The Walking Dead – Rest in Peace

By starrymag | November 26, 2022

By: Kelly Kearney

 

 

“I’m allowed to be a little sad,” is the line Carol says in the finale that will stick with fans long after the tears dry up and the goodbyes are in our hindsight. The thing about ends though, like death itself, they always put the living on a path towards new beginnings-a rebirth, of sorts. That was always where this little apocalyptic show was heading. Out of the ashes of the fall, a new and maybe better world was ready to be built, and with it a reason to hope.

 

THE WRATH OF THE  DEAD

 

Daryl (Norman Reedus) screams for help as he races a wounded and barely conscious Judith (Cailey Fleming) into The Commonwealth’s hospital. Through her blurry vision Judith sees troopers entering behind them and they knock out her uncle, who lands in a heap on the floor. Outside Walkers are swarming the doors trying to get into the lobby, forcing a shot Judith, to roll off her gurney and barricade the doors. She winds up passing out right next to Daryl on the floor- the two of them unconscious with the threat of the dead only held back by a thin piece of glass. Outside the hospital everyone is fighting the swarm. They’re overwhelmed even though Carol (Melissa McBride), Maggie (Lauren Cohan) and Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) seem to be leading the fight. In the middle of the chaos Luke (Dan Fogler) and Jules get separated, giving the walkers the upper hand. Jules (Alex Sgambati) is bit and when Luke tries to get to her he’s knocked down and walker bites his leg, too. As he screams for his girlfriend, Jules gets pulled into the hungry swarm while Luke gets pulled to safety by Connie (Lauren Ridloff) Kelly (Angel Theory) and his friends. Carol screams at everyone to follow her through the gate knowing that Daryl is on the other side with Judith.

Inside the hospital things are not much better. Daryl wakes up to a bandaged head and Carol by his side. Judith is still unconscious and mentions  she’s lost plenty of blood and she ain’t the only one. Across from the room Magna’s (Nadia Hilker) group is suffering. They were forced to cut Luke’s leg off and as he slowly bleeds out they wail and cry knowing their friend cannot be saved. They take the music man’s harmonica, promising to never forget him just as Magna takes her dagger and ends Luke’s Journey. Daryl watches them all doubled over in grief and he realizes he isn’t about to go through that with Rick’s daughter! There is something he can do to save her; his blood type is universal! Merle used to make him sell it to make money.  Carol starts an IV for a transfusion because he is not letting this kid die, too – especially now that Pamela (Laila Robins) has barricaded herself and all the medical workers, troopers and supplies, behind the gates of the Estates, and left the rest of The Commonwealth to fend for themselves. Carol is already working on a plan to find a way in but it’s too heavily guarded for now, so they have to just wait and take care of Judith. Perhaps Mercer can use his influence over some of her guards, but until then they need to secure the hospital. Once the IV is working Carol takes Magna, Connie and Kelly to go sweep the hospital to make sure everyone else is okay.

 

SAVING THE LIVING

 

Next we catch up with Mercer (Michael James Shaw) who’s locked in a cell with walker’s right outside the door. The entire jail has been overrun and without weapons and armor, the big guy is a sitting duck. There is no way out until Princess (Paola Lázaro) saves the day and her man by blasting through the door with Max (Margot Bingham)! After the brother-sister reunion, Princess jumps into Mercer’s arms and the two have their big make-up kiss. Now that he’s free Mercer suits up and organizes his loyal troopers to help Maggie and the others to sneak their way into the Estates and defeat Pamela once and for all. Negan is still trying to get Maggie to go rogue with him and take Milton down but she still wants no part of his plans or the partnership he keeps offering her. We also see Lydia (Cassady McClincy) and Aaron (Ross Marquand) make it back to The Commonwealth by following the swarm just in time for Ezekiel (Khary Payton) to load them, along with Judith, onto a truck en route to his make-shift hospital at Doctor Tomi’s (Ian Anthony Dale) house. Lydia is going to need that arm looked at and Aaron, like Daryl and Carol with Judith, seems to be playing the parental role here and never leaves her side.

Elsewhere, Eugene (Josh McDermitt), Rosita (Christian Serratos) and Gabriel (Seth Gilliam) break off from the group to check out the daycare hoping to find Coco alive and well. What they find instead is a mother’s worst nightmare. They kick open the door to what looks like a walker’s all-you can eat buffet. Bodies are everywhere and the walkers are so stuffed with flesh that Rosita easily slices through them before they can even stop chewing. They’ve eaten all the occupants and that can’t be good news for poor Coco.  Her mother, who shined in this entire episode, flies into Mama Bear mode killing everything in her path, until she finds her daughter and the two have their long-awaited reunion. She wasn’t the only baby who made it out alive- when Gabe and Eugene find mother and daughter they scoop up the two other children and the look on Eugene’s face says it all: these babies survived a massacre and everyone is so grateful they did.

Speaking of gratitude, the transfusion seems to be working. Judth wakes up but only for a brief moment to ask her uncle if she’s dying. She’s panicked and tells him she can’t die before her mother finds her father, which confuses Daryl because he has no idea where Michonne is or why she would be looking for Rick. Before he can even ask what she meant, Judith passes out again. If that’s not scary enough, the walker swarm made its way inside the hospital and Carol tells Daryl they need to go. In a call back to the first episode of the series when Shane blocked Rick’s hospital room from the dead, Daryl barricades the door to Judith’s room before running directly into the fight.  Daryl, Carol and their friends are almost immediately overwhelmed by walkers, who are surrounding them from all sides. They have no other choice but to escape by running deeper into the hospital and away from the threat. On their way Daryl grabs Judith’s gurney while outside Rosita, Gabe and Eugene radio in to say they have Coco but are trapped in the hospital alley in an ambulance surrounded by the dead. They have no other options but to fight their way out of the ambulance, but in the chaos Rosita gets separated from Gabe and Eugene. The two men climb their way up some hospital pipes high above the dead below. With her baby strapped to her chest Rosita tries climbing up after them but winds up falling down into the hungry masses who pile on top of her in a feeding frenzy! It seems like there is no hope for her and little Coco until, like a phoenix rising from the ashes, she battles her way out of the masses and manages to climb on top of the ambulance, leap onto the pipes and make her way to safety. It’s an epic save that if you were not cheering for you may need to check your pulse.

 

MERCY PREVAILS

 

Once the group reunited and they’re able to sneak into the Estates undetected, Maggie notices Negan is missing. She finds him with a rifle sneaking off to go take care of Pamela on his own. The two go back and forth until Negan finally admits everything he’s doing is for her. It’s to make up for what he did to Glenn now that he knows what it feels like to watch a loved one on their knees and face a monster. That Warden who almost killed him and Annie and it made him finally get why Maggie can’t move on. The guilt he feels for what he did radiates off of him and Maggie struggles with forgiveness he craves. She accepts his apology for now and decides to join him in his assasination plot to take down Pamela once and for all.

While those two are outside talking murder plans, inside Tomi’s house everyone else is planning a surprise attack. Now that Judith is out of surgery and they have a moment to breathe, they all watch out the widow as Pamela orders the troopers to execute any Commonwealth citizen who attempts to climb the Estate’s gates to safety. He can’t sit by and let her murder his people but he tells Ezekiel and the others he will make sure they get out of the Commonwealth before he attacks. This isn’t their fight, but that’s where Mercer is wrong. Ezekiel steps up and refuses to go saying there are good people living within those walls that need help and he is not the kind of person that can abandon people in need. These two men have come a long way from their first meeting when Ezekiel accused Mercer of being an abusive cop. Now he refers to the general as his brother and promises to fight alongside him to save, not his people, but their people. The King is still influential on the mic and everyone in the room agrees  that the people of the Commonwealth are worth fighting for. Not a single person chooses to leave the fight.

With Maggie and Negan perching high above the town with their sniper rifle trained on Pamela, Maggie hesitates to pull the trigger when they see Mercer and their friends corner the governor at the gates of the Estates. The people on the other side are begging her to open them as the “rotters” start to make their way to the gates, too. Mercer and company turn their guns on Vickers (Monique Grant) and Pamela, as Father Gabe announces he has had enough and marches towards the gates to open them. Gabe has come full circle from when we first met him-riddled with guilt for locking his parishioners in a church that was ultimately reduced to ashes. Now he’s risking his life to open the door and save his new parishioners and his friends, including Elijah (Okea Eme-Akwari) and Jerry (Cooper Andrews) who are also outside and desperate to get in! Pamela assumes she still has some authority and orders her loyal troops to shoot the pastor and that’s when Daryl steps in and asks them all what they’re doing. He channels his brother from anther mother, Rick, and says they don’t have to live like this; they don’t need to be murderers when the real enemy has always been the dead! Everyone puts their weapons down and Mercer arrests Pamela for crimes against The Commonwealth, but before he can haul her away, she spots a familiar friend reaching through the gates. It’s walker-Lance (Josh Hamilton) with Carol’s arrow sticking out of his neck and he is hungry for his favorite governor. For a moment it seems like Pamela is going to  suicide herself by feeding Lance the meal he so desperately wanted while he was alive but Maggie allows her mercy to prevail over her wrath and shoots Lance. Negan reminded her of how prison is worse than death for people like her, and he should know, he spent 9 years in an Alexandrian cell. Justice has replaced vengeance, and that is something both Rick and Carl Grimes could be proud of.

Now that the Pamela problem is resolved, Daryl and Carol drag her to a prison cell. There, she questions how these people will run her community and reminds them of the difficult choices they will be forced to make. For example: who gets the jobs that no one wants to do and who gets to live in nice houses? How do you divide up socio-economic classes within the walls and still keep the peace? Carol might have her work cut out for her but she’s up for the job–Lance’s job to be exact, and one thing she knows for sure is that nobody is getting Pamela’s house. That’s because the group had an explosive night in the high rent district. With Eugene’s brains for bomb-making, the survivors gather up all the fuel that was hoarded in the Estates and fill Pamela’s house with barrels of it. The remainder they dump down into the sewer system surrounding the neighborhood. With a trigger rigged onto the arm of a record player that’s blasting out the aptly-named song “The Cult of Personality” the music draws the swarm to Pamela’s house. When the song ends and the arm retracts from the record it triggers a spark that ignites into a fireball that levels everything within a multi-block radius. The Walkers are dead and so is the Milton Legacy; reduced to rubble but clearing the slate for a new way of life.

 

TO THOSE WE’VE LOST

 

But not everyone is ready to celebrate their big win. Negan doesn’t have a place setting at the big family dinner because the bad vibes between him and Maggie have not changed. In fact, the two have a heart to heart about his redemption and what it means for his future. In a tearful speech Maggie talks about the beauty of Glenn and how her last memories of him are with Negan and that skull crushing blow. All she has of her husband are memories and now they are tainted by death and the sounds of Negan’s mocking him. As badly as she would like to move on, she hasn’t been able to, but she recognizes the change in him and she is eternally grateful for saving her son. His good deeds are just not enough to erase those horrible images from her mind but she admits, she really wishes they were. She wants to move on; for herself, but especially her son. This is why she offers him a place to live in The Commonwealth where she isn’t forced to work or live near him. It’s a start for the both of them and a crying Negan knows that’s probably more than he ever deserved.

Before the post-battle victory party Eugene finds Rosita memoizing the contours of her daughter’s face. Somewhere deep inside he knows, and asks Rosita about that fall outside the hospital.  She is arguably the love of his life (sorry, Max), so he can barely contain his agony when she confirms his fears; Rosita was bitten on her back when she fell into that pit of the dead and no amputation can save her. She swears him to secrecy because she’s still alive and wants to end things on her terms.  The two besties trade I love yous and promises to keep her spirit alive in Coco.

Cut to the party and everyone is laughing and having a good time. Rosita sits at a distance and watches her friends laugh and talk about a future only her daughter will see. When Gabe finds her she whispers her fate and his subdued reaction does not go unnoticed by Judth. The young Grimes made it through her surgery with flying colors only to realize her aunt wasn’t as lucky. She swallows her pain just like the others do until the time comes for everyone to say goodbye. Carol and Maggie walk her fading body to bed to briefly lie next to a sleeping Coco. She strokes her daughter’s face until a mournful Gabe picks the baby up and says “until we meet again.” He leaves the door open for one last goodbye as we see Eugene fail to hold back his tears. Rosita is glad it’s him in those final moments because these two friends have shared more loss and fiercely loyal love than most of the characters we’ve met over the years. With a peaceful smile knowing her baby is in good hands with Gabe and all of her friends, Rosita takes her final breath and, thankfully, we are spared the heartbreak of watching Eugene put his best friend down. In the doorway Daryl witnesses the exchange and it must get him thinking about his own life, the future and who he couldn’t live without.

 

WE  ARE THE ONES WHO LIVE

 

Flashforward ahead one year and new father Eugene (yes, he and Max had a baby they named Rosita) is paying his respects to his bestie at her memorial plaque. Meanwhile, new Governor Ezekiel is holding court in the town square to introduce his Lieutenant Governor Michael Mercer. These two men, along with Carol in Hornsby’s old job, have a vision of a new world run by survivors that unite all the communities.

Speaking of, we stop over in Alexandria and things are flourishing! The walls are up and the crops are growing, and it’s the same over in Hilltop. Maggie has managed to pull the community out of the devastation left behind by the Reapers and now she has expansion on her mind. Daryl and Carol stop by to talk about what lies beyond their gates and past the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. Surely there are other survivors and infrastructures out there that they could learn from; not to mention the fact that Rick and Michonne are out there too. Judith admitted that she did not tell Daryl about Michonne’s mission fearing her uncle would also leave her behind. He always promised he wouldn’t do that but he has a spin-off to get to and so he’s heading out. Kidding…sort of. To say the end suffered from the change in spin-off dynamics and a reshoot would be an understatement but now that things have settled with the communities, Daryl is going out to look for what’s left. He promises Judith if he hears anything about her parents he will find them and bring them home to her. He promises he’s not leaving forever and Judith knows that because who is Daryl Dixon without his family? Not one we’ve ever known. Always the most perceptive in any scene, Judith glances over at Carol and then turns to her uncle and says, “You deserve happiness too,” and for the first time he might realize how true that is.

Before he leaves he sits down with Carol by the lake. The scene is reminiscent of the time they first spoke about the Cherokee Rose all those years ago when Sophia went missing. Carol doesn’t like that he’s leaving her even though she knows it’s good for him to get closure with Rick and Daryl doesn’t like the fact that she can’t come with him. They both know she’s earned her place as a leader and stand in as a mother for the Grimes kids but separating from each other has always been hard. Sobbing Daryl pulls Carol in for a hug and promises her he’ll be back. They walk to his motorcycle and as he flips on his road poncho a stillness comes upon him. He has always been a man of so few words, and in all eleven seasons never once managed to express how he truly felt-not about Rick, not about Carol, not about anyone. So, what better (or for shipper fans worse) time to say it than when he’s on his way out! He turns to Carol and looks her in the eyes with a determination in his voice and says, “I love you.” It’s a declaration and a promise that this could never be a goodbye but it might just be a  breathtaking hello when they do meet again. Taking some of the weight out of this serious moment – knowing anything more will have her hopping on that bike to go with him – Carol giggles a little bit and whispers back, “I love you, too.” Daryl strokes her cheek and the two embrace closing the chapter on these two for now. As he climbs on his bike he gives her one last look like he’s taking her all in; recording every inch of her to memory, and when he has had his fill, he takes a deep breath, smiles one last time, and drives down the long road out of The Commonwealth and into his future.

We catch a glimpse of what that might look like before the credits roll. The future is obviously Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) and Michonne (Danai Gurira)! We see the two writing letters to each other and to their family back home. Rick escaped captivity and his wife is closer than ever to finding him-the man we called sheriff, husband, father, brother, friend and leader. As she reads his letters we get a montage of all the people we have loved and lost over the seasons. Each one their stories were not singular threads left unraveled in the tragedy of the fall, but sewn together to form a tapestry of the world Rick and Carl dreamed of. One built for the living right alongside the dead. Barefoot and carrying a spear Rick sits down along what seems to be the Delaware River and writes a message in a bottle to his family. When he sees one of those infamous helicopters in the sky he panics and tosses the bottle into the river and shoves that cell phone and his boots into a backpack and throws it aboard the same ship that Virgil found during The Whisperer War. There Is no escaping the CRM, which we know Rick is a part of since his jacket portrays the three interlocking circles that is their symbol. He can’t make it back to his family this time, but he smiles nonetheless because he knows he won’t stop trying. When Michonne finds that bag and his letters she smiles too because nothing – not wars, not walkers and not whispers heard from beyond the woods – could keep her from bringing her husband home to their children. The final shot of the series is in Alexandria with Judith and R.J. hopeful for what the future holds and maybe it does look like Uncle Daryl bringing their parents home or maybe the future is for them to decide, but whatever is ahead of them this isn’t a goodbye but a see you later on down the road. We can take solace in knowing “The Walking Dead” Family will meet again in the many variations of this world we grew to love because at least at AMC the dead never truly die.They just evolve.