Summary:
Last Day on Earth
I think the two big questions are Daryl’s health status and did Maggie lose the baby? And if they are both okay, does someone else die?
The season finale starts with a quick psychedelic pattern of lights before cutting to Morgan, walking through the woods, still searching for Carol. He finds a sign stating the obvious (to anyone who could read it I would think).
He then quickly finds a horse and makes friends.
Things start happening quickly. We see someone we don’t know being chased by a bunch of saviors before they start giving him a beating.
We then cut back to town where multiple people are loading Maggie up in the RV to get her to the doctor at Hilltop. On the way there the RV comes upon the Saviors and the guy they ran down in the woods. Team Rick gets out of the RV, hands up, he wants to talk. The Saviors tell Rick they’re going to need his people to hand everything over. Rick tells the Saviors he was going to ask for the same thing – everything. Then things get weird with Rick and the Savior mouthpiece chatting a little too much about “the last day on earth”. Abraham backs away with no shots fired.
Morgan finds Carol quicker than I would have thought, but she looks like she’s in a bad way.
I can’t tell if she was shot in the side, knifed, or bitten? Morgan doesn’t seem super worried, so I’m guessing it was a knife or a bullet wound. She needs stitches and antibiotics, but otherwise Morgan just wants to get her back to town.
When we come back from commercial we get more strobe lights – was Daryl shot in the head?
We then see Team Rick in the RV, planning their secondary route to the Hilltop before we cut back to Morgan & Carol. Morgan wants to take her back but she doesn’t seem ready to return – she’s still suffering from whatever breakdown she’s going through. She begs Morgan to leave. She can’t go back because then she will be forced to kill again. Morgan lets it go, lured outside by the sound of walkers – one of which is hanging by its neck from a radio tower. I guess the sound was bothering him, because he goes up to kill it and cut it down. When he gets back to the house Carol is gone – leaving Morgan to rush off on his white horse to try and find her. A little further on Morgan finds Carol’s rosary and a dead walker – which he realizes means something bad because Carol left it behind them. Carol meanwhile is looking very rough – she’s wounded, hurt, and can barely kill a walker – which is when the Savior she shot in the shoulder in the last episode catches up with her. He doesn’t care about anything but making Carol pay for killing his friends before he dies too. He then shoots her in the upper arm. The Savior gets mad when Carol starts to laugh, then shoots her in the thigh. He walks away while she taunts him, trying to make him end it, which is when Morgan shows up. Which proves Carol’s point – if you care about someone you might have to kill to defend them.
Carol begs Morgan to let her go but Morgan refuses to let her die. We then get to meet a new faction? Or were the two men on the horses from Hilltop? Whoever they are they seem friendly, or at least willing to talk.
Back on the RV Abraham drops the baby question bomb on Sasha, asking her if she could have a baby in the world they live in. There is a sweet moment between him and Sasha, which left me waiting for the gunfire. Instead they come around the corner and find the rode blocked by a blockade. Carl wants to fight, but Rick talks sense into him. Better to run and fight another day. The Saviors fire off some rounds into the sky but let Team Rick flee in the RV.
Team Rick realizes the people who blocked the second route were different men from the first. The Saviors have numbers. Whatever their third route is the Saviors or someone else anticipated it and blocked the way with a wall of chained walkers. Some of the walkers are wearing Michonne and Daryl’s clothing. Then the action starts. Saviors have the high ground but somehow manage to miss everyone while Rick still manages to clear the way so the RV can get by.
Not too much further on they come to another roadblock – this one with even bigger. The road has been blocked off with a huge pile of logs which the Saviors set alight while taunting Rick.
The Saviors are just toying with Team Rick. It’s time for hard decisions for Team Rick. There are two more routes for the RV to follow, and Eugene is going to try and make the Saviors think everyone is still on board while Rick and the others use the cover of darkness to make a run for it on foot.
At this point I’m pissed because there are only 26 minutes of the season finale left and there is now way they can wrap up all these plot points without leaving major stuff hanging for next season.
When we come back from break we are down to 20 minutes and Team Rick (minus Eugene) is moving through the dark, but not being quiet about it. Too much talking. Which is when Carl says he isn’t going to let anyone die like Denise – and we hear whistling all around them in the darkness. They try and run but find themselves herded into an open area before the flood lights are turned on. They are horribly outnumbered. The Saviors look like they have at least two hundred men there – including Eugene on his knees.
The 60’s porn star Savior mouthpiece tells them to drop their weapons and listen. Team Rick is stripped of their weapons then forced onto their knees. Everyone is lined up, including Maggie and Eugene. Rick looks like he’s losing it – totally defeated.
Fifteen minutes left – at the beginning of the next commercial break. Ten when we get back.
Daryl, Glenn, Sasha, and Rosita are all at the party as well.
With everyone on their knees we meet Negan and his baseball bat Lucille.
He immediately asks who the leader is and Rick is pointed out by the Saviors. Negan is quite pissed that Team Rick has killed so many of his people, including the people he sent to kill the people who killed his people.
Negan then explains the new world order to Rick. “Give me your shit or we will kill you.” Negan then goes on to explain that 50% of everything they have now belongs to the Saviors and that he doesn’t want to kill them, but they need to pay for the damage they’ve done. He tells them he’s going to beat one of them with Lucille. Abraham straightens up when Negan gets to him, but Negan keeps moving until he gets to Carl. He tells Carl to lighten up, cry a little before moving on to Maggie.
Negan says Maggie looks like shit and offers to put her out of her misery, which brings Glenn scrambling in tears. Negan gives Team Rick the one free pass but warns them all not to break the line again before going back to Carl with the realization that it is Rick’s kid.
The last thing we see is Negan swinging Lucille and blood running across someone’s view. Negan says, “Look at that, taking it like a champ,” but it’s not clear who he picked.
We know its not Carl or Rick because Negan says if anyone moves cut Carl’s eye out and feed it to his father. The consensus seems to be that it was Glenn.
Things I loved about this episode…
- Carl trying to save Enid from going on the RV run because he thinks it’s too dangerous.
- Carl saying “he owes them”. I so hope he gets to be badass against the Saviors.
- The touching goodbye between Abraham and Eugene.
- Negan seeing that Carl might be a cold hearted killer. (Serial killer is what he actually says.)
Things that I didn’t like about this episode…
- So many of the fighters are leaving Alexandria with Maggie, and Rick leaves Gabriel in charge?
- Rick telling Maggie the doctor at the Hilltop is going to make things better. It felt like a lie. Especially when he kept saying they would be okay as long as it was all of them.
- Carol descending into the fear of killing, and the fear of loving people because that means you will need to defend them.
- Why waste the energy climbing up to kill the walker if you were Morgan. it seems like a silly risk to take during the ZA.
- When Team Rick finds the chained zombies the Saviors have the high ground, surprise, and cover – and yet they miss everyone? Come on, in reality Team Rick would have just been ended. (Later Rick does say they weren’t trying to stop them.)
- Carol getting caught by the wounded Savior and shot in the arm.
- Team Rick is supposed to be sneaking through the woods but they are making a lot of noise by talking.
Firsts…
- The first time I’ve struggled to keep up because so much stuff has happened in the first ten minutes of the show.
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