Skip to main content

'The Walking Dead' recap: It's not over yet


Spoiler alert! The following contains spoilers for The Walking Dead season 7, episode 8 "Start to Finish." To read our recap of episode 7, click here.

When the Alexandria wall came tumbling down on last week's episode of The Walking Dead, the question was not if our heroes would survive the horde getting into the community but how. And what, if anything, would change along the way. "Start to Finish" ends up being more a pause in the season rather than a "mid-season finale." The slightly underwhelming hour asks more questions than it answers, doesn't move the plot forward too far and focuses only on a slice of our heroes rather than bringing everyone back together again. The ending itself feels like a literal pause in the action, cutting off at a moment that feels like it's 15 seconds too soon.

But the stronger elements of the episode returned to the question of whether or not a place like Alexandria can survive in this world, and what is the right type of morality to have. And at this point the show isn't the only one wondering, but the characters, too, as everyone from Tara to Carol to Deanna to freaking Ron weighs in on the future of the community (and of themselves). Regardless of whether or not the place itself can survive, the show has made it pretty clear that only the people who can throw away the future in favor of the present are equipped to deal with this world, and misunderstanding that (even if it means you just call for your mother when you're scared) can be the difference between life and death.

State of denial

The episode, which promised us plenty of zombie carnage, begins not with violence and gore but with a much more intimate version of destruction. Sam, who will perhaps win the award for most messed-up by the zombie apocalypse/Carol's influence in this show so far, is coloring a picture of himself tied to a tree, surrounded by monsters while Tiptoe Through the Tulips plays on a gosh darn record player because clearly this kid saw The Shining too many times before the world ended. While Sam colors away (and screams can faintly be heard outside), a row of ants creeps through a crack on his window and devours half a cookie he's left on the floor. Subtle stuff.

Outside the battle between the Alexandrians and the Walkers is raging. It interrupts Ron's plans to murder Carl (sorry, Ron) and Maggie's happiness/revelation at seeing Glenn's balloons. It splits our heroes up into the different random houses they are able to take shelter in before things get too out of control (and also Maggie, who climbs up a piece of scaffolding so that she can conveniently be viewed from anyone coming to rescue her like, say, Glenn). Rick, Michonne, Gabriel, Carl, Ron and an injured Deanna head to Jessie's while Tara, Rosita and Eugene head to their own safe haven. Meanwhile Carol, Morgan, Denise and the Wolf are trapped together. Really good time for everyone to air out their grievances right? Absolutely.

This is how it happens

Team Glenn and Enid can see everything going down from outside the Alexandria walls and it's a grim picture to watch. Enid, always the optimist, is pretty much ready to throw in the towel at this point. “This is how it happens — and it always happens,” she says to Glenn. But everyone's favorite un-killable former pizza delivery boy will NOT have this from his new pint-sized side-kick. He has a pregnant wife to save, after all (way to slip that in there so we know he knows, The Walking Dead).

By the time the episode is over Glenn and Enid have made it to a tree by a portion of the wall that's still intact, just in time to see an exhausted Maggie on a precipice, surrounded by walkers. OK, Glenn, what's you're plan, now?

A difference of opinion

The confrontation we've been waiting for all season finally came to a head when Carol and Morgan were literally locked in a room together, with the very incarnation of their differing moralities waiting in the next room (that would be the Wolf who Carol thinks should die and Morgan thinks should get a chance to live). The two finally come to very literal blows in a fight that Morgan wins, only to be overpowered by the Wolf seconds later, which kind of puts a big dent in his argument to keep the guy alive. The Wolf turns his knife on Denise just as Tara, Rosita and Eugene walk in (lock picking is within Eugene's skill set, he tells us). Tara (like last week the best and most emotionally believable character in the episode) watches with genuine fear and heartbreak in her eyes as Denise is led away by the Wolf, and forced out into the Walker-infested streets. Poor Denise.

One of us

Over at Fort Jessie things have gone from bad to worse (at least in Sam's eyes) as the group tries to barricade themselves in the house and Rick makes vague plans about leading the Walkers away or something. But he never gets the chance to as it turns out Deanna didn't just fall on a blade, she also managed to get bitten, making her our first and only casualty this episode. She's in pretty high spirits about the whole thing, though, cracking jokes, shaming Rick into accepting that the Alexandrians are a part of his team and passing on her mission to Michonne (we'd vote for Michonne over Rick for new Alexandria HBIC any day). But while Deanna is making the best of a bad situation, our nominees for worst teenagers in the world, Ron and Carl, manage to make a bad situation so, so much worse. After a whine-off (about Enid and their horrible father figures and whatever), the two have a really dramatic fight in the garage, where Ron really does try to kill Carl, but (sigh), both hormone-filled-teenagers survive.

Unfortunately in the process of working out their angst, Ron and Carl bring a whole slew of Walkers into the house, forcing the group to retreat upstairs. Rick, genius that he is, finally decides to bust out the old let's-cover-ourselves-in-Walker-guts-so-they-will-think-we're-dead trick that he used in season one (I can think of approximately 1,000 times he should have used it before now but alas, I digress), making some nice walker-guts ponchos for everyone to wear. It's a proposition that will likely save their lives but is horrifying to young Sam, who was still living in his 1960s brand of denial even as a bleeding Deanna was brought into the bedroom next door. Jessie tells him just to pretend to be brave, but that's not quite enough to satisfy the Walker and Carol-traumatized boy. When the group gets out of the house, seemingly safe under the cover of the bloody ponchos, Sam just has to call out to his mom. Because he is just a scared kid. We don't see what happens next, but we can't assume that it will be too good. We'll just have to wait until the show returns in 2016 to find out.