Last Sunday’s Walking Dead was the end of an era, but, before the new era begins, check out how Rick’s time ended with this week’s Things To Note!
It’s that time again.
Last Sunday’s episode of The Walking Dead was both sad, and, yet, left me surprisingly optimistic.
Between thinking that Rick was going to die (And, frankly, take the show’s future with him) for most of the episode, seeing Hershel (And thus, the late Scott Wilson) one last time, and even Negan’s pitiable quest for death to be with his deceased wife were all so sad, yet, seeing that Rick didn’t die, knowing his story will continue, and even seeing the time jump, with Judith now at around Carl’s age when the show began, left me intrigued and, dare I say it, hopeful.
Of course, you guys didn’t come here to hear my thoughts on the show’s future, you came to see all the things you probably overlooked because you were so busy enjoying seeing Rick‘s journey through his past as he approached what seemed like his certain death.
Don’t worry, though, I have taken care of all of that for you!
Are you ready? It’s time for this week’s installment of The Walking Dead, Things To Note!
1) This episode begins with a shot of a flock of crows flying over the Atlanta skyline from the view of Rick’s hospital room from the pilot episode, “Days Gone Bye”. The crows are likely a memory of a similar flock of crows Rick and Michonne spotted and pointed out to Judith back in the beginning of this season’s premiere episode, “A New Beginning”.
2) As Rick attempts to wake up his past self, the flock of crows turns into a swarm of helicopters, which is both a callback to the helicopter Rick chased through Atlanta in the aforementioned “Days Gone Bye” and a nice little bit of foreshadowing.
3) While looking at the swarm of helicopters, Rick hears Morgan ask him “What’s your wound?” This is the first (And, as it would turn out, only ) actual memory in any of these dream sequences, specifically, Rick’s first meeting with Morgan.
4) After watching Maggie and Dianne kill a walker, we cut back to Rick as he detours into the woods and stumbles upon an abandoned cabin with “Come face me, assholes”, spray-painted on the boards across the door. Did the owner just think the walkers were crazy (Implying it was from the beginning of the outbreak)? I’m thinking so, otherwise, why write a message to them, seeing as how they couldn’t read it?
5) Inside the cabin, Rick bandages his wound. After doing so, he spots two dusty skeletons on the floor with, apparently, self-inflicted gunshot wounds. If you look carefully, the second skeleton doesn’t seem to have any pants.
6) After Rick passes out, we next see him on his horse, slowly making his way to Atlanta, down the same stretch of highway (Complete with the burnt out cars and trains on either side of him) as he did in “Days Gone Bye”, except this time, he’s also leading a parade of walkers.
7) Continuing with Rick’s hallucination, he also passes through a street very similar to the one he walked down before running into heard in that same episode, complete with the burnt husk of a bus to his right.
8) This hallucination is also where Rick has a conversation with Shane, whom we haven’t even seen (Much less heard) since Rick mistook a Woodburian for him during the attempt to rescue Glenn and Maggie in the Season Three midseason finale, “Made To Suffer”.
9) During their conversation, Rick tells Shane he’s looking for “his” family, to which Shane counters that one could argue that Rick is looking for his (i.e. Shane’s) family. This is a little reference to Rick’s lingering doubts about whether or not Judith is actually his daughter.
10) Furthermore, Shane attempts to take credit for the (relatively) violent person Rick has become, owing to the more authoritarian and ruthless streak Rick showed following Shane’s death. Of course, with this entire conversation being inside Rick’s head, this means that Rick believes he changed following Shane’s death.
11) Additionally, Rick telling Shane he didn’t want to kill him shows that, even this far removed from the incident, killing Shane still haunts Rick, though, one might suggest Shane brushing off the concern is Rick trying to forgive himself for it.
12) Finally, during their conversation on how Rick had to do thing’s Shane’s way to survive, Shane specifically mentions “How you bit that piece of shit’s throat out, and that asshole at the church with the machete” referencing Rick’s killing of Joe in the Season Four finale, “A”, and his butchering of Gareth in the third episode of Season Five, “Four Walls And A Roof”. Once again, because this is all in Rick’s head, this may actually be Rick realizing that, in order to survive, he needed to adopt more of Shane’s approach to the apocalypse.
13) In her argument with Michonne about killing Negan, Maggie reveals that it’s been a year and a half since the war ended.
14) This episode gets its name from Michonne asking Maggie if she can live with the consequences of killing Negan, specifically asking: “And you can live with What Comes After?” This episode also shares a title with a volume of The Walking Dead comics trade paperbacks, which cover, essentially, the events at the beginning of Season Seven.
15) As Maggie throws Negan into the light, you can see scabbed over wounds on the right side and front of Negan’s head, and he tells her that he tried to kill himself, but couldn’t do it. The wounds are almost certainly from him smashing his head into his cell’s walls after learning from Michonne that Lucille had been left behind on the hill in the previous episode, “The Obliged”. This also explains why it seemed like he may have been trying to provoke Michonne in that same episode.
16) As we get to Rick’s third hallucination, he once again hears the phrase “What’s your wound?” This time, it sounds like he’s being asked by Beth.
17) Rick’s third hallucination takes him to Hershel’s barn, where Hershel is waiting for him. This is the first time we’ve seen Hershel since a brief flashback of him in Season Four’s “A”.
18) Following this, Rick’s next vision takes him back to the ravaged hallway of the hospital he woke up in back in “Days Gone Bye”. As he walks through the hallway, he once again hears the phrase “What’s your wound?”, this time being asked by Abraham. Interestingly, all the people who asked the question are either people Rick knows are dead, or, in the case of Morgan, people Rick likely assumes are dead. I hope this isn’t foreshadowing anything in Season Five of Fear The Walking Dead…
19) At the end of the hospital hallway, Rick sees that the cafeteria door’s message reads: DON’T OPEN DEAD OUTSIDE. This is a funny reversal of the door’s original message: DON’T OPEN DEAD INSIDE.
20) On the other side of the door, Rick finds himself standing in a sea of bodies, mostly of people he’s met throughout the apocalypse. This image is an homage to the alternate cover for issue 100 of The Walking Dead comic, which introduced Negan.
21) Among the sea of corpses Rick stands in appears to be the bodies of Glenn, Negan, Tyreese, Hershel(?), Jesus(?), Carol, Daryl, Maggie, Beth, Jerry, Michonne, Noah, Rosita(?), Alden, Ezekiel, Siddiq(?), Francine(?), Greg Nicotero, and Shane, though, there could have been more I couldn’t identify.
22) As Rick wades through the bodies, Sasha stands up amongst them. She is the third “ghost” Rick sees in this episode. This is the first time we’ve seen her since the Season Seven finale, “The First Day Of The Rest Of Your Life” (Not counting Eugene having a flashback of that episode the following season, of course).
23) When Rick awakens from his hallucination, he finds himself at the construction site, where he finds Norris (The ex-Savior who accused Jadis of killing the other Saviors two episodes earlier in “Warning Signs”) and Kathy have turned, both killed during the skirmish in the previous episode. This makes them the fifth and sixth named characters to die this season, respectively, and the second and third to turn.
24) As Jadis takes Rick away in the helicopter, “Space Junk” (By Wang Chung) plays in the background. This is the same song that played as the walkers swarmed over the tank at the end of the pilot episode, “Days Gone Bye”. A nice way to bring things full circle.
And, with that, we’ve concluded our Things To Note for this week. Was there anything you missed? Was there anything I missed? Feel free to throw in your things to note in the comments!
If you like this and want to read more of my writings, specifically about how to survive a zombie apocalypse, why not pick up a copy of my book, The Rules: A Guide To Surviving The Zombie Apocalypse! You can get it on Amazon here and on iTunes here!