One thing that I love about the horror genre is how it is used to affect the viewer and the characters. We have seen that on this episode as it slowly progressed from the start to the finish. Gear up as I recap this week’s episode of The Walking Dead titled “Ghosts”.
The first few minutes of the episode showcases what has happened in a two day montage. From morning to night, everyone at Alexandria cleared walkers that were approcahing the gates in different waves. It started small, and then it got bigger hours later. While this is going on, Carol is taking pills, and Aaron thinks that The Whisperers are sending those waves of walkers to Alexandria. After Michonne gets some breathing time to relax for a few minutes, her and Judith talk about the walkers. After the second day, it started to calm down. Gamma arrives to Alexandria and told them to come to Alpha’s border. Daryl also asks her if she is sending those walkers and Gamma says that they are not. A counsel meeting takes place before they go as Michonne, Siddiq, Eugene, and Aaron are the ones who hold the meeting. Lydia brings up that Alpha has never done this before and if she wanted them dead, she would have done it herself. During the meeting, Eugene brings up the satellite again as he believe that caused the walkers to arrive, but a few of the Highway Women had enough of hearing about it and bring up the idea of killing The Whisperers head on and Michonne went against the idea for now as Daryl also brings up the mega herd Alpha showed him. Michonne wanted to do this the smart way of handling The Whisperers so she comes up with a plan to tightnen the security. Carol also gets her gun as well.
While out of his cell, Negan helps clearing up the walkers that were already killed and he does not want to go out on the mission with the rest so Gabriel teams him up with Aaron to clear more walkers in the area. Negan also made a comment about Aaron’s mace too. While they were killing walkers, Negan finds a crowbar and Aaron told him to put it down. Negtan made a joke about why he should not use the broom and why he should use the crowbar instead and Aaron was not having it at all. Three more walkers were behind Negan and he took them down. The group arrives at The Whisperer’s border at night and Carol had a moment at Henry’s pike to remember him. Also at night, another wave of walkers are arriving at Alexandria and Eugene, Rosita, and the rest are doing their best to clear the walkers and Eugene thinks that he can go all night. Daryl, Michonne, Carol, and the rest are waiting for Alpha to arrive and she did with a number of Whisperers. She told them that she did not send those walkers over there. She also told them that they crossed her border three times. Michonne said two, but Alpha knew when they crossed over the winter storm too and that they are always watching. She also told Michonne that there will be no bloodshead this time at all since they want more land. Carol said that will cause for the hunting ground to be cut short. She also says that she does not have to listen to the rest of this and Michonne wanted to calm her down, but Alpha lets her speak more. The rest of The Whisperers pointed their guns at the group and Alpha stares down Carol and made fun of Henry. Even saying about his last moments when he was alive screaming Carol’s name. Carol shoots at Alpha, but misses when Daryl got in the way to take the gun off her hand. Alpha forgives her “mother to mother” and picks up one of the pikes and said that this is their land now and that they better run.
Michonne and Carol talk about what happened and Carol told her flat out that “bitch has to die”. Carol then sees a few Whisperers and alerted the group as they started chasing them, only to realize that she is hallucinating. Negan is clearing more walkers and even used the crowbar to kill the remaining ones too. The walkers had poison ivy attached to them so it affected Aaron’s eyesight. Aaron and Negan talk about why Eric is not alive and Negan goes on to talk about protecting what belongs to you. Aaron replied back saying that if he failed Eric, then he (Negan) failed his wife. Negan sees right through of his tactic and a walker was about to bite Aaron, but Negan helps him. Michonne, Carol, Daryl, and the rest enter an abandonded school. Carol examines one of the rooms of the school and she picked up a book with a family on the cover. She then has a hallucination when she looks at the cover to see herself, Sophia, Lizzie, Mika, and Henry. Aaron is also looking for Negan and his eyesight is getting worse. He enters a shed and Negan was sitting on a chair and Aaron walked pass him. Back to Daryl and Carol as Daryl told her a story about his dad being a truck driver. After the story, Carol takes more of the pills. Back to Negan and Aaron as Negan killed a few walkers and Aaron thinks that he would be next. But Negan is not going to kill him as he gives him water and helps him up. Carol then walks to the hallway after she heard a scream. She seen a girl through the broken glass. She then hears Henry’s voice and sees him on a window calling for her. Once she turned around, he is not there. She did it again, and a shadow figure was about to stab her until she wakes up (This jumpscare got me good as I did not see this coming). We also find out here that Daryl’s story was an hallucination as Carol dreamed it the entire time.
When Carol walked into the gym, she is caught in a leg trap that was set up by a Whisperer. She then proceeded to kill some of the walkers while she was upside down and managed to break the rope trap and fell into glass and killed the rest of the walkers. Her arm got cut from the glass and Siddiq and Dante were there to take care of the wound. Siddiq also had PTSD flashbacks again of when he was at the barn with the pike victims. In the morning, Aaron wakes up to see that Negan has kept watch over Aaron all night. Rosita and Eugene are also exhausted from the night before and finally has some downtime to talk. Eugene brings up Coco and Rosita makes it clear that they will never be together but also apologized for screaming at him since she is very tired. Eugene then began to question their friendship as he left the room.
Michonne checks up on Siddiq and wants to know how he is doing and after this, him and Dante have a drink and Dante brings up his backstory as he was a field medic while he was in Iraq. Carol also wakes up and goes downstairs to see Daryl cooking breakfast and he even gives her money to go to the store. Henry was also there and asks her a question and then Carol wakes up realizing it was another dream. She then talks to Michonne about her arm and about The Whisperers she seen the night before and Michonne told her that she only seen them, but they did not. She meets Daryl outside and asks him if he believed her from what she seen and he told her that he did. Then back at the school, we see the killed walkers on the ground and one of them in the pile was also a Whisperer as its eyes opened to close the show.
This episode was very great and further explored the mental state of Carol much ever than before. And I believe that the jumpscare that happened during the episode willl catch everyone off guard like it did for me. Also, the scenes with Negan and Aaron were great and it shows that Negan is seriously a different person than what he once was. There are pacing issues that I noticed on the second half as I believe it did not had to jump back and forth with Carol’s and Negan’s scenes back and forth every few minutes like it did since it broke the tension in my opinion. Other than that, this episode is more horror themed than the other two episodes and I love it. It is also another reason why The Walking Dead is the best show on television.
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