The Walking Dead returns after a nine-week hiatus to find Rick seeing ghosts.
Rick, ever the gentleman, calms everyone down, and gets the group to talk about their feelings rather than blow heads off first, and talk later. Glenn seems to feel guilty every time he looks at Maggie, who had been stripped naked and nearly raped back in Woodbury before the break. His self-loathing is evident when he plays whack-a-mole with Truck Zombie’s brains.
The group makes a democratic decision that Merle cannot return to the prison with them. Daryl decides blood is more important than family, and ditches the downtrodden group to gallivant off with his abusive big brother. Carol makes a comment later in the episode that, “men like Merle get into your head; make you feel like you deserve the abuse.” Perhaps that explains why Daryl left the people he cares about so much.
Meanwhile, back at the prison, Tyreese and company start bonding with Hershel and the kids. They seem like genuinely nice people. That is, until the other man and his son start planning an attack on Carol and Carl. Tyreese is adamantly against such actions, and wants to be able to stay with this group of people. He intercepts their plans, but the seed of distrust in half of his group is planted. He knows it’s a dog-eat-dog world now, but want to retain some humanity. Tyreese is a comic book fan favorite. It will be interesting to see how he and his group get accepted or do not get accepted into the varsity zombie killer’s squad.
Rick and his group make it back to the prison, much to the relief of Carl. Carol has a sniffle-inducing moment when Rick tells her Daryl has left them. At first she seems shocked, and then immediately accepts that those she loves leaves in this new flesh-eating world. It was truly heartbreaking to see Carol come to this realization and acceptance.
This is the first time Rick meets Tyreese, and walks right past the group without even a head nod. Tyreese is not deterred. He is more determined than ever to get along with the ringleader. Hershel patches up Glenn, and tells him he is like his own son. He also asks Glenn what happened to Maggie. Glenn’s hatred of himself in the moment when Maggie walks by the cell and barely meets his eyes is never more evident.
