It’s funny to see that a lot of fans are cheering for the gore in this episode in favor of the character development that dominated the past couple installments.  I maintain that the bloodletting is meaningless without giving the audience a reason to care about the fate of the characters, and everything that happens on the mission in this episode serves the purpose of muddying the waters in Alexandria.  The disaster at the warehouse is only going to feed the anxiety that Father Gabriel has already heightened with his warning to Deanna. 

Not surprisingly, this episode was a mixture of elements from the source material (Gabriel’s warning, Abraham’s rise to prominence) and new items brought into the show to keep things active.  In isolation, Abraham’s actions were completely justified, and one could easily point out that both Team Grimes and Team Alexandria had equal losses coming out of the mission to the warehouse.  But that’s before Gabriel frames it very different by fanning the flames of concern.  Now those events seem like a calculated effort to take over Alexandria in key positions, something Rick has expressed a willingness to do, should push come to shove.


The timing is worse because Carol, the one person best prepared to spot the signs of domestic abuse even when they’re not blatantly dropped by a kid with a love for cookies, is pushing Rick to take unilateral action on Jesse’s behalf.  The question will now be: is Rick doing this because it’s the right thing to do, or is he doing this because he sees Jesse as something he wants and will use whatever rationale to justify taking out the competition?  Again, the perfect metaphor for Alexandria as a whole.

Meanwhile, the audience is treated to over-the-top gore as Aidan is gutted and Noah has his face torn apart.  Noah was a dead man the minute the writers started taking out the characters not mentioned in the source material and also not named Daryl, so when he started pondering the future, the telegraphing hit a new and very short-term level.  Of course, setting up the revolving door scenario and forcing Glenn to watch one of his team get torn apart before his eyes was wonderfully cruel.  Glenn will need some serious therapy after that one.


With everything else going on, it would be easy to forget that this was a major turning point for Eugene.  He’s never going to be a zombie-killing badass, but some of the decisions that he made in the name of his “cowardice” were actually fairly bold compared to past choices.  If Nick hadn’t been the real coward, they all might have survived once Eugene drew the walkers on the one side away from the door.





The biggest question at this point is still one of pacing.  The logical direction to take would be one more episode to set up the finale.  Will the next episode focus more on Daryl’s adventures with Aaron instead?  That depends greatly on where all of that is going.  Putting Daryl in jeopardy is The Walking Dead’s version of click-bait, but this is roughly the point at which the first outside threats to Alexandria should appear anyway.  But it’s worth noting that so far, the main events in Alexandria are following the source material fairly closely.  (For those wondering, it’s currently working through issues 73-78 or so, compiled in Volume 13: “Too Far Gone”.)