The Walking Dead season 4, episode 14, “The Grove,” saw two surprise deaths wrapped in one very emotional storyline.

Last week’s episode of the show saw Maggie, Bob, and Sasha on the way to Terminus, while Daryl encountered a new biker-type group led by Joe. Tonight, both of those story lines were placed on hold.

The story

“The Grove” begins with Carol and Lizzie having a late night chat about Terminus. “Do you think there will be kids there?” the latter wonders with hope. We also hear Carol talk about her daughter, calling her sweet and admitting she misses her every day. “Would you miss me?” Lizzie asks. “I won’t have to miss you,” Carol answers.

The next day Carol and Tyreese discuss Lizzie’s inability to understand the threat the zombies are. They continue down the train tracks and stop for water. Tyreese spots a zombie coming towards them and almost kills him, but Lizzie – with Judith in her arms – asks him to not do it. He’s trapped in a hole, so this walker is not a threat. Meanwhile, Carol is trying to lecture Mika about the fact that she’ll reach a point where she has to kill another human. It doesn’t work on her, however.

After finding a safe house, the group sees a fire in the distance. Tyreese and Carol then clear the house, but while they’re in there Mika and Lizzie face a zombie outside. Lizzie has a problem accepting the walker’s death, and later she starts playing with a zombie, which Carol kills because the walker was (obviously) going to kill her.

Tyreese suggests to Carol that they live in this safe house, but the nice thoughts don’t last long. When zombies come out from the nearby fire, the girls decide to join in on the zombie killing with their two elders. Later, Carol also thinks this safe house would be a nice place to stay for a while. Tyreese adds that they may not be ready to be around other people yet.

Tyreese then talks about how he misses Karen, and for a moment it looks like Carol is going to come clean about killing her. She doesn’t, however, but the way Tyreese is speaking, it sounds like he could be understanding if she took a few minutes to explain herself.

When they walk back to the house, they see Lizzie has shockingly killed Mika. She says she was going to do it to Judith too. Why? So we can see…some theory Lizzie has in her messed up head. Tyreese brings Lizzie and Judith back into the house.

Lizzie and Mika clearly are having problems adapting to this apocalyptic world, but it’s to be expected given their young age. Carol seems to think they can be in fighting shape right now, but it’s not an easy task. We also learned that Lizzie was the one feeding the walkers at the prison (there was evidence of this a couple episodes ago too). Tyreese wonders if it was her who killed Karen, but Carol doesn’t think so.

The episode’s ending

Carol and Lizzie go on a walk to gather flowers for Mika. Lizzie apologizes for pulling a gun on Carol (expressing no remorse for killing her sister) and starts staring at flowers. “Just look at the flowers, Lizzie, just look at the flowers,” Carol says as she starts to back away from the girl who she says she loves. Carol sends one bullet through her.

She and Tyreese then bury the two girls. That night, the two put together a puzzle and Carol reveals that she killed Karen and David. She explains herself as best she can. “I had to stop the outbreak,” she pleads while pushing a gun towards Tyreese. He asks if the kill was quick, and she says yes. He’s visibly shaken by this revelation but doesn’t kill Carol and instead forgives her. “You’re never going to forget it happened. You did it, it’s a part of you now. But I forgive you,” he says to her.

They decide that they don’t need to stay at the safe house, so onward to Terminus they go. Judith can be seen on Tyreese’s back in a baby carrier, as he and Carol leave the grove. We didn’t see any other characters this episode, but that will change next week, as we saw in the preview for episode 15:

Your ‘Walking Dead’ recap: What did you think of episode 14, ‘The Grove’?

Episode 14 had a heck of a lot of heart packed into it and obviously some of the darker moments this season has had to offer. Notably, Chris Hardwicke’s Talking Dead introduction felt really sad coming off such a powerful story.

You can watch tonight’s episode of The Walking Dead online beginning Monday, March 17 via the stream on AMC.com’s website. You must have digital cable credentials so you can prove you are a paying customer.

There are only two more episodes left in The Walking Dead season 4. Episode 15, titled “Us,” airs Sunday, March 23 at 9 p.m. eastern/pacific on AMC.