The Walking Dead Recap Se 6 Ep 9 No Way Out
I’m not gonna go out of my way to mark this winter premiere of The Walking Dead as one of the best episodes ever. I’ll leave that to those who deal in the hyperbole of the moment. I do have to admit “No Way Out” was pretty damn good as a starting point for the rest of season six.
Lessons learned this week on TWD:
– An entire family can be wiped out in a matter of moments in this world.
– Carl may be the toughest kid on Earth. Also the one with the least amount of luck.
– Rick is willing to cut his losses when need be.
In the open we were introduced to Negan’s gang who thought it wise to car jack the threesome of Daryl, Sasha, and Abraham. This eight man gang seemed pretty impressive, and it looked like Abe or Sasha would not be making it past this week on TWD.
The tables got turned on the shit buffet when Daryl Dixon eviscerated the biker gang with a freaking rocket launcher! Incredible scene that looked bleak for our heroes until the bully got punched in the nose by Daryl.
How many people had this gang abused and killed before running into a more lethal crew?
The death march inside Alexandria continued from the fall finale. The scene was another reminder that all these survivors are really the walking dead. The clock is always ticking on their humanity.
Father Gabriel manned up by taking Judith to his church while the others were headed to get their vehicles from the quarry. Sam could have went with the priest but insisted he could go on.
Hindsight’s 20/20.
The result of Morgan’s pacifist stance is the doctor in training being taken hostage by the remaining Wolf. Carol’s pissed and Morgan should see the flaw in his philosophy.
The Wolf is in need of a dentist more than a doctor, but it wouldn’t matter for long. He did have to endure a speech from Dr. Denise about how people can change.
Glenn and Enid’s story boiled down to some Harry Potter type musings about the people we love living on inside us even after they’re gone. Enid, all of a sudden, decided to care after seeing a quote inside the church about “faith without works being dead”.
Nice of her to join the fight!
In one of the most deadly scenes ever on TWD, the entire Anderson family was eaten alive in a matter of about 45 seconds. Well, Pete was already dead.
Sam started tripping at the sight of all the Walkers with Carol’s warnings ringing in his head. That lead to the boy getting his face chewed up like a pack of Hubba Bubba gum.
That caused the once beautiful Jessie to freeze up, which led to her looks going downhill in a hurry. The look on Rick’s face may have been temporary insanity, but it was also the realization that he would never find another woman as lovely as Jessie in this jacked up world. Pretty sad moment for the leader of the survivors.
A quick moment of silence for the fallen, and then Rick hacks Jessie’s arm off so they all can keep moving.
Even sadder for Rick was when Ron picked the worst time ever to get revenge. The idiot elder son of Jessie pulled a gun on Rick, but Michonne ended that threat with a steel blade. The kid did get a shot off that took out the eye of Carl, though.
Carl looks like he’ll make it, though. Tough but unlucky as hell.
The Wolf showed signs that he may have changed a bit when he went back to save Denise. She intended to amputate his arm to save him after he was bitten. That didn’t pan out since Carol popped a cap in the guy as the two were making their way to the infirmary.
Some may see this as sad since the guy had a chance to change. I laughed out loud. He had plenty of time to change before entering Alexandria to kill women and children. He was taking his evolution a might slow.
While Carl is getting much needed medical attention, Rick goes bananas as he tries out for Ax Men. He massacres zombie after zombie with his hatchet. Michonne and the others go out to help and eventually all the formerly timid town folk enter the fray.
Even Gabriel and Eugene.
Without the arrival of Daryl, Abe, and Sasha, this fight would have ended with no survivors. It took some automatic weapons to drive the undead back. Then Daryl got to use the rocket launcher for the second time in one day when he blew up the gasoline soaked lake to draw the herd to one central location to be slaughtered.
All I can say is Alexandria may have been saved, but it’s no longer the green community it once was. The lake is ruined, and the rotting Walkers littered the streets like confetti.
The show ended with Rick talking to Carl as the boy slept. We saw signs of life as Rick told him about the hope he felt with the community who had come together to fight off the herd the night before.
Carl is going to make it.
And so is Alexandria. For the moment at least.
There’s still the threat of Negan hanging in the air, though.
The Daryl Dixon Negan link:
The link between Daryl Dixon and Negan that might have occurred in the fantastic The Walking Dead midseason premiere may not be anything. Then again, it may beeverything, so it’s worth exploring.
Let’s back up a moment. There’s been some evidence that Norman Reedus’ character, Daryl Dixon, may not be long for The Walking Dead world anymore. To summarize, the evidence has to do with The Walking Dead‘s Daryl Dixon problem, the fact that the character hasn’t had much to do in the last couple of seasons, and the fact that Norman Reedus is developing his own AMC show.
I’m going to put a comic spoiler here out of obligation before I talk about the worst kept secret on The Walking Dead: That when Negan arrives, he kills Glenn with his baseball bat. However, Scott Gimple has noted that the storyline takes a “hard left turn,” which suggests that someone other than Glenn will fall victim to Negan’s bat, Lucille.
Who might it be? We know that whoever dies in the finale — when we assume that Negan arrives — is so close to the cast that the death of this character makes Andrew Lincoln “sick to his stomach.”
“I felt sick to my stomach when I read the script. It was the first day in the whole six years of working on The Walking Dead that I was late for work because I woke up in the middle of the night and I couldn’t get back to sleep. I was so angry and frustrated and I felt sick. And that was just after reading it.”
Lauren Cohan was likewise upset by the finale, saying that it “took a really, really long time for everybody to feel okay again after the finale.”
Clearly, whoever dies is someone close to the cast. We know it’s not Carol. We can probably rule out Glenn because Gimple said the television storyline would not follow the comic storyline.
Could it be Daryl?
Well, now there is motive for Negan to want to kill Daryl. In the midseason premiere, Daryl took a rocket launcher and blew several of Negan’s henchman to little bits, but not before the lead Savior told Sasha and Abraham, “Usually, we introduce ourselves by popping one of you right off that bat.” That could just be a coincidental turn of phrase, or the use of “bat” may be some sly foreshadowing to Lucille, specifically the use of it to kill Daryl.
But, viewers may argue that there’s no way that Negan would know that it was Daryl who blew up his henchman, because none of them survived to go back and tell Negan.
But what if Negan was there to witness it?
Again, this may be nothing — it may be a mistake in filming — but watch very closely in the last few seconds of this clip from the midseason premiere.
Car in the background… Neegan? #TheWakingDead #TheWalkingDeadMidSeasonPremiere #TWD pic.twitter.com/znSIZ00qkH
— Vinnie Gorham (@VinnieGorham) February 15, 2016
It was hard to see, but there was clearly a moving car in the distant background that popped up just as Daryl was launching that RPG. Could Negan have been in that car, and might he have witnessed Daryl blow up his men? If so, that does give Negan motive to kill Daryl, and along with all the other evidence that Daryl’s life may be in danger, the mounting evidence is terrifying.
If Daryl dies, Andrew Lincoln won’t be the only one who is sick to his stomach.