The Walking Dead 1002 recap: We Are the End of the World

Beta stalks toward Gamma. She asks if Beta is angry with her but he isn’t. She also feels empty. He’s looking for Alpha and Gamma says she’s down at the old camp.

In the past, Alpha wakes up and sees that Lydia is gone. She hurries off to find her. We see that Lydia has left a trail of bloody footprints. She comes to a room where the dead are locked behind a door. She opens the door.

Alpha searches for her daughter. She finds more words scrawled on the walls, then in a display case she spots a picture of Beta with a man. They had been patients at the recovery center together.

In the present, Alpha asks if Beta has lost his way. In the past, he tells her that he warned her not to come down this hall. He has a machete, and he doesn’t care when she says she is looking for her daughter.

In the woods Beta discovers that Alpha still has Lydia’s bunny. He thought she killed Lydia, but now he realizes that she wants her back. He taunts her by saying that Lydia is gone.

In the past, Alpha stabs the man from the picture, who is a walker now. Beta roars.

In the present, Alpha tells Beta that she couldn’t kill her daughter, her baby. She’s emotional. She tells Beta that the pack can’t know that she’s alive. She insists that Lydia is dead, and she was dead the moment she was born because she was never like her. She starts tearing the little fort apart.

In the past, Alpha watches as Beta starts going on a rampage no matter how much she tells him to stop. Lydia appears and says that Alpha is trying to save him. Beta stops, and Alpha is relieved to see her daughter. But she threatens her daughter to never leave her again. Alpha goes to Beta and tells him the world went dark so they can see. “I am the end of the world,” he says. “We are the end of the world,” she corrects. She lifts his mask and looks at his face, then she puts it back and tells him to come with them. Beta won’t leave his friend and she says he doesn’t have to, offering him a knife. Beta weeps as carves his friend’s face off.

Now we see Beta in the present, wearing the face of his fallen friend. He tells Alpha he saw smoke by the border, and Alpha says they need to teach the enemy a lesson while the pac watches. “We’re going back,” she says.

They clasp hands and repeat their mantra: “We walk in darkness. We are free. We bathe in the blood. We are free. We love nothing. We are free. We fear nothing. We are free. We need no words. We are free. We embrace all death. We are free. This is the end of the world. Now is the end of the world. We are the end of the world.”

As the pack moves along we see Alpha break away and go to the ledge of the ravine. It’s at that moment that she looks up to see Carol standing there.

The Walking Dead airs Sundays at 9pm on AMC.