The Walking Dead opened with a close-up of Maggie (Lauren Cohan), the loss of her sister still fresh in her mind, crying in the forest. As a walker approaches her from behind, she casually stands up, knifes it in the head and slides back to the ground to cry some more.

The Walking Dead Recap

Elsewhere, Daryl (Norman Reedus) is digging in the ground for sustenance, finding a worm. Sasha (Sonequa Martin-Green), on the hunt for water, realizes she’s walking down the middle of an erstwhile stream, littered with dead frogs. Walking back to the car, Maggie openly worries about how they’re going to make it, as they haven’t had any food or water in a day and a half. The other group that went out looking for supplies came up empty as well.

Things only get worse for Rick (Andrew Lincoln) and the rest, three weeks out from Atlanta, when their truck runs out of gas. Walking up the road, Daryl points out that the baby needs food and water and Carl (Chandler Riggs) tries to comfort Maggie. Father Gabriel (Seth Gilliam) then offers to lend Maggie an ear to talk about losing both her father and Beth. She wants nothing to do with him or his faith, calling him a coward. In a grassy area, Carol (Melissa McBride) and Daryl remember Beth, who saved both of their lives before losing her own.

As the night approaches, the group realizes it’s attracted a hoard of walkers that’s following a hundred yards behind them. They have no other choice but to wait for them to approach and dispatch them one by one. Worried that Sasha is letting her emotions get the better of her, Michonne (Danai Gurira) warns her to stop. After getting rid of the threat, the group moves forward and comes across some empty cars. In the trunk of one, Maggie finds a walker bound and gagged. After she closes the trunk, Glenn (Steven Yeun) comes over and gets rid of it for her.

Out in the woods, Daryl finds a deer carcass next to a corpse. All that anyone else finds is a bottle of booze, which Abraham, suffering from dehydration, unwisely sips. Just as they’re about to give up hope, a pack of wild dogs approaches. Sasha immediately takes action, shooting them all. Around a fire, the group gathers and cooks up the dogs for dinner. The next day, Maggie confesses to Glenn that believing Beth was dead only to learn she was alive and for her to eventually end up truly dead feels like it’s too much – and that she’s finding it hard to keep fighting. After giving Maggie a pep talk, Glenn then encourages Daryl to keep his hope alive too. Taking a detour, Daryl sits down and has a smoke, fighting back tears, and putting the cigarette out on his hand before finally allowing himself to cry.

When Daryl gets back to the group, he finds everyone huddled around bottles of water left for them in the middle of the road along with a note. When Eugene starts to grab one to drink, Abraham stops him, as they fear it’s a trap. Thankfully, they don’t need the bottled water as it finally starts to rain. To get them out of the storm, Daryl leads them to the barn he’d found earlier. Inside, Michonne, Rick, Daryl and Glenn talk about how to survive the new state of the world. Daryl goes towards the front of the barn to keep watch and looks out to spot a pack of walkers upon them. Maggie and Sasha, followed by the rest, rush to the doors to hold them at bay, the storm raging outside.

It’s peaceful inside the barn the next day when Maggie goes over to Daryl, trying to get him to rest. The two, bonded in loss, talk about how strong both Tyreese and Beth were. Maggie then wakes Sasha and they go outside to find the army of walkers taken out by fallen branches. Marveling at how the storm spared them, they go sit out on a bench to watch the sunrise, where Maggie tells Sasha they’re going to survive all of this and takes out the music box. They laugh when it doesn’t work and then go on high alert when a man named Aaron comes up to them, claiming to be a friend. The music box starts to play.

Leave a comment

Read more about: