The Walking Dead – The Bridge

By: Kelly Kearney

On this week’s The Walking Dead, Rick continues to work towards a future where all the communities can work and thrive together, but his new cooperative vibe isn’t sitting easy with everyone. Saviors are disappearing, infighting between the communities is at an all time high and walker herds are once again the true threat to their survival. Its hard to build a future with so many, living in the past.

Storytime with Rick Grimes

Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) sits in a cell in Alexandria while the world outside goes on without him. It’s his punishment for the wrath he unleashed on his own people and the communities he worked so diligently to destroy. Part of his punishment is updates from Rick (Andrew Lincoln) about how life is thriving while he’s locked in a cage. After a long and painful day, Rick stops by for his jailhouse update.

We flashback to earlier in the day where Rick walks through the tent camp where the bridge workers are staying until the job is complete. The project is important to the survival of all the communities and King Ezekiel (Khary Payton) explains this to Henry (Macsen Lintz) who isn’t too impressed with all the pomp and circumstance surrounding a boring bridge. Ezekiel notes that one day Henry will tell his grandkids about the part he played in rebuilding the world and this bridge is what connects them to the future and to each other. Henry listens to the King, who is more like a father to the boy than his leader and tries to understand his part in all of this.

Meanwhile, Rick gets an update from Rosita (Christian Serratos) and Eugene (Josh McDermitt) about some missing Saviors and a herd of Walkers that are making the bridge work difficult. Nobody has any idea why Saviors are going missing, but food is scarce and Rick wonders if maybe some of them ran off or they fell victim to a hungry zombie horde. Rick lets Eugene know that Michonne (Danai Gurira) went to talk to Maggie (Lauren Cohan) about sending more food to the Sanctuary, but considering the Saviors are not her favorite subject Michonne has her work cut out for her.

Over at Hilltop, Michonne interrupts Maggie while she’s breaking a wild horse, their new mode of transportation now that gas is low. Speaking of, the gas that the Saviors promised to send Hilltop never arrived and so Maggie never sent them their rations of food. After all, that was the deal – ethanol for food. Without the gas, the fields can not get plowed. So, when Michonne asks Maggie to send more food she assumes the Saviors are either lying about the missing shipment or keeping the gas for themselves. She refuses Michonne’s request because for Maggie the Hilltop comes first and with no crops being harvested, her community will need any extra food they might have stored. Michonne brings up the plow they took from the museum, which doesn’t require fuel but with their only blacksmith in jail the museum plow can’t be fixed. Michonne asks if it’s smart to keep Earl (John Finn) locked up if they need his expertise with the plow, but Maggie doesn’t take kindly to Michonne questioning her punishment and blows her off.  Its seems that Rick’s new world has some obstacles and none bigger than Maggie’s inability to move on from the past. Her hate for Negan and the Saviors is clouding her judgment and Michonne treads lightly because she needs Maggie to agree to her charter.

There’s a Rumble Down at the Bridge

The work on the bridge seems to be coming together, with the Saviors providing the bulk of the labor. Daryl (Norman Reedus) and Aaron (Ross Marquand) are also helping out while talking about the joys of parenting, something Aaron thinks Daryl would be great at. Their friendly banter gets interrupted by Justin (Zach McGowan), who makes the awful mistake of roughing up Henry over a drink of water. The teen boy is handing out drinks when Justin grabs an extra cup only to have Henry remind him that there’s not enough for everyone. Justin takes the water anyway and knocks Henry to the ground, but this kid is no pushover. Henry hops up and uses his staff to knock Justin to the ground. Embarrassed over being taken out by a child, Justin gets up and runs after Henry, but Daryl steps in before he reaches the boy. The two men already don’t like each other so when Justin pushes Daryl, he winds up getting punched in the face. This starts a knock down drag out fight that escalates until Rick shows up and stops it. After ordering Justin back to work, Rick, Daryl and Carol (Melissa McBride) hold a meeting in one of the off-site tents. Daryl wants Justin punished, preferably banished from the communities altogether but Rick disagrees. They need Justin to work on the bridge, he’s strong and able and losing him would be a setback. Daryl is livid and isn’t buying into Rick’s whole kumbaya vibes. Carol agrees with Daryl that some are not ready to forgive and forget and Rick can’t expect this to go smoothly just because he wants it. Daryl storms out of the tent and Carol tells Rick that she supports his vision of the future, but he needs to make things right with Daryl.

Maggie Has a Change of Heart

After Tammy (Brett Butler) pleads with Jesus (Tom Payne) to let her visit Earl in jail, he talks to Michonne who urges him to convince Maggie to do what’s right. Michonne sees the bigger picture, even if Maggie can’t and she knows Earl is the key to getting the farm up and running. When Jesus does talk to Maggie, he questions whether or not she’s considered leaving Hilltop to go live with Georgie (Jayne Atkinson). But Maggie assures her friend that she has made her life in Hilltop, no matter how many times Georgie offers her a new home. Jesus might not agree with all the choices Maggie’s made, but he knows she’s a good woman and that’s enough for him. It’s why he pushes her to allow Tammy to see her husband – everyone makes mistakes and everyone deserves another chance to right them.

Watching how different Earl is now that he’s sobered up in the cell changes Maggie’s opinion of the man who tried to kill her. There’s something about Earl that reminds her of her father, who was also an alcoholic and given a second chance to make things right. Maggie decides right then and there that Earl can be sent out under supervised work release. Gregory (Xander Berkeley) had chance after chance and squandered all of them. Earl is not Gregory and deserves another shot at being a productive member of Hilltop.

Speaking of productive members, Rosita and Arat (Elizabeth Ludlow) have buried the hatchet (and not in Rosita’s face) long enough to set up an explosive diversion to use on the walker herd. Elsewhere, Tara (Alana Masterson) and Jerry (Cooper Andrews) are using a series of sirens to draw the walkers away from the bridge. It’s a decent way of wrangling the dead, but when one of the walkie-talkies dies the signal to set off the sirens goes unheard. This leads to a tragic moment at the work site where Aaron, Daryl and a few Saviors are gathering timber to fix the bridge. Without the diversion, the horde wanders into the work site which sets of a chain of events that, once again, falls under Justin’s fault. Daryl is forced to abandon his work to double knife his way through the herd while in the chaos Aaron gets trapped under a falling log. After a few attempts, the Saviors manage to free him, but Aaron’s arm is crushed to a bloody, bony pulp. Daryl jumps in to get Aaron out of the way the minute Rick and the others show up to take out the herd. Aaron makes it back to the tent site where new medical student Enid (Katelyn Nacon) is forced to cut off his arm to save his life. The entire scene is brutal and gruesome and Daryl loses it when he finds out Justin was the one in charge of making sure the walkie talkies had fresh batteries. The archer is irate and takes his anger out on Justin’s face with a soup pot. He is full of uncontrollable rage and it if it wasn’t for Carol, Daryl would have killed Justin right in front of all the bridge workers.

Back at Hilltop, Michonne is happy to hear that Earl is out of jail and back to working on the plow. Maggie even decides to send the Sanctuary a shipment of food and agrees to sign the community charter. She makes it clear that she will respect the rules, but Hilltop will always come first. Michonne hopes that one day she can see that what’s best for Hilltop is what’s best for everyone.

A Monument to the Dead

Elsewhere, Ann (Pollyanna McIntosh) has found a confidant and lover in Father Gabe (Seth Gilliam). The two bond over their love of art, nature and feeling like an outsider, something with which both of them are very familiar. They’re not the only couple making big changes as Carol agrees to wear Ezekiel’s ring, but she wants their engagement to remain a secret until things calm down between the communities. Things are starting to come together, and Rick looks on with pride at all the positive changes he’s seeing. That is until Justin makes some crack about Daryl and Rick has had enough of the trouble maker. He banishes Justin from all four communities thinking that it’s better than letting Daryl kill him in the next fight they will inevitably get into. Justin doesn’t get far because the minute he leaves the tent site, he gets jumped by someone hiding in the bushes. Was it Daryl in the bushes, finishing the fight from the bridge, or was it someone else who might be responsible for all the missing Saviors?

The episode draws to a close with Rick ending his story time with Negan. Even after all the things they went through (the fight, Aaron losing his arm and Justin leaving) the survivors manage to turn it into a positive and come together. It’s what humans do, he explains, but Negan laughs and leaves Rick with an ominous thought. Is Rick building a future or is he building an homage to the past and Carl? Negan thinks this new beginning is more of a monument to the dead than a step into the future and he promises Rick it will all fall apart. “You’re not saving he world Rick, you’re just getting it ready for me.”

It cuts to Ann who spots that same helicopter from last season circling the night time sky. She doesn’t alert the others or even her new lover Gabe. She just watches the helicopter fly by and stays silent. Maybe Ann is an outsider for a reason and that helicopter is the key to her actual agenda that has nothing to do with Rick’s vision of the future? Who knows what the Queen of the Trash People is up to, but that helicopter has been following her around ever since she built her castle in the town dump.

Who is flying that helicopter and why is Ann staying so quiet about it? Will Maggie keep her word and try and follow the rules set up by Rick and Michonne? Is Negan, right? Is Rick building a monument to the dead and that’s why so many aren’t on board with his version of the future? Find out the answers to these questions and more on the next The Walking Dead.