In ‘The Walking Dead’ recap, the Saviors are ready to revolt after more of their members go missing with Daryl and Maggie finally figuring out who is behind it all…
By Damon Martin — Editor/Lead Writer
If the first couple of episodes of the new season of ‘The Walking Dead’ have shown anything it’s the inevitable conflict between Rick and Maggie and how they choose to live in this new world.
Since the end of last season with ‘All Out War’ coming to an end, Rick is resigned to carrying out Carl’s dream to return to civilization where there are rules and people live to help each other rather than hurt each other. That’s why Rick refused to kill Negan at the end of the war because having him serve out the rest of his days in prison would be a better example to set than just killing him for all the atrocities he committed.
At Alexandria, Rick has started to return live to some sense of normalcy — he wakes up in the morning, checks on the crops growing outside his front door and returns in time to wake up Michonne with some breakfast. He plays with his daughter Judith and they seem to have a happy family life at home.
While Rick has built a happy existence at Alexandria based on his new Carl-inspired philosophy, his counterpart from the Hilltop has a different ideology.
Maggie held democratic elections in her community where she was voted leader but now that she’s in charge, she won’t suffer fools, especially those who try to start a coup to overthrow her. That’s why Gregory had to die because he not only wanted her dead but he coerced an innocent and grieving father to do his dirty work for him.
Her way of law is in direct opposition of Rick’s new ‘live and let live’ philosophy and those two differing opinions on how to lead have already caused conflicts and judging by the end of the latest episode, things are about to take a turn for the worse.
With that said, let’s recap the latest episode of ‘The Walking Dead’ titled ‘Warning Signs’…
Rick’s Way
Last week saw Justin — the disruptive Savior who was causing problems at the construction site for the new bridge — leave on his own and then end up getting attacked while he walked back to the Sanctuary.
In the aftermath of another Savior going missing, the people closest to Justin are desperate for answers and the tension at the construction site is starting to boil over.
Maggie meets a group of those Saviors led by Billy Walsh as she transports food to the Sanctuary as part of her agreement to help them despite not yet receiving any of the corn fuel she was promised. Billy Walsh (his name is Jed but I will always know him as Billy Walsh) is upset about all of the Saviors who have gone missing recently and he wants answers and he even makes the ill-fated mistake of referring to Maggie as ‘the widow’.
Thankfully some of the other Saviors calm things down before they walk away and Maggie continues on her trip.
Back at the camp, just about everybody is at odds with the Saviors lobbying accusations and Rick not having any answers about the people who have gone missing.
Rick starts to question people in the camp after Justin’s body is finally discovered and it looks like a thin, sharp object was stabbed through his head, which is what caused his death. Justin being found dead also only serves to further anger the remaining Saviors, who feel like their being hunted and killed.
Rick questions Daryl because the stab wound looked suspiciously like an arrow but he doesn’t actually want to accuse his friend of killing the Savior in cold blood. Meanwhile, Rick asks Father Gabriel about Anne/Jadis, who was on watch the night before when the Savior went missing. Gabriel vouches for Anne and says he was with her all night — after they did a little screwing around — but the reality is he wasn’t with her the entire time.
Gabriel tells Anne that he vouched for her and he wants to trust her but he needs to ensure that she’s not the person going after the Saviors as retribution for Simon killing all of her trash heap people when the war was still going on.
Everybody teams up to go on a patrol for a sweep and clear of the area to ensure nothing else happens today but disaster strikes after Maggie and Cyndie (from Oceanside) run into a house filled with walkers and the numbers are too great for them to handle on their own. They call for back up and eventually Rick and Daryl arrive to provide support but they were further away than the other group from a different sector.
A sweep of that section reveals that Arat — one of the Saviors — has been taken and Bea — from Oceanside — has been knocked unconscious. Another missing Savior means people are going to be at each other’s throats even more now.
Rick decides to pair everybody up with someone they trust to go search for Arat in hopes of finding her alive before the Saviors revolt. Jerry then lobs a question that nobody seems to have an answer for at the time — if they capture the person responsible are they going to imprison them following Rick’s way or hang them like Gregory under Maggie’s direction?
For now, Rick says that the most important thing is finding Arat and then they’ll deal with the fallout when it’s done.
Rick pairs up with Carol while Maggie teams with Daryl as they head out into the woods searching for answers. Both groups find something — but a much different result in each case.
Rick and Carol run into Billy Walsh and another friend, who are out hunting for their friends as well. Billy Walsh ambushes Carol, takes her gun and puts a knife to her throat and demands Rick give up his weapon as well. Billy Walsh claims the Saviors just want to have some guns for protection because all of their weapons were taken away after Negan was defeated.
Carol ends up turning the tables and stabbing Billy Walsh but Rick refuses to shoot either of them dead. Instead, he tells them to go get patched up because his idea of ‘all lives matter’ isn’t going to get broken for one colossally stupid mistake.
As for Maggie and Daryl, they happen upon a dead zombie with a harpoon in its back while searching the area where Arat went missing. At that moment, Daryl realizes the culprit responsible for all the missing Saviors.
A or B
In the other split off story this week, Anne/Jadis saw that helicopter flying overhead during last week’s episode when she was doing a midnight watch by herself after getting busy with Gabriel. Following a few knowing looks from the Saviors who believed she was responsible for Justin’s disappearance and death, she ends up wandering back to her old stomping grounds at the trash heap.
There, she digs out a lock box that holds a long range walkie-talkie inside. Anne puts a batter into the walkie and begins calling out to the people from that helicopter. They are speaking in some sort of code asking if she’s retrieved at ‘A’ or a ‘B’ and it appears Anne is trying to bargain for her own life to escape the place she’s currently living.
Before she can finish speaking, Gabriel appears and calls her on the lies she’s been telling him.
Anne confesses that there’s another group far away from here that travels in by helicopter and exchanges valuable supplies for people. Anne has apparently been doing this for years where she would hand over a person — either an ‘A’ or a ‘B’ — and they would give her back supplies that her people needed. If you remember when Anne/Jadis captured Rick a couple of seasons ago, she had him in a container marked with an ‘A’.
Gabriel is obviously upset that Anne lied to him while also keeping secret this other group that barters supplies for people. In a blink of an eye, Anne whacks Gabriel with the butt of her gun and proclaims that she thought he was a ‘B’.
Now there’s no telling what this cryptic language is all about — perhaps Alpha or Beta, which would be a reference to The Whisperers, who are coming this season. That seems unlikely considering that group largely shunned technology much less had a helicopter to fly around. Still, the writers behind the TV show have changed so much from the original source material that anything seems fair game these days.
Maggie’s Way
Maggie and Daryl eventually hunt down the people responsible for kidnapping the Saviors who have gone missing lately. Daryl tracked them back to a recovery center that previously served as the home base for the people who eventually became the Oceanside community.
They find Arat on her knees with Cyndie, Bea and a couple other members of the Oceanside community by her side. Cyndie explains that they’ve been the ones taking and killing the Saviors, but only the people directly related to Negan’s reign of terror when their group was nearly wiped out.
It seems Justin was the one responsible for killing Bea’s husband and Arat was the one who murdered Cyndie’s brother on the same spot where they are currently standing. Back then, they were acting under Simon’s orders but the result of the people being killed was all the same.
Cyndie got the idea for this frontier justice after Maggie decided to hang Gregory for his crimes. While everybody had been trying to survive under Rick’s new ethos where every life matters, Maggie showed them a different way where the criminals responsible are punished severely.
Rather than take a step back and question her earlier decision, Maggie decides to turn and walk away while leaving Cyndie to carry out one last act of vengeance against the Saviors who killed so many members of the Oceanside community. Cyndie exacts her revenge on Arat with a spear to the back of the head while Maggie and Daryl leave them to handle it.
The next day after the execution was carried out, Rick watches the remaining Saviors abandon work on the bridge and leave to return to the Sanctuary.
Meanwhile, after what Maggie and Daryl witnessed the night before, they agree that not everybody deserves to live in this new world and that Rick’s philosophy doesn’t always work.
That’s why Maggie decides it’s finally time — 18 months overdue in fact — for Negan to pay for what he did to Glenn, Abraham and everybody else he murdered or had murdered while he was leading the Saviors. Maggie and Daryl prepare for a trip to Alexandria where Negan will finally be held accountable for all of his crimes.
‘The Walking Dead’ returns next Sunday night at 9 p.m. ET on AMC with only two episodes remaining for Rick Grimes during season 9. Check out a preview below:
