The Walking Dead: Start to Finish Recap

Synopsis of 6×08: Another fast-paced episode where we find out who survives the wall coming down.

Rating: ★★★☆☆

In useless sheltered children news, Sam is still upstairs refusing to come down and even worse he’s listening to crappy music and has let ants into his room because of leftovers. It’s a metaphor that also could’ve been summed up with, ‘Life uh… finds a way.’ I suppose. This is also just before the tower comes down.

As soon as we speed up to the present (?), we see Rick and Deanna running and fighting, Carol running into Morgan’s hideaway, and Maggie climbing up to her platform. Eugene makes his radio call to Daryl before Rosita and Tara grab him and drag him into hiding. While Rick drags an injured Deanna, Carl, Ron, Father Gabriel, and Michonne join them as they all pile into Jessie’s house. It’s a mess. And for all of his bravado about keeping her safe and bringing her home, Glenn tells Enid she can leave if she doesn’t want to help him figure out a way to get into Alexandria.

Jessie bangs on Sam’s door and asks him to turn off his music and close the blinds in the midst of the chaos of Rick dragging an injured Deanna inside. At first, they think they can save Deanna by stopping her bleeding, but they soon find a bite. Her reaction is simply, “Well, shit.” While Rick and Jessie are trying to figure out what to do next, Deanna and Michonne are discussing what Michonne wants. Deanna urges her to figure out what Alexandria means to her when she can’t answer the question.

Poor Denise was left with the W Man while Carol and Morgan are upstairs. He ends up telling another person all about how they’re all dead and they shouldn’t be there and that he’s going to kill them anyway when he gets free. He thinks the world just is and even after his entire speech, Denise still asks to see his wound. She tells him that he wasn’t born with these views, he can change.

Carl goes off to look for Ron and finds him crying in the garage. He’s having a breakdown about people dying and how they’re all dead. When he tells Carl that all his dad does is get people killed, Carl reminds him that his dad was also a killer. Ron then locks the door and attacks Carl. Their fighting attracts walkers, who break down the door and get into the garage.

Outside the door, Rick and Jessie hear them and become concerned. Rick has to hack the door down with an axe and then he and Gabriel try to barricade the door with a couch. At the same time, Rick’s asking Carl about what happened and Carl smoothly covers that they were fighting. Instead, when Ron slips away, Carl follows and disarms him and makes sure to tell him in no uncertain terms, “Your dad was an asshole.”

With that crisis momentarily settled, Rick hears Judith crying and almost brains the weakened Deanna, who is over her crib. She goes on to encourage Rick to embrace the Alexandrians as his people. Before they can bond too much, Jessie calls him back downstairs to find that the walkers are starting to overrun them. The entire group is forced to the top floor.

In their hideaway, Rosita is having a moment of doubt about everything. She asks if Alexandria is lost and feels as if Abraham is dead anyway. Tara, ever the optimist, talks her down from the edge and Eugene offers his surprise lock-picking services to get through the door into whatever house they’re hiding in the garage of.

Upstairs, Carol is feigning sleep, lulling Morgan into a sense of safety, before she attacks him and goes running back down the stairs to take out the Wolf that Morgan’s holding for rehabilitation. She forces Denise away from the man just before Morgan gets in front of the W Man to defend him from Carol.

Once again using their under-utilized knowledge of how to evade walkers, Rick and Michonne proceed to drag two dead walkers upstairs with them and dig into their insides. Everyone else is pretty uncomfortable with the plan of covering bed sheets in innards and walking through the crowds wearing them, but no one voices that concern.

Morgan is still trying to talk a shaking Carol out of her plans, but they end up coming to blows. He knocks the knife out of her hand, they struggle, and Morgan ends up slamming her onto the ground, knocking her out. As soon as he does that, the W Man knocks him out leaving Denise alone to plead for all of their lives.

As they prepare to make their pilgrimage, Michonne checks on Deanna one last time. She offers to kill Deanna, but Deanna declines and claims that she’ll do it herself when the time comes. They share another heart to heart, with Michonne really connecting with Deanna in her last moments.

Just when things look bad for poor Denise, Tara, Rosita, and Eugene burst through the door and things just get worse for her. The W Man holds Denise at knifepoint, forcing the rest of them to give up their weapons. He takes a gun, and Denise, and makes his exit even though he acknowledges that he doesn’t really need her.

Meanwhile Jessie has to talk Sam into being brave once more, as they all cover themselves in guts. When they’re ready to move, Rick gives Judith to Carl and they start moving cautiously through the herd. As they exit the house, Sam can be heard trying to get his mother’s attention and that certainly won’t end well for anyone.

Deanna gets her swan song when she refuses to take herself out without flinging open the door and taking some walkers with her. They gave her a good ending.

And when we come back in February, your property now belongs to Negan. Let us know what you thought of the first half of season six in the comments!