The Walking Dead midseason finale aired last night, and we were in for quite a few thrills and surprises. Our Walking Dead recap reports all of the action.
Our first surprise came when Tyreese popped up right in the opening sequence! We knew he was joining the show, but we heard that we wouldn’t see him until the end. His group of four start off the Walking Dead midseason finale by fighting off some walkers in the woods.
Unfortunately, one of their girls is bitten. On the run with the wounded woman in tow, they stumble upon some tall, crumbling buildings surrounded by a fence, which we assumed was a part of Woodbury.
Andrea is still infatuated with the Governor, but she doesn’t know (yet) that he’s keeping his zombie daughter and tanks full of decapitated heads in a secret room. The Governor is keeping Penny chained up in a cage, and when he brings her out and starts to sing to her, she seems to calm down a little, but that doesn’t last long.
We learned last week that the walkers don’t have any lingering memories.
Rick and his group finally sneak into Woodbury after some hesitation, and Rick is still hesitant to completely trust Michonne. When a Woodbury resident stumbles upon them, Rick and Daryl tie him up and leave him, after they realize Glenn and Maggie are right next door.
Everything is so loud in Glenn and Maggie’s holding area because they just killed off one of the Woodbury men with a walker bone and tried to kill Merle along with the rest of his men. Unfortunately, they weren’t very successful.
However, they are fortunate that Rick and Daryl seemed to have acquired quite the supply of smoke bombs. While using these, Rick, Daryl, Michonne, and Oscar are able to finally pull Maggie and Glenn out of the Governor’s clutches.
They hide out in an abandoned building, but Michonne stays outside and then runs off. Inside, Daryl is conflicted because Glenn tells him Merle was the one who beat him up, but Daryl is just happy to hear his brother is alive. Sorry Daryl, but we need you to stay with Rick.
The Governor quickly goes into defense mode after Glenn and Maggie are rescued and sends his men out to find them and kill them. The Governor brushes off Andrea’s desire to help, and she’s pretty salty about it, so she goes out anyway.
He’s not too upset when he sees her out there shooting though, especially when she reveals to him that she’s seen Oscar in his prison jumpsuit.
In a scene full of smoke bombs and gunshots, Rick’s company tries to make it to the Woodbury border alive. Daryl stays behind to cover them, and in an ironic twist he and Merle are literally shooting at each other from across the street.
When Rick, Maggie, Glenn, and Oscar are almost to the wall, Oscar is shot down and killed, and Maggie puts a bullet in his head. The surviving three make it over the fence relatively safely.
So where exactly did Michonne go?
After leaving Rick, Michonne heads to the Governor’s place to wait for him, only she is interrupted by some strange noises from another room. Curious and keeping her guard up, Michonne explores a little and discovers the Governor’s room full of decapitated heads, as well as his daughter, Penny.
When she realizes the little girl is actually a walker, she is posed to kill, but is stopped by the Governor. It seems like he would trade his life for Penny’s, but Michonne isn’t so merciful and kills Penny right in front of him.
The two fall into a hand-to-hand brawl, and when the Governor shoves Michonne’s head into his tanks, a few biting walker heads roll out. Michonne takes advantage of the broken glass, and in a cringe-worthy moment, stabs him in the eye.
With the Governor down, Michonne takes the opportunity to make a kill, but she’s stopped once again when Andrea holds her at gunpoint. The two have an epic stare-down before Michonne runs off. It looks like Andrea has chosen the Governor. Even after she sees the head tanks and his secret zombie daughter. She actually goes to comfort him.
She even believes his sob story that the walker heads were there to “prepare” him for the horrors he faced outside. We’re so sure.
Seriously, though, Andrea. Michonne took care of you on the road for eight months when you were sick and struggling to survive. She stuck by your side, and now you forget all of that once you start sleeping with a new man? Come on, Andrea. He’s a horrible human being. How did the Wall o’ Heads not even freak you out?
Michonne makes it out of Woodbury safely, but when she catches up to Rick, he takes her sword and questions her loyalty. She pleads (well, pleading for the stoic Michonne) to stay with them. She says that they need her, and we agree.
Over at the prison, Carol is holding down the fort and keeping Axel in check when he hits on Beth. We feared that he might be creepy in the sense of Thomas from the comics, but it looks like he’s just trying to find some action. When he moves onto Carol, she declines.
It is a little funny to see Carl get defensive of Beth. Sorry Carl, but you’re a little too young for her right now.
Later on, Carl, Beth, and Hershel hear screams from deep inside the prison. Hershel thinks it’s just some walkers who have gotten in, but Carl insists on going to investigate. We were so nervous for Carl as he explored.
Finally he finds the source of the screaming when he discovers Tyreese and his group fighting off walkers in a closed off room. Sasha really needs to cut it out with the screaming. How have they lasted so long with the lungs on that girl?
Taking charge, Carl tells them to follow him and leads them to a cellblock. He locks them in, which freaks Sasha out, but Tyreese takes control and calms her down. He concedes to Carl, acknowledging that it’s Carl’s territory and that Tyreese really doesn’t want to cause any trouble.
Tyreese seems like such a strong, level-headed leader, and we’re so excited to see where his character is going on the show. We’ve been waiting for him.
To close out the episode, the Governor addresses the folks of Woodbury, playing the victim and instilling a sense of fear, as well as bloodlust, into his people. He refers to Rick’s group as “terrorists” who want to take Woodbury and destroy what they’ve built in this town, which terrifies the Woodbury residents.
In a heartbreaking twist, we learn that the Governor has taken Daryl captive, and we actually feel bad for Merle when the Governor pins the whole invasion on Daryl’s brother. When the Governor asks the supposedly docile townsfolk of Woodbury what they want to do with Merle and Daryl, he is met with replies of “Kill them!”
Andrea is horrified, and Milton is not amused. Otherwise, the brainwashed masses of Woodbury are calling for blood, and the Governor is relishing his power.
We predict that the Governor is going to make the Dixon brothers fight in one of the arena battles. Just let Daryl survive, please.