The Walking Dead Season 4 Mid-Season Finale Recap: ‘Kill Em All’

The Governor shows up at the prison gates demanding that Rick and his gang can either leave peacefully or die in a bloodbath as The Walking Dead veers into the mid-season hiatus….

By Damon Martin — Editor/Lead Writer

On more than a few occasions I have been fairly critical of The Walking Dead straying far, far away from the source material i.e. the comic book the show is based upon because during several long stretches during the series it didn’t even come close to mirroring the amazing book that I believe is the best of the best in comics over the last decade. Of course I understand that for the show to stand alone, new problems and characters must exist because as rich in story as Robert Kirkman’s stories have been over the last 117 issues, at only 30 pages each the tales are told in pretty rapid fire fashion (Shane lasted one issue for Christ’s sake!).

Also I’m not oblivious to how writers work — I fancy myself a writer you know — and adding creativity to that work flow is essential to a happy process. There’s a reason why the best artists in the world create their own masterpieces and aren’t color by number specialists. So I get that The Walking Dead TV show had to be different in some ways than The Walking Dead comic book.

All of that changed in a massive way on Sunday night during the mid-season finale titled ‘Too Far Gone‘ when The Governor and his new pack of followers showed up knocking at the prison doors and demanding that Rick and his survivors move on or fight back and die. We’ll come back to that iconic moment in a few minutes, but first let’s set the stage for how we get there….

As last week’s episode ended we saw The Governor eyeing Michonne and Hershel working to load bodies outside the gates as they disposed of the dead after the great influenza battle of 2013 ended. While even I wondered if he would take a shot at them while no one was around, turns out he was laying in wait for Michonne and Hershel to step a little closer into his trap. Like flies to a spider’s web they stepped and with one quick hit, Michonne was knocked out and Hershel was staring down the barrel of a gun with very little he could do.

The Governor takes them back to his new camp and informs them that they will be used as hostages to force Rick and the survivors out of the prison. He’s a changed man you see and he doesn’t want any bloodshed, but if that’s what it takes for the prison to be the new home for his family, that’s what he’ll do. Hershel does his best to try and convince The Governor that they could live in peace together, and share the prison. He’s not having it though and says that this can end peacefully with Rick and his group leaving or this can end bloody with a lot of dead bodies scattering the fields inside the prison walls. He also uses their capture as a way to convince the group he’s with that they need to invade the prison because this group helped to destroy Woodbury and they are savages.

Also in the ultimate kiss of death, The Governor promises Lilly and Meghan that things will be be better in their new home once they ransack it and take over. Nothing could go wrong with that plan right?

Cut back to the prison for a minute and we finally hear Rick explain to Daryl that Carol isn’t coming back and why he had to exile her after learning that she killed two people in the prison that were sick with the flu. Daryl’s anger is pretty subdued given how close he was to Carol over these last few seasons, and even a stray punch being tossed Rick’s way would have been nice just to see him seething a little bit about the decision to kick her out without consulting anybody else.

Here is where I have one major fundamental problem with how The Walking Dead progressed this season short of this episode — The Governor’s story took up two full episodes while we completely forgot about the prison. This was directly after Rick sent Carol packing and without Daryl knowing about her exit. I’m not Robert Kirkman and I’m not show runner Scott Gimple, but my question would be why not re-introduce The Governor around episode two or three (the mid-season finale was episode eight for those curious) and slowly draw out his return to sanity and his eventual slip back into the sociopath we all know and love?

This could have also done wonders to break up the monotony of some of the flu epidemic story line, that while ultimately paid off in the final hour that saw the group get the antibiotics while Rick and Carl fought back a horde of walkers, did move at a Boardwalk Empire-esque slow pace for much of the first six episodes. I found myself intrigued at The Governor’s return once it got really rolling last week, but I was still curious about the entire open ended story still hanging overhead with Rick and Daryl dealing with Carol’s exile. Instead what we got tonight was a 45 seconds back and forth where Daryl really didn’t seem all that upset that she was gone.

Anyways back to the episode….

Rick and Daryl decide that Tyreese should know about Carol and her roll in the death of two people in the prison (one of which was his girlfriend) but before they can do that it’s Tyreese that comes calling with some disturbing news of his own. Deep in the bowels of the prison, he’s discovered a rabbit tacked up on a piece of wood and carved from the inside out like a 12th grade science experiment. Tyreese believes that the same person carrying out dissections in the basement of the prison is also the one that was feeding the walkers rats and responsible for Karen and David’s death. Well two out of three ain’t bad, Tyreese.

This conversation is quickly broken up by a loud explosion and a thunderous rattling of the entire prison — Rick, Daryl and Tyreese quickly run back up to the surface and pop outside to see The Governor, a tank and a whole bunch of people carrying automatic weapons awaiting them.

The Governor’s demands are simple — give up the prison before sun down, leave peacefully and on one gets hurt. If not they will ram the gates and take out everybody inside and take the prison by force. Rick informs The Governor that he’s no longer in charge and that they have a council that makes decisions now to which he replies ‘is Hershel on the council? How about Michonne?’

And one by one, Hershel and Michonne are dragged out in front of everybody, hands bound behind their backs, hostages of a madman. If Rick and his group don’t leave, Hershel and Michonne will be the first two casualties in a day filled with them after they storm the prison walls.

Rick heads down to the fences to try and talk to The Governor (who doesn’t want to be called The Governor anymore by the way) and come up with a different solution. Rick swallows down a big lump of pride and even offers to share the prison with his sworn enemy. At the same time this is happening, The Governor has put Michonne’s sword to Herschel’s throat much to the dismay of his daughters who are looking on high atop in the prison.

Rick: We’re not leaving. You try and force us we’ll fight back. Like you said, gunshots will bring more of them out, they’ll take down the fences and without the fences this place is worthless. Now, we can all live in the prison or none of us can.

Now you put down your weapons, walk through those gates, you’re one of us. We let go of all of it and nobody dies. Everyone who’s alive right now, everyone’s made it this far. We’ve done the worst kinds of things to stay alive but we can still come back. We’re not too far gone. We can come back. I know. We all can change.

The Governor: Liar

As the sun glistens down on the blade and The Governor stares back at Rick, he pulls the sword up over his shoulder and brings it down in one, violent swing and cuts into Hershel’s neck. As his white hair and shirt are soaked in blood, Maggie and Beth scream in horror as does Rick, who immediately draws his gun and opens fire as does everyone else.

Prior to this whole thing exploding like a powder keg, back at the camp Lilly is looking at a stream where a walker is attempting to cross while her daughter Meghan digs in the dirt. She finds a sign that says ‘Warning Flash Floods’. Lilly watches as the walker gets swept up in the stream and goes down the river, but moments later Meghan screams in terror as another zombie, long buried under one of the flash floods that happened in this area pops up from under the dirt and grabs the little girl by the arm. She tries to escape and of course Lilly tries mightily to reach her in time, but to no avail — the zombie takes a big bite out of Meghan and she’s gone.

Following The Governor’s beheading of poor Hershel, he turns to see Lilly standing there with Meghan dead in her arms having witnessed this entire atrocity. He grabs the kid away from her and shoots Meghan in the head. Penny the resurrection won’t be happening this time!

Meanwhile, Rick gets tagged by a shot in the leg while the rest of The Governor’s troops bare down with machine gun fire back at the prison. Daryl, Carl and the survivors all shoot back and it’s now a fire fight. This is where Kirkman and Gimple pull off one of the most chilling moments in the history of the show and literally bring the comic book to life. Just seconds after The Governor kills his surrogate child, he’s had enough of this battle and it’s time for a lot of people to die. li

“Go through the fences in your cars, get your guns, we go in,” The Governor orders. “Kill ’em all.”

The tank and the rest of the vehicles crash through the gates as the fire fight continues. Rick tackles The Governor on his way in and the two engage in a one on one battle that’s been a season and a half in the coming. The kids (and Glenn) are loaded up on a bus to escape out the back while Maggie, Tyreese and the rest stay to defend the prison as the tank starts unloading round after round, blowing huge gaping holes into the walls. Maggie sends Beth to stay with the kids on the bus but do you think she actually does? C’mon now.

The older kids (the ones Carol took in) decide they need to help and they get some guns of their own! Now normally this would backfire in a big way but as Tyreese is pinned down and out of options with Alisha pointing directly at him, her head explodes like a Peep in the microwave (don’t try that at home kids). Turns out Carol’s killer kids worked out okay because they save Tyreese’s life and they all escape.

Daryl is firing down on the group when walkers invade and start getting dangerously close. One even gets right next to him just as the camera cuts away, giving the slight idea that something bad was going to happen to Daryl — but there was no way that was actually going to go down. Daryl decides to use the walker as a human shield adding yet another notch on his badass utility belt and he takes out a few more shooters while also dropping a grenade in the tank barrel, effectively killing that attack as well. In other words, Daryl turns into every Arnold Schwarzenegger movie where he kills 100 men by himself and barely gets scratched. In the end, Daryl even busts out his crossbow to take out Mitch.

Back on the ground, The Governor gets the upper hand on Rick and starts to beat him to a bloody pulp. Just as he’s choking the life out of Rick, a blade goes slicing through his chest like an Alien popping out of John Hurt. It’s Michonne back to save the day. She leaves The Governor there to die and helps Rick get out of the prison once he finds Carl. Now I know what you’re thinking — why leave The Governor alive at all with a chance to be saved because that’s going to come back to bite you. Well not this time.

Another iconic moment from the comic comes to life as Lilly finds The Governor on the ground, bleeding out and takes one final shot with her pistol to put the evil, megalomaniac down for good.

Rick and Carl have one last mission before they leave — find baby Judith. What they come across instead is an empty baby carrier filled with blood and no Judith. They both burst into tears as they leave the prison behind without the baby. Is she dead? That much we don’t know at this point.

All of the survivors break out of the prison into different directions, and one final shot of Rick as he’s pulled away by Carl as he instructs his son ‘Don’t look back’ and they fade away into the woods.

So a quick recap — The Governor’s dead. Hershel’s dead. Pretty much everybody from that camp is dead minus Lilly and her sister (who disappeared in fear during all of the melee). Basically everybody that came over from Woodbury is gone but all of the other major characters made it out alive.

The mid-season finale was the grand point of this show that I’ve been waiting for over the past few seasons. The farm coming down, although not in the comic, was a real moment of peril that I enjoyed. The season three finale left me only wanting this showdown and we finally got it in season four. My only complaint is that it took this long to get here and that the first seven episodes (as stated earlier) could have been interlaced with some of The Governor’s story to push the narrative a bit.

As it stands, however, The Walking Dead season four mid-season finale may stand as the best episode of the entire series and kudos to Kirkman, Gimple and gang for bringing it all to life.

The Walking Dead will now go on hiatus through the holidays and return on February 9 with eight more episodes to close out the season.