Warning: The recap and review will contain spoilers for this episode.
On this week's episode of The Walking Dead, Daryl is on his motorcycle and in front of Abraham and Sasha. A few cars behind them starts shooting at them. Daryl becomes split from them as Sasha and Abraham handle the problem. Daryl falls off his bike and ends up pushing it through the woods. He tries to get a hold of Sasha and Abraham on the walkie-talkie, but there's no response. Daryl comes across a couple of women and one of them knocks him out. He finds himself at a campfire, surrounded by survivors. He wakes up again in the morning and finds a man pointing a gun at him. Daryl is tied up and not allowed to talk. He's being held hostage by the two women and a man. They're using Daryl as a bargaining chip because they think he's someone else, probably one of the Wolves. There's apparently some history between these people and the group they think Daryl's a part of.
The group comes across a fenced in area and sees it swarming with walkers. Daryl grabs his stuff and runs through the forest. He gets back on the radio and still can't reach them. Daryl shoots a walker, kept in the duffle bag from the other people and sees the bag had insulin in it.
Abraham and Sasha are on the trail of Daryl. They get on the radio, but there's no answer. They head into a building and Sasha takes a nap while Abraham searches for anything useful.
Back in the woods, Daryl finds the three people that took him hostage earlier and gets their gun from him. Daryl gives back the bag and starts to walk away until a truck pulls up and a bunch of people get out. The man starts yelling to give everything back they took. The three people are surrounded. Daryl grabs them and they run the one way out. They find a relatively safe spot and Daryl gives back the gun. Eventually, the people give up and stop looking for them.
Abraham finds some RPG rounds in the back of a military truck. He also finds a walker with the RPG strapped to him. The walker has a what looks like to be a Saviors patch on. (Checking again, it's a hawk on a crown, not the Saviors logo, which is an eagle on top of Lucille) The walker eventually falls off the roof, but the RPG stays. Abraham talks to Sasha and comes to terms with their situation.
Daryl and his new three friends walk and talk. Dina spots two dead, familiar faces and pays homage, but they're walkers now and kills Dina. Daryl takes care of the walkers. Daryl asks the guy the questions to let them into Alexandria. They start walking away and Neil pulls the gun on him and demands the crossbow and takes his motorcycle. He and the woman head off. Daryl heads back to the woods and finds a truck. He kills the walker inside. He then finds and picks up Sasha and Abraham. Daryl tries radioing Rick.
Once again, another episode goes by with no closure to what's going on with Glenn. It's been a few weeks now and the episodes are good and all, especially the Morgan episode, but leaving the biggest moment of the season, thus far, just hanging out there in the open with no answers is not only insanely frustrating for the viewer, but it's also not a great way to keep the story compelling. If they don't go back to this until the end of the episode before the winter break, that moment of Glenn's life hanging in the balance will lose the emotional resonance it had with the viewer.
The episode did open up with a pretty cool scene with Daryl, Sasha, and Abraham being ambushed by this new group. It was cool to see some exciting scenes that didn't just feature walker attacks. Sure, we had the Wolves attacks earlier in the season, but we haven't seen an attack like this and it was pretty refreshing.
It's pretty nice to have an episode focussing solely on Daryl. He's a fan favorite character and while this season has spent most of the time putting Daryl in a place where he thinks he wants to be on his own. This episode makes him realize that he needs to be there for everyone else and not just because he's the toughest character around. He needs to be with other people. That's who he is now. Once again, we're reminded that while Daryl is pretty tough, he still has a heart, as he brings back the insulin to the people that once took him hostage.
This also leads to something bigger. There's another group in the area that is trying to be dominant. Chances are, if you follow the comic, that this is The Saviors, but it offers viewers two antagonistic groups, if this is true: The Saviors (maybe) and The Wolves. It's obvious these are two different groups because this new group isn't as savage as The Wolves. There's also a strategy to how they fight. They don't run and gun. They surround the people they're looking for and have a system of tribute. That's what leading me to believe this is actually the Saviors.
We're also getting a bit more from Abraham here as he and Sasha figure out what to do while Daryl is missing. It's been a little while since we've gotten much depth from Abraham, as he's been mainly in the background for this season so far, and it works decently for the episode, but it's not the most engaging or gripping stuff since Daryl's story clearly overshadows all of this.
Overall, this was another pretty good episode. It's still insanely frustrating that the show isn't going back to what happened to Glenn, but the continued focus on solo stories from this now incredibly large cast is keeping this season fresher than it's been in quite some time. The Abraham/Sasha story was decent but completely overshadowed by what was going on with Daryl and the possible first appearance of The Saviors. It's going to be interesting to see how the people of Alexandria deal with two different threats that are very different than each other.
Questions of the week:
How long before Daryl gets his crossbow back?
What will Daryl do to the people that stole his bike and crossbow?
Are the Wolves and the Saviors (that's what we're calling them now)?
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