‘The Walking Dead’ Season 8, Episode 2 Recap: Rick Searches For Weapons, War Against Saviors Rages

Season eight of The Walking Dead started off slow, and continued to be slow through its second episode.

THE WALKING DEAD RECAP

In the opening, there are multiple close-up shots of characters’ faces, appearing more like a teaser than a cold open. Then Aaron and Eric lead an assault on a Savior outpost, and even the people who get shot and killed react lazily to being bombarded with bullets. Aaron and Eric need just kill enough so that they revive as walkers and kill the rest. Various groups of Hilltoppers, Alexandrians, and Kingdomites do the same and target other Savior camps.

Meanwhile, Rick and Daryl head off to search for guns, and Ezekiel and Carol have to search for the Savior that threw a grenade and ran off to tell Negan what happened. Diane shoots a few guards with her arrows while Morgan distracts them. He’s caught off guard when a few fighters attack, and appears to have been killed. Later, though, he awakes, surrounded by a few dead allies. He grabs two guns and runs after the enemy.

Tara and Jesus find a Savior, cowering in fear. He surrenders, and the pair argue over what to do with him – Tara wants to kill him for his crimes against them, but Jesus doesn’t want to become ravaged by revenge. In the end, Tara is proved right when the Savior puts a gun to Jesus’ head. He taunts them, and stomps on Maggie’s prenatal vitamins. When he turns to shoot Tara, Jesus disarms him, but still won’t allow Tara to kill him. “It’s not about revenge, it’s about getting it done,” he says.

Back with Ezekiel and Carol as they search for the grenade-throwing Savior, they run into a strange looking walker, with elfish ears and bat-like features. Ezekiel wonders what could have happened to make it like that, but then Jerry plunges an axe into its skull. Then Ezekiel and Carol have a similar argument to Tara and Jesus’, about if good people commit evil acts, can they still be good. The show has explored this before, and there’s not much more to get at except that there is a gray area.

Rick and Daryl, meanwhile, continue to look for weapons. Daryl finds a closet full of blood stains, with a half-eaten sandwich and handcuffs on a pipe. While Daryl daydreams about the conditions that Negan kept him in, Rick gets attacked by a Savior. The fight ends with Rick throwing the Savior against the some spikes in the wall and choking him, at which point the Savior tells him there are no guns.

We cut to Morgan, alone and shooting at Saviors, as he recall an earlier conversation with Rick where he tells him he’s confident they can defeat Negan. When he gets outside, he finds Jesus and Tara and their forces holding the leftover Saviors at gunpoint. Morgan thinks back to a time when Rick told him they had to attack the Saviors before they attacked them. Morgan sees Jared, who stole his staff to kill someone long ago, and went to kill him, but Jesus stopped him. “This is not what we do,” he tells him. “And what do we do?” Morgan fires back.

Back with Rick, he opens a closet door and instead of finding guns, he finds a baby named Gracie asleep in her crib. He has a moment of panic and is disgusted with himself.

Carol and Ezekiel finally find the Savior they were tracking, but before killing him, Shiva leaps out and eats him. Aaron and Eric are still fighting, but hit some obstacles. Eric gets shot and Aaron drives through a wall of Saviors to get to him. Meanwhile, Ezekiel gives a rousing battle speech to his fighters, as they know the Saviors are expecting them.

The last scene of the episode show Rick find another room where Morales is waiting for him. Morales has been gone from the show since season 1, when he was part of the original group of Rick’s. He decided to head to Birmingham with his family instead of with everyone else to the CDC in Atlanta. It’s unclear of his journey here, but now he is a Savior, and he is apparently hungry for Rick’s blood.