'The Walking Dead' Recap: Tiptoe Through the Walkers
Warning: This recap for the “Start to Finish” episode of The Walking Dead contains spoilers.
Alexandria lost its original leader, two of the most capable people in town were duking it out with each other, the big bad Wolf is on the loose, Glenn still hasn’t reunited with Maggie, and things in general just got worse for those living under the Ricktatorship. And then they got worse still, in ways Rick and company don’t even know, because a special post-episode prologue officially announced the impending arrival of a big-time villain.
Here’s where the midseason finale left us, with a two-and-a-half-month wait for the second half of Season 6.
The Herd
They’re in. All in. The wall that came tumbling down at the end of “Heads Up” left the herd free to flood the town, and very quickly, the streets of Alexandria were filled with walkers. In the chaos, most of the townsfolk ran to whatever safety they could, making for a splintered population and some pairings that were unfortunate and dangerous.
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Morgan and Carol
Denise remains in the basement with the Wolf as the herd takes over the town, but Morgan and Carol go outside and make their way back to Morgan’s house together. Carol takes a nasty spill along the way, and Morgan thinks she may have a concussion, but she’s not too injured to let him know what she thinks about him: She doesn’t trust him, and is not at all about his plan to rehabilitate the Wolf.
In fact, Carol isn’t injured at all; it was a goof so she could distract Morgan and make her way to the basement, to kill the Wolf. Denise is trying to treat the creep — who continues to take every chance he gets to tell them he will kill them all if he gets loose — and Morgan and Carol square off against each other. He says he won’t let her kill the Wolf, who is potentially redeemable as long as he’s alive. Nah, Carol says; he’s got to go, and she’s willing to kill Morgan to get the opening to kill the Wolf.
The impasse becomes physical when Carol presses the issue, and though she goes toe-to-toe with Morgan, he’s able to knock her out. The Wolf uses the fight as his opportunity to attack and knock out Morgan, then free himself, and take Denise hostage.
Rick, Carl, Michonne, Deanna, Jessie, Ron, Sam, Judith, and Father Gabriel
These nine all end up in Jessie’s house, where Sam has remained holed up in the upstairs area and, in a creepy soundtrack for much of the episode, is listening to Nick Lucas’s “Tiptoe Through the Tulips.” (Because don’t all little boys listen to 1929 standards from jazz guitarists?)
An injured Deanna is taken upstairs, and once everyone is in the house, her injury is revealed to be much worse than anyone realized: She was bitten by a walker. “Well, s–t” is her response, as she knows her fate. Rick and Michonne each spend time with her, as she tells Michonne, “I got to do what I wanted, right up to the end,” and tells Rick he’s the leader for everyone in Alexandria now.
Meanwhile, downstairs, Ron falls apart and tells Carl they’re all going to die, and it’s going to be Rick’s fault, because Rick is a killer. Carl tells him his dad was one, too, and the two get into a scrap which results in a trashed garage, with broken windows and noise that draws walkers to the house and provides them with an opening to get inside.
Rick and Jessie break down the door leading to the garage (Ron had locked it) and Carl doesn’t tell them what really happened. But there are bigger issues facing the Jessie’s House Gang: The walkers have poured in via the garage, and then into the house, forcing everyone who’s been trying to keep them at bay to run upstairs. Sam’s still playing “Tiptoe Through the Tulips,” and with Deanna’s impending death a certainty, Rick drags a couple of walker bodies upstairs and tells everyone they need to cover themselves with sheets, smear walker innards all over themselves to mask their scent, and try to make their way to the armory.
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They bid Deanna adieu, as she has a gun and tells Michonne she’ll shoot herself when she’s ready to die. But as the others make their way downstairs and outside, Deanna decides to be a badass to the end: She uses her bullets to take out as many walkers as she can, and then screams “Die!” at them.
Outside, Rick, Carl, Michonne, Jessie, Ron, Sam, Judith, and Gabriel walk silently through the herd, undetected… but then Sam starts to cry out for his mom, who’s holding his hand.
And we’ll have to wait until February to find out just how long the group continues to go undetected with Sam’s voice spoiling their attempt to go forth stealthily, i.e. how long it takes Sam — and likely some others — to get eaten. Tiptoe through the walkers, Sam… but silently.
Eugene, Tara, and Rosita
Eugene was the one who called “Help!” on Daryl’s radio at the end of “Always Accountable.” He does so while trying to hide out from the walkers, but since that plan was about to fail, he was fortunate enough to be saved by Rosita and Tara, and the three of them take refuge in a room that looks like it’s being used as the Alexandria school. Tara tries to talk a dejected Rosita into maintaining faith that Abraham is still alive and that they will continue to survive in Alexandria, while Eugene busies himself with eavesdropping and reading a world history textbook.
He also reveals that he has lock-picking skills, which is how the three of them gain entrance into an adjoining room, where the Carol/Morgan/Denise/Wolf showdown is happening. But the trio’s contribution to the fight is to be forced by the Wolf holding a knife to Denise’s neck into tossing him their guns, which is how he kidnaps Denise and leaves the three of them — plus Morgan and Carol — standing there as their friend Denise seems doomed to be a victim of the Wolf or the herd.
Glenn and Enid
They’re outside Alexandria, still trying to figure out a way to get inside, even though they don’t know whether anyone has survived the swarm of walkers inside. Enid wants to give up; “this is how it happens… and it always happens, Glenn,” she says. He insists they’re not going to give up, especially since he says he knows his pregnant wife is alive inside. Yep, if there was any doubt about whether or not Glenn knows… he knows.
And when he and Enid climb up a tree to try to get a better look inside the town, he spots Maggie — who narrowly escaped a pack of walkers to get herself a safe perch at the town’s lookout spot — and makes it a safe bet that he will continue to look for a way to meet up with her. At the very least, the first half of the season ends with Glenn alive, which probably ruined some Glenn death pool bets for those who thought he was spared in “Heads Up” only to die in “Start to Finish.” As for those who think he’ll be in real danger again when Negan eventually shows up, that wait may not be as long as the season finale…
Season 6.5 Preview
In case you didn’t stick around for the first commercial break of post-TWD series Into the Badlands, well, you should have. The break featured a two-minute preview of the second half of Season 6, and announced the arrival of the character every TWD comic book fan has been waiting for.
Daryl is driving down the road in the fuel truck he snagged, taking himself, Abraham, and Sasha back to Alexandria. But they stop when they see a group of men on motorcycles in the middle of the road (almost like they had been waiting on them?).
The head biker guy tells Daryl and pals to get out of the truck, lest he and his buddies open some serious gunfire on them. Daryl turns off the engine and gets out, as do Abraham and Sasha. Lead biker dude then tells them that everything they have, their weapons, the truck, the floor mats in the truck, the mints in the glove compartment, the fuel in the truck, the maps in the truck, the… you get it… everything they have now belongs to someone else:
“Your property now belongs to Negan.”
Zombie Bites:
* Anyone spot Spencer? Was he off pouting somewhere? Did he get snacked upon by the walkers? Or perhaps he used the chaos of the attack to try again with his plan to get outside of the town, get a vehicle, and try to lure the herd away? Yeah, no, we think he’s probably off somewhere pouting, too.
* Best line of the midseason finale is courtesy of Carl, to Ron: “You need to know something: Your dad was an a–hole.”
OK, Dead-heads, let’s hear your reactions to “Start to Finish”: Did we get a satisfactory number of answers to all the storylines the show set up throughout the first half of the season? Which cliffhanger are you most anxious to see resolved in Season 6.5? How sad were you to see Deanna go? Are you still loving Morgan, given all the havoc his choices have created for Rick’s group? And how long do you think it will take for us to actually meet Negan in the second half of the season?
The Walking Dead returns Sunday, Feb. 14 at 9 p.m. on AMC.
