TWD World Beyond season 1 episode 5 recap: Madman Across the Water

Here’s your recap of TWD: World Beyond season 1 episode 5 “Madman Across the Water”

This week’s episode of TWD: World Beyond begins with a woman asking about the strongest force in the world: Nature. Elton looks out at a sign for Daiquiri World, then she smiles as he walks along with the rest of the group because he has found a family. He frowns slightly when he sees Felix behind him, reminded that he’s working with him to get the group turned around.

That night, Elton writes in his mom’s manuscript (it was her voice reading from the manuscript) as Felix walks around. Iris tells Hope that Huck said that the military blew up all of the bridges over the Mississippi River when things fell apart. They’ll need a boat to cross.

Huck says it’s going to be hard to get across and the terrain on the other side will be more challenging than anything they have seen yet, but Iris and Hope are committed to pressing on.

Felix asks for Elton’s help but Elton realizes that Felix just wants to show him a map and make a point of helping them to break the news to the others. Elton emphasizes that he didn’t say he was in on the plan, but Felix persists, telling him that he knows they all care about each other and that should be enough to get them to do what it takes to stay safe.

The next day Elton takes pictures of the undead that they see on the walk as his mom’s voice talks about how nature always wins. The sound of thunder can be heard in the distance.

We see one of the bridges that has been blown up, and all of the boats have been destroyed. Huck asks if Felix has any updates and all he has is Elton, who isn’t entirely on their side. Huck admits that she’s looking at Plan B, and that maybe keeping them safe means splitting up the girls as they move on while the other takes the boys back.

Elton reasons that the locals used the boats to escape, so Iris says that they need to build a boat. Felix doesn’t see it, but Silas is supportive. The sisters decide to raid a warehouse and Huck can’t help but smile at their dedication.

When they arrive at the warehouse they find that there’s a lot of stuff but not a ton to help them out. (Aside from a box of nail polish)

Elton spots an empty, and he’s transported to his parents’ office at the university. Young Elton loves the dinosaur fossils. His father tells him about the meteor photo and how it was a meteor that killed the dinosaurs. Young Elton is inquisitive and curious, and his mother Amelia is worried that dad, Isaac, is telling him too much. She calls him over to feel his sister kicking in her belly. “If you’re going to teach him about departures then I’m going to teach him about arrivals, it’s only fair,” she says.

Her staff meeting is moved up so she has to go. Isaac warns her about police activity by the hospital. Elton wants to name his sister Esmeralda and get her a bracelet like his mom’s.

Isaac shows Elton how to clean a horn on his desk, the same one he went after.

More from Undead Walking

• Walking Dead alum Jayson Warner Smith promotes new film, Chipper, watch it now
• Walking Dead actor Chandler Riggs filming new movie in Tampa Bay
• Why is there no season 12 of The Walking Dead?
• Will Morgan Jones find Rick Grimes in The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live spinoff?
• Watch Tales of TWD actress Jillian Bell in Prime Video’s Candy Cane Lane

Back in the present, they gather their supplies and decide to use the air conditioner to make a steam boiler. Even Huck agrees.

Work begins on the raft, and they all work together to make it come together using their own talents. Hope and Elton work on the engine while Silas and Felix help Iris with the raft itself. Hope is happy with the progress, noting that working on the boat makes this whole trip seem possible and if they can make it across they can make it anywhere.

Felix and Huck talk, and Felix thinks that if they finish the boat it will make it harder to convince them to turn back. Hope overhears them and goes to confront Elton about working behind their backs to turn around. Hope is furious, and Elton says he’s sort of on Felix’s side. A lot of what Felix says makes sense to him.

Felix says he wanted to go downriver to go back to the Missouri and return to the university. He doesn’t even know if Leo is in trouble, but his primary concern is taking care of the girls. Iris gets in the middle of them and tells them they don’t have time for it.

Later, Hope tells Huck that she can’t believe Felix would work against her. She wants to know whose side she’s on. Huck was on his side for a while, but now she’s not so sure. She feels like what they’re doing is big, and it makes them stronger than they ever would have been.

Huck reveals that when the world fell apart she’d been floating down the river on a raft and that’s when they found her with a broken arm. She was almost gone, but she survived and they started calling her Huck. She leaves a lot out, not knowing if she was going to live, whether she was going to give up, but she didn’t. Then Omaha Security found her, but she had to keep pushing. Hope apologizes, but Huck tells her that her history pushes her to be strong. SHe thinks that’s what the journey could be for Hope and the others, and even Felix. She was about to tell Felix that when “Hurricane Hope” struck. However, Felix might need to work that out on his own.

Felix joins them and asks for a word with Hope. She’s more upset with herself for thinking that she could make Felix change his mind. She was excited when Felix came to live with them because they wanted him as a brother, but he never took the chance to be their brother. Hope wishes that he would have stopped their father from leaving.

Huck tests the boiler and says the fire isn’t hot enough, so Silas suggests the nail polish. Huck sends Elton and Silas to get it, while they finish up the raft.

Thunder rolls as Iris and Felix make their way toward Daiquiri World, which is just a big barn. Iris studies a map and asks if that was his plan. She’s not mad, but she’s trying to understand. She wants to know if he really thinks Leo is safe, and he dodges the question. He says yes, but only because he needs to believe that Leo and Will are safe for him to make it. He’d been the one who was supposed to go with Leo but Leo asked him to stay behind with the girls and Will took his place, so out of guilt he wants them to be safe.

The thunder roars above, and they leave, but not before the sound of empties fills the air.

Silas watched Elton as he emptied nail polish into a bucket. Elton is shaking, and he’s talking about not being afraid of dying or fear.

There’s a flashback of Isaac putting Elton into a box so that he can go find a safe way to get home. He gives Elton the horn to keep him safe. He tells his son not to be scared, even as there are screams and the sound of gunshots outside. He closes the box with his son inside.

Iris notices that her skin is crawling and soon lightning strikes the building, sending the empties out.

Hope and Huck work on the engine as the storm moves closer. Hope wonders where Silas and Elton are. The engine starts to blow.

Elton sees the lightning and says that it’s a positive strike and that the storm is getting closer. When he trips and spills the nail polish he apologizes immediately, saying that he didn’t do it on purpose. Silas knows that.

They make it back in time to get the engine going, but it seizes up as the empties bear down on them. The drive belt came loose, and Elton is the only one who could reach it. Felix goes to stop the empties by making a net with fishing line. Elton says he can’t do it because he’s claustrophobic, thinking back to being in the box. Iris tells him he can do it. The whole time he climbs under he recites the planets, just as he did in the box. He reaches the belt and puts it back as Felix tries to keep the empties at bay.

The engine roars to life and he goes to climb out but he gets stuck, and he panics.

Felix goes to fight the empties when Hope and Iris tackle them, trying to help.

Elton holds his knife the way he held the horn in the box. Iris and Hope pull him out, then they try to push the boat into the water but it’s stuck. Felix rushes in with a board to use as a lever, and together they push the boat into the water. They make it. They look around at each other in relief, and Silas pats Elton on the arm as the empties are drawn to the water.

Felix hands out food to everyone. They’ve reached the other side of the river and set up a camp. Felix says Hope and her sister are stubborn, but Hope says Huck thinks it could be a good thing. Felix tells her it was more than a promise he made to their dad. She knows that. She admits that she left the clues for him, glad he’s there.

Huck tells Felix that she’s good with this, and they’ll find Leo and Will and keep them safe too. She thinks they need to have a scout, though. She tells the group she’s going to scout ahead because they don’t have any intel for this side of the river. She’ll be gone two days at most.

Later that night Elton goes off on his own to write in his manuscript. He thinks back to the university. He thinks back to that last memory of being with his parents and how happy he was, and he cries. Then he starts writing, thinking about how nature didn’t account for self-awareness. We see him in the box, then he hears the soldiers say it was clear. He slowly emerges from the box and goes outside. His father is there outside the door, covered in blood  with a gunshot to his head. He’d turned at some point. Young Elton grabs a tote bag and puts the horn in it, then he goes outside to find that it’s quiet and empty. He finds a paper on the ground that says people should evacuate to the NSU Campus, so he sets out, walking around the dead bodies all over the place.

Hope finds him and asks if he’s okay. He says he is, but he tells her about the Night the Sky Fell his father told him not to be scared. But his father was scared, and he did what needed to be done. He was brave because he was scared. Hope wishes she could have met his parents, thinking them to be cool for having such a great son.

Elton admits he hopes his mom and sister are alive somewhere. He opens the book and looks at a picture of them, and Hope says it’s not so crazy, but then she sees the picture and realizes she shot Elton’s mom.

An empty shows up and Iris says she’s going to kill it, but it turns out to be a person with a big stick.

TWD: World Beyond continues next Sunday following Fear the Walking Dead.