Be sure to check out the recaps of the first two episodes in season 6 of The Walking Dead!Â
If you haven’t watched this week’s episode, I am warning you now, and this isn’t like my normal spoiler alert. There are MAJOR spoilers ahead. Read on at your own risk.Â
***
You guys, I don’t want to talk about this week’s episode.
This week’s episode felt like a horrible, stress-filled dream. I’ll get to that horrible, awful bit, but first, let’s back up.
This season has been a tad bit timey-wimey, with the timeline jumping back and forth. Last week’s episode took us back to Alexandria prior to the ominous horn blaring from the premiere, and focused on the town as it attempted to fight off an attack by the Wolves. This week’s episode brought us back to Rick’s group just after the horn sounded. I feel like I’ve said this after every episode this season, but OH MY WORD, this episode was intense!
With the horn diverting the attention of the walker herd, Rick and the group try to devise a plan to get the herd back on track (or at least direct them away from Alexandria), and hurry back to Alexandria to make sure their people are safe. As with everything in the Walking Dead universe, things do not go as planned. Unsurprisingly, the Alexandrians prove to be a huge liability, doubting Rick’s judgement, getting injured easily, and generally slowing things down. Alexandrians get shot, bitten, die, sprain their ankles, accidentally shoot other Alexandrians … it’s a hot mess, y’all.
The group ultimately decides to split up to help their people in Alexandria and deal with the herd. Sasha and Abraham stay in the car, directing as many walkers as they can, Daryl breaks off to head back to Alexandria, Rick goes off by himself to get back to the RV, and Glenn and Michonne take the rest of the group back to Alexandria. From there, Glenn and Nicholas (boo, hiss) break off to set a fire to draw the attention of the walkers.
Michonne really has a pretty rough job. She’s got to protect one Alexandrian, Annie, who has a sprained ankle, Scott, who was shot in the leg, one bitten by a walker (and offering his super sweet post-apocalyptic love story as the virus slowly destroys him), and Heath, who was super skeptical about Rick, Glenn and Michonne. Michonne manages to lay a serious truth bomb on Heath, shutting down his doubts against Rick and that entire group, proving that Alexandrians don’t understand the reality of this new, harsh world. Heath gets to see this first hand when all but one of his fellow Alexandrians met a grisly end at the hand of walkers, and finally starts to understand where Michonne was coming from. Though Michonne’s group isn’t wholly safe just yet, they seem to be the group in the best situation out of everyone.
Rick, on the other hand, is in a seriously sticky situation. He’s badly injured his hand while he was hacking through walkers, was attacked by the Wolves Morgan let go in last week’s episode—Wolves that Rick promptly killed—and is now stuck in an RV that is not working as the walker herd closes in. While I highly doubt he’s going to die, he’s definitely need in some serious help. Plus, after finding a jar of baby food on one of the Wolves, he’s likely also thinking Carl and Judith are dead. But more on Rick in a moment …
While the entire episode had a lot of intensity, Glenn and Nicholas are the real story here. Nicholas has been on quite the redemption story with Glenn, but I think every single Walking Dead fan was waiting for Nicholas to prove himself to either be a giant coward, an evil guy, or do something moronic to get Glenn hurt or killed. In this week’s episode, Nicholas was having a really hard time dealing with a world filled with walkers, nearly blacking out on several occasions when he was overwhelmed by the death around him (some of the death which he caused). After Glenn and Nicholas’ plan to burn a building down is ruined when they find the building already burned down, Glenn asks Nicholas to help them find their way through the town to find something else to incinerate. Unfortunately, Nicholas leads them to a dead end where they become completely surrounded by walkers. Glenn and Nicholas jump onto a dumpster, where Nicholas begins to zone out. Glenn tries to snap Nicholas out of it, which Nicholas does (sort of), thanks Glenn—presumably for saying Nicholas isn’t that “that guy” who is an awful, horrible, cowardly human—and then shoots himself in the head. Nicholas’ body falls onto Glenn, which tosses the two of them directly into the walker herd. We see Glenn hit the ground, and then the walkers descend upon them—blood and gore everywhere.
Here’s the thing though: it’s not entirely clear what exactly happened to Glenn.
I know. It looks bleak for Glenn, but since it wasn’t explicitly shown that Glenn was killed, there are several fans (myself included) who refuse to believe he’s gone. I had an all-caps text conversation with a friend over Glenn’s fate. Sure, there was a lot of “Glenn’s gonna die” imagery happening by referencing his pre-apocalyptic job as a pizza delivery man, calling Rick a dumbass over the radio like in season one, Michonne hearing the story of a man dying thanks to a walker bite while his unsuspecting wife waited for him at home, and Rick being stuck in a vehicle while a herd of walkers descended on him like in season one. Despite that “full circle” imagery, I still think Glenn has a chance—it’s small, but I refuse to call time of death just yet. When Glenn fell into the walkers, Nicholas’ body was on top of Glenn, so all of that blood and intestines being slung about could be Nicholas’, not Glenn’s. Plus, we already know how covering yourself in gore can help hide you from walkers. It’s safe to say that, when Glenn stands up (because he’s totally alive, you see) he’ll be covered head to toe in blood and guts, and camouflaged from the walkers.
With Rick trapped in the RV, my official, grasping-at-straws theory is that Glenn will be able to get through the walker herd thanks to his gory camouflage, come on the radio and save Rick just like he did in season one. If you watched Talking Dead last night, you know that Scott Gimple promised that in next week’s 90-minute episode we’ll get “closure” on what happened to Glenn. He went as far as saying we’d see him or parts of him (parts of him?? wtaf, Gimple???) next week in the form of a flashback, a walker, a dead body, or a safe-and-sound Glenn to let us know what was happening. So basically Gimple gave us nothing and you can interpret Gimple’s statement however you want at this point because we really have zero idea what happened. Still, it was nice of him to release some kind of a statement to the fandom.
I for one, refuse to believe Glenn is dead until I see some cold, hard evidence. Glenn has proved to be one of the most human characters on the show, and has one of the biggest hearts out of all the characters. While those moral characters or overly compassionate characters prove to be a liability most of the time, Glenn is always able to juggle his humanity and morality with the need to survive. He is a capable fighter, but also a genuinely good person. He can’t be dead, he simply cannot. Not only will the show be seriously lacking without him, I can’t bear to think of poor Maggie, having lost her father, her sister, and now her husband. If nothing else, Maggie doesn’t deserve to lose yet another loved one.
Call me delusional, I don’t care. I’m gonna say it: #GlennLives.
What did you think of this week’s episode? Do you think that Glenn is really dead? What do you think is going to happen to Rick next week? And what’s going on with the Wolves? Let me know your thoughts on that and the entire episode in the comments!
(image via AMC)
Kendall is an editor and a writer. She has a geek and pop culture blog, she is a seasoned Netflix binger, a hoarder of candles, still an unabashed Hanson fan, and she takes ballet twice a week to stave off some of her clumsiness. You can find her on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, and Google+ (yes, she is actually on Google+).
—Please make note of The Mary Sue’s general comment policy.—
Do you follow The Mary Sue on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Pinterest, & Google +?
