter because a moment later just as Gunther is about to kill the king with his own sword, he’s chopped in half — literally — as Jerry finally emerges safe and sound from the sniper attack.
Jerry rescues the king and when Ezekiel tries to tell him that he no longer has to address him as ‘your majesty’, his most loyal subject says there’s no way he’s going to stop calling him that now. Jerry just saved the king but it’s not the last time he’ll need saving on this day.
Die Hard
At this point in ‘The Walking Dead’ can we all just acknowledge that Carol is John McClane from the “Die Hard” movies? She seems to get herself stuck in all sorts of terrible situations but always finds a away to survive and usually ends up as the only one left alive as well.
This week, Carol finds herself alone in the Savior compound where they have just cut down all of the soldiers from the Kingdom with some very heavy artillery and they are now going to take those weapons back to the Sanctuary where they will use them to clear out the walkers that have stormed the gates after Rick launched his attack a few weeks ago.
Sadly the Saviors didn’t prepare for Carol’s arrival as she hides in the ceiling and guns down four of the men carrying the guns and then goes on a stealth mission to get out of the compound and take out the rest.
Carol ends up in a gun fight with a pack of Saviors trying to load up the guns onto a transport truck that will carry them back to the Sanctuary. Of course they underestimate Carol and she makes them pay.
First she “surrenders” so she can take one of the Saviors hostage but when his friends aren’t willing to barter for his life, she lets him get cut down by gunfire while she opens up a gate behind the rest of his friends as walkers begin to pour into the compound. While more of the Saviors are eaten alive, Carol is left with only two men still remaining as they are hidden behind a truck just hoping that she runs out of ammo before they do.
The good news for these Saviors is that Carol spots King Ezekiel and Jerry fighting for their lives at another nearby gate and she decides to forgo getting the guns in favor of saving her friends. As it turns out, the Saviors weren’t safe even if they escaped the wrath of Carol
Here Comes the Cavalry
Carol ends up abandoning the truck full of guns to help save Ezekiel and Jerry from the outer gate. Just when it appears that the battle was completely lost, Carol hears the roaring sound of a motorcycle in the distance and she knows that the cavalry has arrived to stop the Saviors and save the day.
Sure enough, Rick and Daryl have arrived from the other Savior compound where they found out about the weapons being transported and they are dead set on either taking these weapons or making sure Negan never gets his hands on them.
Some bullets are exchanged but eventually Daryl shoots the guy firing back at them from the truck and Rick does some Indiana Jones type moves to leap from his Jeep into the moving truck before stabbing the driver in the gut and tossing him out. Unfortunately, Rick can’t stop the transport truck in time and he ends up crashing over an embankment.
Thankfully, Rick is just fine and once Daryl arrives they stare back down at the truck and the reward for this little caper. They now have some very powerful weapons that can be used in the war against the Saviors.
As for Carol, Ezekiel and Jerry — they escape the compound but soon fall upon a creek bed that’s been infected with some sort of toxic waste that has turned a pack of walkers into oozing zombies like something out of ‘Robocop’. Once again, Carol and Jerry fight back the zombies but Ezekiel is still a beaten and broken man.
During the melee to escape the compound, Ezekiel remembers back to a moment he shared with Carol just before they left the Kingdom to go off to war. He explains how he transformed from a meek zookeeper into the king that all of his people now follow — it’s because he decided to change who he was and become something everyone needed. Carol then relates with her own story after she was a housewife with an abusive husband but now a few years later, she’s an ass kicking alpha female and pretty much Negan’s worst nightmare because that’s what she decided to be.
Cut back to the present as Ezekiel is struggling to get up a hill with his injured leg as the walkers are nearly onto them when Shiva finally reappears to save her king. The tiger attacks the zombies and they turn their attention to the animal rather than going after the humans. Sadly, Shiva sacrifices her life clawing and biting at the zombies and Ezekiel has to watch in horror as the tiger he saved from the apocalypse has now perished.
The three survivors then return to the Kingdom, bloody and beaten, and this time King Ezekiel does not have a smile on his face. Instead, he hobbles past those same people in the Kingdom who saw him off but they aren’t sure what to think after witnessing their king seemingly defeated in body and spirit for the first time.
As for Carol, she once again saved the day and I’m just waiting for her to grab a walkie-talkie and tell Negan with rebellion in her voice — ‘yippee-kayay-motherfucker’.
It’s going to happen. Just watch.
‘The Walking Dead’ returns next Sunday night at 9pm ET on AMC and Negan is finally back…
