‘The Walking Dead’ Season 8, Episode 4 Recap: Ezekiel Transforms After Losing Shiva & His People

The Walking Dead begins where we left off, with King Ezekiel being protected by his people as bullets whiz around them.

THE WALKING DEAD RECAP

Ezekiel has gone out of his way to maintain this persona of a king for his people, all in the hopes of keeping them safe. Now this is backfiring, as they lay down their lives to protect their leader. Eventually he awakes trapped by the dead bodies on top of him, his only scathe a bullet wound in his leg. He hobbles to safety as his former followers awake as walkers and come after him.

The show gives a series of flashbacks of Ezekiel’s time with many of the now-walkers – a mother whose son offers Ezekiel flowers for good luck, another a man who kissed his wife and baby before taking up arms, and another is Daniel, the red-headed soldier. He drags himself along, unable to stand on his injured legs, until another survivor, Alvaro, comes to help. Ezekiel tells him to run and save himself, but Alvaro says he can’t do that. As they limp away together, a bullet rips through Alvaro’s chest, killing him. A Savior reveals himself and tells Ezekiel he plans to chain him up outside the Sanctuary with the walkers.

The Savior takes Ezekiel’s cane, paints his face with blood, and berates him for tricking his followers into thinking him a prophet. They reach a locked gate, and the walkers are gaining ground. The Savior decides to kill Ezekiel to distract the walkers while he runs, but he is too late – Jerry comes along and splits the Savior in half with his axe.

Again, Ezekiel tries to tell his follower to leave him to die and to save himself, but Jerry won’t do that. They turn to face the walkers together, but are ultimately saved by Carol, who had been in a mess of her own. She escaped the previous gunfire and snuck into the Savior’s camp to stop them from moving the machine gun. She picked some Saviors off one by one until she is caught and chased back outside. She gets pinned down behind an armored car, and is clearly outnumbered, so she tricks them into thinking she’s surrendered. They go for it, and one lowly Savior goes to collect her, but she turns on him, and so do his people. They kill him, and as they do, Carol has enough time to turn the tables and opens up the gates behind her to let the walkers in.

Now she sees Ezekiel and Jerry, and must decide whether to stop the transport of the machine gun or save her allies – she chooses the latter. Ezekiel expresses fear that the gun will then be the end of the, but Carol assures him she’s got it covered. Then, as the Saviors ride toward their home base, Daryl and Rick come around the corner on their motorcycle and car, and a chase begins. Shots are exchanged, but Rick wins in the end, knocking the car with the gun careening off the side of the road.

Back with Carol, she and Jerry help Ezekiel get across the train tracks. They try to escape to the woods, but become surrounded further by walkers, including those radioactive ones who awoke in a ditch of chemical waste. Ezekiel again tries to tell his friends to save themselves and let him die, but they will not. Instead, Shiva the tiger comes in to save the day, sacrificing herself to save all three.

It’s an interesting move to kill Shiva, who has been Ezekiel’s companion since before the outbreak. This episode was about a transformation, with King Ezekiel being turned back into a mortal man. When the three return the Kingdom, Ezekiel avoids all talk of what happened, and sulks off to be alone with his grief.