If you weren’t afraid of the big bad Wolves before this week’s Walking Dead, you certainly will be now.
Last week’s Season 6 premiere ended on a high note, literally, as a blaring alarm interrupted Rick’s (Andrew Lincoln) best-laid plans to parade approximately one million zombies westward, away from Alexandria.
This week, on “JSS,” viewers found out what that horn was heralding: the sudden, brutal arrival of a band of terrifying maniacs with Ws carved into their foreheads — and an answer to the question of who would survive the inevitable breach of Alexandria’s walls by unfriendly invaders.
Spoiler alert: The next community confab in Deanna Monroe’s (Tovah Feldsheh) living room is going to be, er, sparsely attended.
The Mystery of Enid
Enid (Katelyn Nacon) has been a guarded enigma since we first met her last season, and now we know why. In the cold open, we see her in a series of flashbacks: trapped in a blood-covered car while her parents were eaten by zombies; cowering behind a board while the walking dead wandered past; eating a fresh meal of uncooked turtle; and finally walking alone through Alexandria’s front gate. And each step of the way, she left behind a tag: JSS.
It’ll take all episode to find out what those letters stand for, but it’s clear from the start what they mean. Like everyone else who’s lived on after the end of the world as we know it, Enid has her reasons for staying alive.
Just an Ordinary Day in Survivorland
Meanwhile, with all its most capable warriors wrangling the zombie parade down the road, Alexandria was getting slowly back in the swing of things. Maggie (Lauren Cohan) gave Deanna a pep talk — and a shovel, because they’ve got a garden to plan.
Ron (Austin Abrams) was refusing haircuts from mom Jessie (Alexandra Breckenridge) in the wake of his father’s execution. Denise (Merritt Wever), the replacement doctor, was anxious about getting her hands bloody.
And Carol (Melissa McBride) was still pretending to be the happiest homemaker in zombie America, making kitchen sink casseroles out of unwanted canned goods. In fact, she’d just put one into the oven when she looked out the window to see her neighbor enjoying a cigarette — and a man coming around the corner and cutting her down with a giant axe.
Little Pig, Little Pig, Let Me In
You knew it had to happen sooner or later: Alexandria was being invaded by the Wolves, who were a much larger group than they looked like when Morgan (Lennie James) encountered them on the road last season. (Keeping in mind that what they looked like last season was two spacey dudes in a forest with a shared fixation on the letter W and maybe one quarter of a working brain between them.)
There were at least a dozen of them, and in minutes, the entire community was in chaos. For one, the Wolves were completely psychotic, as evidenced by the fact that their attack strategy is best described as “hacking and screaming.” But more importantly, the Alexandrites were almost uniformly incapable of defending themselves (minus Jessie, who finds the strength to murder an attacker with her styling shears). Enid, who holed up with Carl (Chandler Riggs) in a stand to protect baby Judith, said it best: “They’re just people. This place is too big to protect.”
Morgan the Pacifist, Carol the Killer
That blaring horn from last week’s final scene? Turns out, it belonged to a mack truck that the Wolves used to ram Alexandria’s gates. Morgan turned up just in time to kill the zombified driver, and also to confront Carol, who had brilliantly disguised herself as a Wolf in order to kill the invaders. Unfortunately, Morgan is the one person on earth who didn’t think this was totally badass and awesome.
“You don’t have to kill people,” he said.
“Of course we do,” Carol snapped, and not to be taking sides or anything, but she kind of has a point.
Carol made a run to protect the armory, fully blowing her Susie Homemaker cover in the process, but she succeeded. Meanwhile, Morgan met several Wolves and tried to talk them into leaving in between beating them senseless with his bo staff.
“You keep choosing this life, you will die,” he said. And Morgan, we appreciate this life-is-precious thing you’ve got going — and yes, it worked. This time. But in the future, might we please draw the line at trying to reason with the self-mutilating lunatics who are hacking people to death in the street for funzies? Kthxbai.
Safe for Now
Thanks in large part to Carol’s ruthlessness (and in lesser part to Morgan’s diplomacy), the Wolves were neutralized. Unfortunately, so have a lot of the now-former residents of Alexandria, including Denise’s first patient.
“We’re still here,” said Maggie.
“Not all of us,” Deanna replied.
She’s more right than she knows. For one, Enid survived the invasion, but she’s gone nonetheless — because for her, Alexandria no longer fulfilled the three-word promise she made to herself, the same one she leaves on a note for Carl.
JSS: Just Survive Somehow.
And there’s been another casualty: Carol. Not the real Carol, of course, but that den-mother-in-sweater-sets who’s been walking around since last season? We’re guessing she’s officially dunzo, as Carol was last seen striding down the street, blood-spattered and black-clad, like a Wild West outlaw.
Meanwhile, some of the survivors are simply shocked at the brutality of the people who live outside the walls. But others are experiencing more… complicated emotions.
In the aftermath, Aaron (Ross Marquand) walked the streets, diligently stabbing the corpses in the head — which was how he discovers his backpack, which held photos of the previously peaceful community, in the hands of one of the invaders. So, if you’re wondering whose fault this is? (We’re looking pointedly at Aaron until things start to get really awkward.)
Tell Us: What did you think of Carol’s return to being a badass? Was it everything you had hoped for?
