Synopsis of 8×14: Jadis tries to hit Negan where it hurts, Carol goes out in search of Henry, and Rick and Morgan team up to hunt down the escaped Saviors.
At the Hilltop, Ezekiel tries to get Carol to go out in search of Henry, but she refuses. She will go in search of him with a crazy-eyed Morgan though. Tara still hasn’t gotten sick like everyone else who was injured in the last fight and she’s letting go of her vendetta against Dwight. Daryl, however, is not.
Michonne has finally gotten around to reading the letter that Carl wrote to her and she’s crying when Rick finds her. He’s all ready to run out to find food, but she stops him momentarily and encourages him to read his own letter. He can’t read it yet, but she does manage to keep him from running himself raged for a second.
Negan, who learned of the heapster massacre from Jadis, is explaining to her that he wouldn’t have ordered this because of his philosophy that people are resources. He offers to help her and she nearly bludgeons him with Lucille. He’s stuck prone on a rolling cart while Jadis continues to prepare Lucille’s demise.
Out in the woods, Morgan hallucinates Henry while Carol looks on. She admits to him that she came out to keep an eye on him and not to look for Henry, who they both think is dead. But when they find a walker with Henry’s stick stuck in it, Carol tries to convince Morgan that he might be alive if they go looking for him. He abandons her in the woods because he has to kill and she saves, despite her reminders that he saved her.
Rick does eventually get his coat back and confronts Al about where the escaped Saviors might have gone. Al gives him his best guess and asks Rick to try to bring some of them back because they’ve probably realized their mistake by now. It’s obvious Rick isn’t planning to bring any survivors home with him.
Somehow, Negan manages to wheel himself around enough to get a flare, a gun, and a pile of Jadis’ pictures. He threatens to burn the pictures while being sure that this isn’t something Jadis really wants to do. He also gives some insight into why Lucille is so important to him – it’s the only reminder he has left of his wife. They struggle over the flare, which ultimately makes a hovering helicopter miss the signal and depart.
In the woods, Rick runs into Morgan and immediately recognizes ‘Clear’ Morgan. He recruits him to finish their fight against the Saviors, but they’re almost immediately ambushed and captured. They wake to find Jared and the rest of the Saviors arguing about what to do with their injured — Jared wants to leave them behind while delivering Rick the Prick to Negan, of course.
Rick offers to take them back to the Hilltop’s doctor but warns they’re running out of time before a herd of walkers catches up to them all. Jared talks everyone out of Rick’s plan while Morgan reminds them that everyone eventually turns, leaving just enough time for the herd to descend. They’re surrounded and Rick and Morgan manage to convince a few of the Saviors to cut them loose so they can help. Once the situation is more under control, Rick and Morgan kill the Saviors fighting alongside them.
Jared manages to run, but Morgan spots him and gives chase. Unfortunately, he gets distracted by another hallucination of Henry and Jared gets the better of him for a second. Morgan can’t die though, so he turns the tides of the fight and holds Jared pinned while walkers take bites out of him.
In the other room, Rick kills the last mortally wounded Savior, who thought they’d go back with Rick. When Morgan joins him, Rick asks why Morgan saved him in the first place, since he had a son and a home to protect. The answer is because he had a son.
Jadis doesn’t end up destroying Lucille and even lets Negan go, complete with his leather jacket and everything. He tries to console her by telling her that she didn’t lose herself when the rest of the heapsters were killed and offers for her to come with him. She doesn’t want to go with him, nor does she want to explain the helicopter, but he leaves with a promise to swing by again sometime.
Carol is still out searching for Henry when she hears him yelling for help. Much like her own daughter, Sophia, was left to hide in a swamp from the walkers, this time Carol made it in time to save the kid. She brings Henry back to the Hilltop and Ezekiel, where she later tells him about Sophia. Morgan, covered in blood, returns and tells Henry that he killed the man who killed his brother once he determines Henry is real and alive. Henry apologizes to him, but he doesn’t want that.
Rick also returned worse for wear and Al side-eyes him for returning alone, the disappointment is obvious. He cleans himself up and thanks Michonne before apologizing to her for his actions… Then he reads his letter from Carl.
Earlier in the episode, Rosita, Daryl, Diane, and Maggie talk about setting the Hilltop up for another Savior attack. They doubt the Saviors’ bullet storage, but Rosita is quick to point out that they have the bullet maker. Later, Daryl and Rosita scope out the bullet factory and she comes to the conclusion that sabotaging the machines wouldn’t be good enough, they have to kill Eugene.
On his drive home, Negan runs into someone who looks worse for wear — best guesses are either Laura (the Savior who could rat out Dwight) or Gregory. He gets to the gates of the Sanctuary and tells the guards on duty to keep his return a surprise.
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