In “The Walking Dead” recap, Maggie and Daryl lead the fight against the Reapers while Aaron, Carol and the others attempt to save Alexandria before receiving some new visitors…
By Damon Martin — Editor/Lead Writer
The final season of “The Walking Dead” continues with part two of three debuting on Sunday night on AMC with the next chunk of episodes leading towards the endgame of the long running series.
When the show came to a conclusion a few months ago, Maggie had finally led an assault against The Reapers — the ex-military psychopaths who essentially wiped out her entire community — as she attempted to take back the food and supplies stolen by them. Just when it appeared the battle was turning, The Reapers pulled out a hidden weapon that put everybody’s life in danger.
Meanwhile back in Alexandria, a huge storm has crashed down upon the community with everybody trying to pitch in to save the town that may no longer be worth saving. Like Carl from years past, the children once again find themselves in peril except this time it’s Judith and Gracie cut off from the rest of the group.
When the last episode aired, there was no mention of Eugene or his group back at The Commonwealth — the sprawling society that appears to be the closest thing to an actual thriving city since the zombie apocalypse first started — but that all changes by the end of the episode.
There was also a time jump at the conclusion of this installment that sets up a very interesting premise for the next bunch of episodes that will eventually lead to the end of “The Walking Dead.”
With that said, let’s recap the latest episode of “The Walking Dead” titled “No Other Way”…
The Last Stand
It’s tough to imagine how Alexandria is even still standing after wars with Negan’s Saviors and The Whisperers but somehow the community continues to survive, although these days it appears everything that’s been built to this point is falling apart.
With walls crumbling down and supplies running short, the people in Alexandria are nearly out of hope when a storm arrives that threatens to destroy everything that they have left.
When the last episode of “The Walking Dead” ended, Judith and Gracie got trapped in a basement filling up with water and a door being battered by walkers who got into the house after a wall fell down, which allowed the zombies to just pour into the community. Judith does her best to fend off the walkers but the numbers are starting to get overwhelming and the basement flooding with water isn’t helping matters much.
Gracie makes a last ditch effort to save them by blowing on a whistle that her adoptive father Aaron gave to her for a matter of emergencies. When Aaron hears the call, he’s trying to gather up people to save the windmill, which has caught fire and if it burns down then there’s pretty much no hope that Alexandria will make it through this storm.
With Gracie in peril, Aaron sends Carol, Jerry and a few others out to the windmill while he rushes to the sound of that whistle to save his daughter.
Once he arrives at the basement, Aaron smashes out a window and jumps inside to kill the walkers about to get to Gracie and Judith. His main concern is rescuing the children and that’s what he does before worrying about his own life.
As Gracie and Judith escape, Aaron is still left inside and the walkers are filling up the basement rather quickly with little hope that he’ll be able to slip out again without being bitten or otherwise eaten by the zombies.
Back up in the house, Rosita is still leading the charge to fend off the walkers attempting to get upstairs when Lydia hears the same whistle that came from the basement. She jumps out to go help whoever is trapped in the basement and when she arrives, Gracie and Judith are safe but Aaron is still stuck inside.
Thankfully, Lydia is able to get slip a rope down into the basement and pull Aaron to safety before he succumbs to the walkers hungry for his flesh. Aaron is thankful for the assist and he runs back to help the rest of the people try and stop the windmill from burning to the ground.
Choices
Back in Meridian at The Reaper compound, Maggie and the others are ducking and dodging the homemade missiles being fired at them from on top of a building after Leah decided to rain down fire on the attackers threatening her people. Leah already killed Pope after realizing that he had lost his way as an effective leader but she wasn’t ready to give up on the only family she’s every truly known since the world fell apart in the first place.
It turns out dropping fireworks strapped with bombs down into a crowd of people can be rather dangerous because Leah ends up doing just as much damage to her own crew as she does Maggie and the other survivors who came to get back what was stolen from them.
One bomb in particular actually ends up saving Maggie’s life after she was being attacked.
Back inside the building, Daryl ends up killing another member of The Reapers before hiding away as Leah and her main crew storm through the hallways looking for anybody still left alive.
Father Gabriel also finds himself in a precarious situation after he gets into another building and he runs into the priest that works with The Reapers. The priest actually admits that he saw Gabriel outside their compound a day earlier but claims the Lord told him that he was at no risk of harm from this man so he didn’t alert the soldiers.
The priest attempts to get Gabriel to listen to his version of God because he’s apparently been receiving daily messages from the messiah. Gabriel isn’t interested in listening, especially if the God who’s talking to him defends The Reapers’ actions.
So with that, Gabriel stabs the priest to death and heads up to the roof in hopes of tracking down the rest of his people.
As for Maggie, she eventually heads inside as well where she reunites with Elijah and Negan but they are soon interrupted when one of The Reapers named Carver catches up to them. You’d think a three on one fight would be easy enough to win but Carver pretty much kicks everybody’s ass until Negan finally gets an idea to throw dirt in his face and then clock him with a bell to knock him senseless.
Elijah is ready to use this moment to avenge his sister’s death thanks to The Reapers but Daryl arrives just in time to stop him. Daryl knows keeping Carver alive might be the one chance they have to escape from this place unscathed without anybody else needing to die.
Daryl ties up Carver and calls to Leah over the radio to arrange a meeting.
By the time everybody heads outside, it’s morning time and Daryl is looking to exchange Carver for safe passage out of Meridian.
The only problem is Leah has no intention of letting these people escape and she reveals her intentions by ordering a sniper she has planted on one of the rooftops to fire down a bullet as a warning. When Leah says that the next shot fired will go through Maggie’s head, Daryl concedes to cut Carver loose while an injured Elijah stumbles and does his best to get back at The Reaper most responsible for killing his sister.
With Elijah injured after falling to the ground, Carver looks to inflict a little more damage with a shot rings out except the bullet tears through The Reaper’s leg. Leah calls out to her man on the roof except he doesn’t answer — the voice on the other end of the radio tells her to call him Gabriel.
It seems Gabriel got to the roof and killed the Reaper in order to take away his sniper rifle.
Now Daryl is the one in control and he tells Leah and her people to drop their weapons and they’ll be allowed to leave Meridian alive without anyone else being harmed. With limited options, Leah orders everybody to leave their weapons behind as they gather up Carver and prepare to leave town very much wounded but still alive.
But Maggie takes one look at Elijah and the tormented look on his face while thinking about the people responsible for killing their friends and family just walking away and it’s too much for her to handle.
So she pulls out the revolver she took from the Reaper who attacked her earlier in the episode and she stalks down the remaining survivors and she executes them one by one. She gets a single bullet off to hit Leah in the shoulder before she runs away as Daryl scrambles to stop the shooting after he assured The Reapers that they’d be able to leave alive.
Maggie stops pursuing Leah before putting a final bullet in another Reaper as Daryl gives chase to the woman he may have once loved.
When Daryl finally catches up to an injured Leah — she remains hidden but he knows she’s there — he tells her that it didn’t have to end this way. They could have survived together but it just wasn’t meant to be. He then gives her the chance to escape but tells Leah to run now before he changes his mind.
As for Carver, he’s still laying there injured in Meridian but Maggie is out of bullets.
Before he can try to escape or fight back with a knife he spots on the ground, Maggie grabs one of Elijah’s weapons and cuts him down once and for all. Maggie is always playing the long game and there was no way she was going to allow The Reapers to escape after all they had done to her people.
Of course, Negan is keeping a watchful eye on all of this happening because he knows deep down that Maggie will eventually get back around to him as well.
When Daryl returns, he doesn’t have much to say as Maggie and the rest of the group start loading up supplies from Meridian to take back to Alexandria. It’s enough food to help them survive for a little while longer and day-by-day is just about the only guarantee anybody has right now.
Before making the journey back, Maggie has one more stop to make — the church where she left an injured Alden after the fight with The Reapers.
Sadly when she arrives, Maggie finds nothing but the dead inside including a reanimated Alden, who died at some point after he sent his friends off without him.
Maggie is devastated as she puts Alden down once and for all before burying him nearby and marking the grave with a cross made out of sticks. Negan appears out of the woods as Maggie puts Alden down in his final resting place and he tells her that it’s only a matter of time before her vengeance for him will need to be satiated.
Rather than stick around and wait for a bullet in his back, Negan tells Maggie that he’s going his own way separate from the survivors in Alexandria.
Back at the campfire, Daryl talks with Gabriel about the path that led them to this point and he wonders if anybody even has those choices anymore, especially in this constant battle so survive. A moment later, Maggie returns to gather up the rest of the supplies so they can head back to Alexandria but not before telling them that Negan has decided to leave the group for good.
It’s easy to see there’s a moment of hesitation because Daryl and Gabriel obviously wonder if Maggie is telling them the truth or if she finally killed Negan but either way he ain’t coming back. With that, they mount up the horses and head back to Alexandria.
It Doesn’t Have To Be This Way
At Alexandria, the community has barely managed to survive but everybody is still alive.
A sign of hope arrives when Jerry spots Daryl and the caravan behind him arriving back at the town gates and they’re bringing carts filled with food and supplies. Judith is overjoyed to see her Uncle Daryl back while Rosita is happy to know that Gabriel made it back alive after promising that he would return to her.
Perhaps the biggest surprise is when Daryl starts handing out food and he spots Connie walking towards him.
Of course, Daryl has long since believed that Connie was dead after she got lost in the cave with Alpha’s horde a season ago. It wasn’t until just recently that Connie was found very much alive and she managed to escape a dangerous situation thanks to Virgil, who decided he wanted to live again as well.
Daryl gives Connie a big hug and tells her that she will definitely have to explain to him how she managed to stay alive this entire time. While it’s a long awaited reunion, it’s not quite the outpouring of emotion that was probably expected but either way, Daryl and Connie have found their way back to each other again.
While the reunion is happy for just about everybody, Lydia is understandably upset to learn that Negan has decided to leave the group and strike out on his own.
Just when it looks like some sense of normalcy is returning to Alexandria, Jerry alerts everybody that they have even more visitors arriving at the gates except this is an entire army dressed in stormtrooper outfits with guns at their sides.
Daryl rushes to the gate with his crossbow drawn but before a single shot is fired, Eugene emerges from the back of the crowd to lower the tension and assure everybody that this is a friendly visit.
Back inside, Eugene explains the journey he took alongside Yumiko and Ezekiel as well as The Princess, who they met along the way, before eventually meeting up with the people from The Commonwealth. With that, Eugene introduces Lance Hornsby to the group so he can further explain why they’ve come to Alexandria.
Lance tells the survivors that he can see how much they’ve been struggling but now help has arrived. The Commonwealth army starts unloading fuel and other supplies and Lance informs the group that they will help rebuild Alexandria because this entire endeavor is about reclaiming the whole world from the dead.
But Lance also has another offer in mind if the people of Alexandria are interesting in a potentially more lucrative choice. Obviously, he’s offering them a chance to leave Alexandria behind and start a new life as citizens of The Commonwealth but it’s also easy to see the lack of trust in the faces of the survivors as they receive this particular opportunity.
Nobody looks more hesitant than Maggie — and just as she looks back at Lance, the scene flashes forward six months and she’s now standing at the gates of Hilltop.
It appears in this flash forward that Maggie has taken a group to restart the Hilltop community but now she’s staring down at a garrison of Commonwealth soldiers standing at her gates. One of the soldiers tells her to open the gates and Maggie answers back that it doesn’t have to be this way.
When the soldier removes his helmet, Daryl is revealed to be the man in the uniform and he tells Maggie that this is exactly how it has to be.
It’s obviously a shocking conclusion to the episode as it appears Maggie has refused to join The Commonwealth and now she stands at odds with Daryl, who has joined the army at the sprawling community. There’s obviously a lot more to this story, which is what the next set of episodes are likely to reveal as “The Walking Dead” continues to move forwards to the finale.
“The Walking Dead” will return with a new episode next Sunday night at 9 p.m. ET on AMC.
