On Talking Dead, Chris Hardwick said that last night’s episode of The Walking Dead “felt like a season finale.” Check out our Walking Dead recap to find out why. Major spoiler warning if you have not seen Sunday’s episode.
“Killer Within” began with someone cutting locks and opening the gates at the prison unbeknownst to Rick and his crew. A few of them decided to clean up the yard and get everything settled at the prison, but chaos ensued when walkers invaded and the alarm started sounding.
Rick, Glenn, and Daryl were all in between the two fences when the walkers started coming in the prison yard, so that left one-legged Hershel, pregnant Lori, Maggie, Beth, Carol, T-Dog, and Carl to fend for themselves inside. Hershel and Beth were able to get themselves to a safe place pretty quickly, but the rest of them opted to go inside, and that turned out to be a grave mistake.
The walkers were rampant inside as well chasing the group on all sides, and T-Dog and Carol were split from Lori, Maggie, and Carl. With walkers coming on all sides, there were bound to be some casualties.
The first one happened to be T-Dog. We shared the sentiments of many fans screaming, “No! Not T-Dog!” After being bitten, he and Carol still struggled to make it away from the walkers, but eventually he sacrificed himself by baiting the walkers so Carol could escape safely. We’re still not sure though if she made it out alive.
T-Dog’s death was truly gruesome, but incredibly heroic and brave. We hated to see him go.
In another part of the prison, Lori starts going into labor. While also being pursued by walkers on all sides, Carl finds a boiler-room-like space to hide out. Maggie tries to help Lori through birthing the baby, but after a few pushes, it’s clear that something is wrong. She’s not dilated enough and there’s too much blood.
So Lori decides she needs to have a C-section, and the baby’s life is more important than hers.
A heartbreakingly emotional moment follows when Carl and his mom hug and cry, and she tells him that he is good. In a way, she is forgiving him for being so cold with her recently. He needs to be strong in order to survive. While we were never huge Lori fans, and Carl often got on our nerves, this was an incredibly powerful scene.
After the emotional mother-son moment, Maggie is forced to perform a C-section on Lori, who soon goes into shock and life slowly leaves her. The baby is pulled out and appears to be healthy.
Carl knows what he has to do now, and makes Maggie go ahead of him. Now this is the moment that really had us bawling: Carl flashes back to his dad telling him “No more kid stuff” and facing him with the hard facts that they’re all going to die. In that moment, Carl shoots his mom in the head to save her from life as walker.
Stony-faced Carl walks quickly out of the room in which his mother just died and his younger brother or sister was just born. He and Maggie return to the prison yard.
Before he comes face-to-face with the harsh reality of his wife’s death, Rick must try to shut off the generators with Oscar and Daryl in order to stop the alarm. Once they get to the generator room, Rick is attacked by Andrew, who apparently had been alive for the past two episodes and caused this whole mess.
With a little hesitation, Oscar shoots Andrew, but this action seems to prove that Rick can now trust him. Rick gets the generators shut off and they head back out to the prison yard, and along the way they find T-Dog’s remains and Carol’s scarf, indicating she might also be dead.
When the two groups finally converge in the prison yard, and Rick sees Maggie and Carl with the baby but no Lori, his face falls and he realizes the grim reality. He is absolutely wrecked at the loss of his wife, and he completely breaks down. Even though Rick and Lori were struggling as a couple, no one wants the mother of his children to die in such a horrible way.
Rick’s reaction was one of the most heartbreaking things we have ever seen on television. He can’t even get the words out to ask Maggie about Lori because he knows that she’s gone. Rick loses it and falls to the ground, crying. We still tear up just thinking about it.
In the midst of all the drama at the prison, we also got a few snippets of Woodbury. Andrea told Merle where Hershel’s farm was, and he plans on going to try to track down Daryl. After trying to talk Merle out of it, the Governor eventually decides that he has to go with Merle on this mission.
Michonne and Andrea are planning to leave, but the Governor gets to Andrea. She starts to think they might be better off if they stay. The Governor seems to be almost seducing Andrea, and we worry that she’s falling under his spell. He even shares with her that his real name is Phillip. Michonne still refuses to leave Andrea in Woodbury alone.
During Talking Dead on AMC after The Walking Dead aired, Executive producer Gale Anne Hurd revealed that “it’s going to get dark” from here on out. If it’s getting darker than this, we don’t know what to expect next. Showrunner Glen Mazzara also tweeted earlier today saying he was scared of what he was writing for the finale.
So I’m writing the #TWD finale & I’m scaring myself. Seriously. I am very uncomfortable right now. #Can‘tLook
— Glen Mazzara (@glenmazzara) November 4, 2012
How will the group continue on after the major deaths of T-Dog, Lori, and potentially Carol?
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