Last week, Rick got injured by falling of his horse which leads him to getting impaled on a metal rebar as he loses conscious as the episode ends. This week, not only we are shown the final moments of Rick Grimes on The Walking Dead, but we also see new characters at the end of the episode along with a good twist from the comic series. Time to deep in “What Comes After” which is also the same name as volume 18 of the comic series (the material of volume 18 however, was also most of the first half of Season 7 of the TV series).
Rick gets his way out of the scary situation by pulling himself up with the belt he had on as the double herds of walkers were approaching him. He then gets on the horse to lead the herd away as he is bleeding out on his way. During this along with the beginning of the episode, Rick has hallucinations from previous scenes of his journey starting with the hospital along with the characters that are no longer here such as Hershel at the barn, Shane at the scene of the pilot episode before he was shot, and Sasha. The scenes with Hershel were heart warming as Rick apologizes for what happened to him and his family. It is also important to note that this scene is the very last scene Sott Wilson has ever been filmed as he passed away during the weekend of New York Comic Con. Rick’s scenes with Shane however, were not that very heart warming as Shane makes it known that he himself was a pain in the butt. He also asks Rick about his daughter as well.
Another hallucination during this episode is when Rick is standing over a large amount of characters that are dead (or yet to be dead) and that mirrors the issue 100 variant cover of the same scene.
Maggie finally arrives at Alexandria as her and Michonne are talking about Negan. I love that Michonne mentioned that if Glenn would have wanted her to do what she wanted to do. Michonne lets her see Negan and this scene mirrored the one on Issue 174 which was released last December. Negan wants Maggie to kill him so he can be with his wife but Maggie refused as she would rather let him live and suffer. If Lauren Cohan was not leaving the show this year, I bet this scene would have happened on the next season but I understood why it had to happen.
Jadis is also seen driving the van that used to belong to Heath who went missing back in Season 7 and my theory about what happened to him seems to be coming to light. But more about her later.
Rick leads the herd to the camp as the bridge that we thought was going to break, did not. But as the others are coming to his aid, he thinks that they are part of the hallucination he has seen earlier. He then shoots his gun at the dynamite that he noticed as the bridge explodes. Everyone looks shocked as they (including myself) thinks that Rick has died. But we find out that the helicopter Jadis has been in contact with has been called after she found him by the river as Jadis also tells them that they have a B. I still do not know the meaning of A and B, but I am still curious. The helicopter takes Rick Grimes away as his status after this is missing.
We are then shown another time skip of about 5-6 years as we are finally introduced to Magna and her group as they were trying to get away from a herd until a 10 year old Judith Grimes saved them. She also wields a shotgun and is wearing Carl Grimes’ hat as the episode ends.
In the Comic Series, Magna and her group were introduced almost the same way at issue #127. The few differences is that on the comic series, they were introduced two years after All Out War ended and that it was Jesus and Heath that saved her and her group.
I love this episode. I know that the way Rick’s exit was handled will be up for debate in the coming days and even months since AMC promoted that this will be his last episode. Leaving his exit opened ended means that he might come back in the future. We also know that Lauren Cohan will come back soon as well, but we do not know exactly when. Putting those two moments aside, the callbacks to previous seasons gave me memories of why I love the show in the first place. I just wish that Carl, Lori, Andrea and a few others were shown. Maggie’s interaction with Negan felt like a closure of their story as Negan was not up to his usual mind tricks at all. He was broken and he knew that his time was running thin once he seen Maggie. More questions are also in the way as i think of will we find out more about the helicopter, how will the group move on from Rick not being there, how will Magna’s group react to the communities and much more. This episode is an emotional roller coaster.
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