The Walking Dead season 4, episode 9 only followed three characters but had several interesting twists.
Our recap of The Walking Dead mid-season 4 premiere traced Rick, Carl, and Michonne in the days after the disaster at the prison. We’ve separated our recap into two sections: Michonne’s journey and Rick and Carl’s.
Michonne, her two new friends, and her two old friends. We begin tonight’s episode at the prison, where the zombies have taken over. The Governor lies dead, smoke still rises from the former safe house, and we see that Michonne is watching the scene from the sidelines. She turns two zombies into armless, mouthless figures – similar to the ones she had when we first met her. On her way out, we see Hershel’s head showing signs of zombie-fication. She sends her katana through him to put him out of his misery. Bye, Hershel.
Later, we enter a dream sequence which looks like the early days of the apocalypse. Michonne is with “her lover” named Mike, their child, and a friend. She keeps her katana in the kitchen with the other knives (this is one of those strange dream occurrences). Things start turning sour when the two men are talking about how to have a life in this apocalyptic world, and go from being dressed nice, to being dirty, to being armless. Michonne screams and snaps out of the dream to see she’s been sleeping in a car.
Further on in the episode, Michonne is walking with a pretty big group of zombies – under the protection of her two zombie mules – and can’t help but notice a zombie who looks similar to herself. She decides to kill it, which naturally makes the other zombies come after her. She kills every single one of them with the katana.
She picks up on a trail and comes across Joe & Joe Jr.’s BBQ Shack, which Rick and Carl have already been through. She starts talking to herself. “Mike, I miss you. I missed you when I was with you.” She says that she was wrong, because she’s still here, and he could still be here too. It’s not clear what exactly she’s talking about, but perhaps more will be revealed in the future.
Carl and Rick. Papa Grimes is in awful condition and can’t say with certainty if they’re going to be okay. Carl is leading the charge as they try to find shelter on their own. The two have some tension between them, and Carl seems interested in making decisions on his own. The two frequently spar over things like securing their new safe house, when to eat, etc.
The next morning Carl wakes before Rick. After getting tired of waiting for dad to wake up, he tries to stir him but can’t (because he’s in such poor physical condition). His screams at his dad stir up a couple zombies outside. He goes outside to chase them away and runs into another zombie, and the walkers bring Carl to the ground. He wastes a few bullets killing them, and to us it looks like could’ve easily been killed. “I win,” he tells them. This kid has built an ego.
Carl comes back in and talks to his father – who’s still sleeping – to tell him about his zombie kills. He tells him he can’t protect anyone anymore. “They’re all gone now, because of you. [Referring to Hershel, mom, etc.] They counted on you. You were their leader! But now, you’re nothing,” he says with tears in his eyes. “I’d be fine if you died.”
With fresh confidence thanks to his zombie kills, he goes out on his own and enters another house to pick up more supplies. Being a kid, he can’t resist picking up the chocolate pudding. He goes upstairs and encounters another zombie, but this time he runs out of bullets and narrowly escapes (at the cost of losing a shoe). Apparently satisfied with his latest escape, he sits on the roof eating that pudding.
Back in the house with dad, Carl is resting next to him when he starts breathing, and he thinks Rick has turned into a zombie. He almost shoots him but can’t, and luckily his hesitation yields the fact that his dad hasn’t been turned. “I’m scared,” he admits to his still-sleeping father.
Rick finally comes to and proudly tells his son he’s a man now.
A reunion! Finally, some nice news. At the end of the episode Michonne spots the pudding tub and comes up to the house it leads to. She looks in and sees Carl and Rick, then with a smile knocks on the door. Rick looks through the peephole and starts to laugh. He tells Carl, “It’s for you,” and our guess is that Michonne is holding up the pudding tub.
Today’s episode focused on three characters, so we suspect the next couple may continue this trend of only following particular people. Because of the small group, episode 9 felt like it was moving pretty slow. On the other hand, there were interesting revelations: Carl realized he needs his father after all, and viewers got a glimpse into Michonne’s past. Her boyfriend/partner/love we see is named Mike, which is the same name her boyfriend has in the comic series. Mike’s best friend Terry is not specifically mentioned in this episode, but we can assume that the friend we see is him.