The Walking Dead, recap of season 10 episode: Stalker

We continue our recaps of season 10 of The Walking Dead in preparation for the premiere of season 10c on February 28 on AMC.

Next up is the tenth episode of the tenth season, “Stalker.”

This episode is a tale of two people stalking enemies of their respective groups: Beta stalking  Gamma, the wayward Whisperer and Daryl, having just escaped the Whisperers’ horde cave, trying to track down and kill Alpha.

It begins with Beta walking to a lonely RV in the middle of an overgrown field. Inside, two Whisperers open a secret hatch in the floor, and Beta descends into a massive tunnel that is big enough for the huge Beta to be able to stand up inside with room to spare. There he finds another Whisperer patiently waiting to give him a lantern. His hunt begins.

While Daryl tries to take down Alpha in Virginia’s forests, Beta stalks Alexandria on the hunt for Gamma.

Meanwhile, at Alexandria, Rosita is woken by a nightmare of a Whisperer sneaking into her home and murdering her and Siddiq’s infant daughter, Coco, in her crib. Fortunately, she hasn’t time to worry, as Gamma has arrived at Alexandria’s gates, warning that the team sent to obliterate the horde has been marched into a trap, and they may still be inside a cave that is located deep in Whisperer territory. Father Gabriel is suspicious, following the revelation of Dante’s betrayal, but agrees to let Gamma inside after learning her nephew was the baby abandoned by the Whisperers at Hilltop and that she is ready and willing to point out the cave on a map. Rosita greets Gamma by knocking her out with a punch and ordering the guards to put her in a cell. When Gamma later reveals that she killed her sister on Alpha’s behalf, Father Gabriel deems her trustworthy.

At the other end of the horde cave, Alpha has problems of her own, being stalked by Daryl, who, having just escaped the cave, sees this as his chance to do away with the Whisperer leader once and for all. After following Alpha and a small entourage of Whisperers and walkers, Daryl leaps into action. He quickly dispatches her bodyguards before descending into a fight to the death with her. They each wounding the other severely, with Alpha slashing Daryl’s face and stabbing him in the thigh and Daryl ramming a tree branch into Alpha’s shoulder.

The hunt continues with Alpha, armed with a sawed-off shotgun, following an injured and bloody Daryl into an abandoned auto repair shop where the wounded and exhausted Alpha tries to use nearby walkers to flush him out.

Back at Alexandria, Gamma points out where Alpha’s horde (And, potentially, Daryl’s team) was located before being sent back to her cell. Father Gabriel, still angry over the death of Siddiq, instructs Laura, Scott, and Rosita to tell the rescue teams to take any Whisperers they find alive and torture them for information. Rosita questions these orders, believing Gabriel to be too hot-headed since Siddiq’s death. While Gamma stews in her cell, she is questioned by a curious Judith, who asks her what she was like before joining the Whisperers. As Gamma recounts her upbringing, she realizes just how much brainwashing Alpha subjected her, her sister, and the other Whisperers. Also telling Judith that, after the outbreak, she and her sister made many bad decisions and started requiring other people to make decisions for them. Judith tells Gamma that if she and her sister had met her parents, she wouldn’t be in the cell.

Alpha’s plan bears fruit at the gas station as a trio of wandering walkers stroll inside and make for Daryl, who manages to fight them off. But not before he pulls the knife out of his thigh, causing himself to begin bleeding out, while Alpha, already weakened by the wound to her shoulder, seems to be fighting the compulsion to pass out.

Then, with most of the Alexandrians miles away looking for a herd that doesn’t exist, Beta rises out of a false grave like Jason Voorhees, which was dug by Dante in “Open Your Eyes.”  He then begins slashing his way through the skeleton crew left behind at the community, first killing the last of the Highwaymen, then murdering a whole house full of Alexandrians, leaving them all to turn and provide him cover as he pursues his real target, the wayward Gamma.

Sure enough, he finds her in the cell, demanding she returns with him to Alpha, promising a painless death if she does so. After telling Beta about Alpha’s lies, Gamma realizes he doesn’t care and is lying on Alpha’s behalf. Laura stops him from killing Gamma and sends her to get help. Gamma can only find  Judith, who hides her inside Rick and Michonne’s house, while Beta brutally kills Laura for her efforts.

It takes little time for Beta to ascertain Gamma’s whereabouts, sneaking into Michonne’s house and tracking her upstairs. He’s met with a bullet from Rick’s magnum, fired by Judith, knocking the giant down. While Judith and R.J. escape, Gamma isn’t so lucky, as Beta, protected by a stolen bulletproof vest, plays possum, tripping his prey and knocking her unconscious. Before he can take her away, he’s stopped by Rosita, who puts up a valiant fight but is outmatched by the towering Whisperer, only being saved at the last minute by Gamma, who demands Beta stand down, lest she kills herself. She knows that Alpha wants her alive and that Beta does not want to disappoint her. Beta complies and begins marching Gamma back to Whisperer’s territory but is caught by the rescue team and chased away by Father Gabriel’s shotgun.

Back at the gas station, night has fallen, and Alpha and Daryl, both exhausted, both bleeding out, regain consciousness. Feeling she’s at death’s door, Alpha begins envisioning those who caused her pain in her upbringing, thanking them for “Making [her] strong.” She starts talking to Daryl, seeing parallels between them, believing that pain in their childhoods made them survivors, and claiming the same thing of Lydia. Daryl rejects the last statement, telling Alpha that she lost Lydia because she didn’t love her. Even in her weakened state, this stirs Alpha, who angrily limps toward Daryl but is too weak to reach him.

Then, out of the darkness, Lydia, who vanished after Carol shrewdly revealed her to Gamma, reappears, carrying Daryl’s crossbow. Alpha has a touching moment with her daughter, singing her a song she sang to Lydia as a child, trying to explain that she was trying to make her strong, and tries to get Lydia to kill her so that she can assume leadership of the Whisperers, a role Alpha believes Lydia is ready for. However, Lydia refuses, telling her mother that all she ever wanted was to be human and that Alpha never gave that to her. Alpha tries to ask Lydia to stay with her but passes out before she can finish her request.

The dawn comes with the return of the rest of Daryl’s team. Aaron informs Gabriel and Scott that not all of the team made it out. A contingent of Alexandrians, including Judith, R.J., Rosita, Aaron, and his daughter, Gracie, pile into a wagon, making for Hilltop before they’re joined at the last minute by Gamma, who introduces herself to Rosita and reveals her name to be Mary.

We see Daryl awaken with Lydia by his side, having patched up the wound on his thigh. He asks if she killed Alpha, but Lydia reveals that she couldn’t bring herself to do it. Alpha, meanwhile, has been found by a team of Whisperers, who have patched her up. Though still weakened from the fight, she proclaims herself stronger than ever; Lydia’s rejection of Alpha’s way of life (Which she even left a message saying as much for her mother, scratched into a table) seeming to have caused Alpha to purge, in her mind, her last weakness: Her love for Lydia. Alpha closes the episode reciting the Whisperers’ mantra and officially declaring war on the communities.

And that is my recap of The Walking Dead season ten episode, “Stalker”! 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!