The Walking Dead, Season 10 Recap: Open Your Eyes

This episode begins with Siddiq suffering from nightmares, still clearly haunted by the night several months earlier when ten members of the communities were kidnapped and decapitated by Alpha and the Whisperers, awoken by a disturbing voice commanding him “Open Your Eyes.”

We see that what Siddiq has opened his eyes to isn’t much more pleasant than what he sees with his eyes closed: A dozen or so residents of Alexandria (Including the mother of his child, Rosita) have come down with a mysterious illness that Siddiq is powerless to stop, despite his around-the-clock efforts. Worse still, those efforts seem to be wearing him thin, as he’s starting to have hallucinations brought on by sleep deprivation, seeing Alpha while he’s awake.

While trying to cure a mysterious illness, Siddiq is haunted by the festival massacre and a chilling voice telling him, “Open Your Eyes.”

Meanwhile, both Carol and Aaron are trying to extract information from individual Whisperers. For Carol, this involves trying to interrogate a captured Whisperer, first with bribery, then torture, then beatings, none of which produce results. For Aaron, on the other hand, it involves sitting with a Whisperer by the name of Gamma and casually showing her what the communities have, like freshly baked bread…and children, the latter of which gets Gamma talking about family, something which, even if she won’t admit it to herself (After betraying her own sister for Alpha), still matters to her. Eventually, Carol’s Whisperer dies of accidental poisoning by Dante (Thanks to Siddiq unconsciously putting hemlock in his medical bag). Gamma storms away from her conversation with Aaron, her resolve shaken by Aaron’s discussion of family.

While Gamma escapes to the woods to deal with her conscience crisis, she is met first by a walker and then by Alpha. Gamma’s wavering does not go unnoticed by the leader of the Whisperers, who punishes Gamma by whipping her with a switch, before reassuring her that Aaron (Whom Gamma has been assigned to try to extract intel from) will try to “seduce [her] with his lies” and reminds her that she has the utmost faith in her. Despite Alpha generally being encouraging to her subordinate, it is easily one of her most sinister scenes, as everything about her drips with insidiousness and menace.

Back at Alexandria, after losing another patient to the mystery illness and seeing Dante preparing to bury her, Siddiq has his own crisis, as his stress mounts from his sleeplessness, his nightmares, and his guilt over both the deaths in the community from the illness he can’t solve and the deaths of his friends in the festival massacre (At the end of season nine). Unable to take it anymore, he jumps into the town reservoir, possibly trying to drown himself, before being rescued by Rosita, who forces him to confront his demons and realize that he can solve the mystery illness and that he isn’t alone. Rosita’s talk finally gets Siddiq to open up about his PTSD, and this seems to clear his head enough to realize the one constant with all of his patients: Water.

At the border between the communities and Whisperer’s turf, Aaron meets up once again with Gamma, who attempts to force him to give up details, only to be stopped by Carol, who is flanked by Lydia, whom Alpha had told all of the Whisperers was dead. This shatters both Gamma’s trust in Alpha, her rationalization for betraying her own sister, and Lydia’s faith in Carol, who she felt used her to shake up the Whisperers.

And finally, Dante visits Siddiq, who attempts to cheer up his friend and accept some of the responsibility for failing to recognize that the water wasn’t clean enough to drink. As he tries to assure Siddiq, he clicks his tongue nervously, triggering a flashback in Alexandria’s chief doctor; For the first time, remembering fully the night of the festival massacre. Siddiq remembered seeing the murders of D.J. and Enid, and, as he tried to close his eyes, a Whisperer standing next to him forces him to face Alpha and tells him “Open Your Eyes” before clicking his tongue. It was Dante. The hemlock, the contaminated water? It was all Dante. Siddiq, realizing who Dante was, attempted to reach for his hatchet but was stopped by Dante, who, despite saying he didn’t want to kill Siddiq, killed Siddiq.

That was how the episode ended.

And that is our recap of The Walking Dead, season ten-episode, “Open Your Eyes”! If you like this and want to learn about how to survive a zombie apocalypse (I kinda talk about that a lot), why not pick up a copy of my book, The Rules: A Guide To Surviving The Zombie Apocalypse! You can also get it at Amazon here and on iTunes here!