The Walking Dead recap: 'Rock in the Road'

A few deaths, plots of rebellion, trips to hidden colonies, and countless tense encounters later, and the stage is finally set: Rick is ready to rumble against Negan and the Saviors. The problem is that not many other key players are on the same page just yet.

When last we saw Rick, he was looking a lot closer to his former self and assembling his crew on the Hilltop doorstep to make the first move in reclaiming their freedom: enlisting the aide of other colonies. But before we get into that, there’s a small piece of business with Father Gabriel.

We pick up right after that post-credits scene with the mystery boatman (or boatwoman) in boots, who spies Gabriel standing on watch duty. If you need a refresher, here it is:

The good priest is still there, but he soon makes off with a crate full of food and weapons and leaves Alexandria. Yup. The shift is so stark that it doesn’t make all that much sense on the surface. Last we saw, he was the kind of person to leave Spencer in a car for speaking ill of Rick — the kind of person to try to instill hope in everyone as Negan ransacked their homes. But his physicality has changed: Gabriel walks calmly to the food pantry before hustling to lift as much as he can out of there. He even leaves his Bible on the ground, perhaps a metaphorical shedding of his holy order — or perhaps a purposeful breadcrumb left behind for Rick?

Was his whole change of heart just a ruse? Has he always been devious? Did he see whoever it was skulking around beyond the wall? If so, do they know each other somehow?

Rick is scratching his head over questions of his own about Hilltop. After triumphantly signaling to his crew that he’s finally (finally!) ready to take action, Gregory refuses to help, but he does at least offer his complacency. In Gregory’s defense, that was a dead end from the beginning. Maggie and Sasha should have realized he wouldn’t be on board with their plans after he tried handing them over to the Saviors. Why ask him at all, for that matter, when he’s so shady? Jesus and the others were so keen on usurping him as leader of Hilltop. They should’ve been more forceful.

However, others in the colony do want to help, thanks to Enid, who wrangles together people outside the mansion. Maybe they can overwhelm the Saviors if they have the forces. Forces. Hmm. Well, Ezekiel has forces. Jesus declares it’s time to meet the King, and because he happens to have a long-range walkie he lifted from one of Negan’s men, he knows when is the right window to seek an audience. It’s about time, but already this immediate shift in pacing feels at odds with the slog that was the first half of the season: Ezekiel was barely in the first batch of episodes, and now, minutes into the show’s return, we’re already there.

Richard and another guard meet Rick’s group at an empty parking lot to size them up, and Jesus is their liaison. (Side note: Jesus earned some points for that display of parkour at Hilltop, but his dialogue could use some work.) The trip serves another purpose by reuniting them with Morgan, who tells them about Carol.

She’s still off on her own, but I’m already predicting a moment of self-realization that brings her out of this funk and changes the tide in the war ahead. That was Rick’s whole thing in the first half of the season, and Morgan admits here that he, too, underwent a similar transformation by killing a man because he had no other choice. Another likelihood is that Carol is the one to sway Ezekiel into making moves: As they soon learn, the King is still very much afraid to launch his people into a battle that may not be a necessity.

Rick makes a good case, bolstered by Richard’s interruption, but Morgan proves to be a barrier when he suggests there’s another way to solve the problem. And here I thought he knew when you have to kill and when you don’t. Before they leave, Rick tells a childhood story about a young girl who’s the only one in her kingdom to dig up a treacherous “rock in the road” (look, it’s the episode title!), and it proves to be a test from the king, who bestows her with well-deserved riches.

NEXT: Ezekiel’s decision

As Ezekiel ponders this tale, his protégé Benjamin journeys into the woods to find Carol and make sure she’s safe and doing well. She is, and she’s still committed to her solitary life, but Benjamin sparks something in her when he says, “There aren’t that many people left. We have to help each other.” He heads back to the Kingdom to speak with Ezekiel and urge him to join Rick’s cause. Benjamin argues that the Alexandrians will risk it all regardless of their decision: If they lose, it’ll be partly on the Kingdom, and if they win, the Kingdom will have done nothing to help.

Ezekiel still isn’t on board because, as he explains the morning after, the Kingdom was formed at a cost — men and women lost their limbs and others lost their lives in fighting a battle against the walkers when there was no need. He does, however, offer Daryl asylum as the Saviors don’t stray into their walls (for now), a suggestion Rick forces Daryl to take.

Daryl seems pissed off, almost betrayed, since he only just freed himself from Negan. But Rick wants someone on the inside to try to convince Ezekiel to come around. The move also seems like a storytelling ploy to rearrange the characters’ locations. Now Daryl is closer to Carol, which means he’ll probably reawaken her warrior spirit and lead her to sway Ezekiel.

Joining Ezekiel in the group of people making bad choices for themselves is Rosita, who slings this insult to Sasha as they depart the Kingdom: “What the hell you telling me for? We both had sex with the same dead guy. It don’t make us friends.” On one hand, they haven’t spent a lot of time together since Abraham’s death, so it makes sense for long-festering resentments to boil over. But then again, are we really going to carve out time to address this pretty squashable personal beef when there are such higher stakes at play? I thought Rosita, even in this psychological transmogrification, was better than that.

As the group drives home, Negan’s voice is heard on the walkie mourning the death of Fat Joey. (“Skinny Joey becomes Joey.”) Their path is blocked when they come across one of the Saviors’ traps: A line of cars cuts off the highway, while further down is a steel wire covered with explosives. The plan is to move the cars so as not to leave any sign of their presence and take the explosives for ammunition.

Things change when they hear Negan commanding his forces to go to Alexandria and look for Daryl as a herd of walkers emerges from around the bend. Now, they want to cap the herd with the cars to potentially use against Negan later. They succeed in acquiring the bombs, but when the herd encroaches, Rick and Michonne hot-wire the vehicles attached to the wire and drive them straight through the dead.

Remember that opening scene of 2002’s Ghost Ship? It’s kind of like that.

Sasha and Jesus head for Hilltop on foot, and the rest make it back to Alexandria in time to welcome Simon and his gang. They search the town for signs of Daryl, but they only find the food supply depleted, something that also surprises Rick. After the Saviors impart a final warning about what will happen if they ever find Daryl in their company, the group reconvenes and learns what Gabriel did.

Rick may be the only one with faith in the priest, a faith that may be rewarded when he searches for clues and finds a message scrawled in a notebook: “BOAT.” Wondering how Gabriel would have known of Rick and Aaron’s secret mission across those treacherous wailing waters, the group sets out for the site. Aaron has a light squabble with Eric, who fears the consequences of Rick’s plan to combat the Saviors and Aaron’s blind eagerness to join.

Regrouping near the boat, Rick searches for clues and finds a trail of footprints that lead the group to an encampment covered in shrubbery. Though it all seems abandoned, they are quickly overwhelmed by a strange group of people. One of them, a woman with long braid handling a gun, is wearing a familiar hood and cloth over her face that may have also been worn by the mysterious figure spying on Rick from the woods.

The group closes in, but Rick is the only one who’s calm about this ambush. In fact, he locks eyes on something (or someone) and smiles. This seems like the new group of survivors showrunner Scott M. Gimple teased, and perhaps its leader is someone from Rick’s past.

The Walking Dead is trying to repair itself after the bad will it gained since the deaths of Abraham and Glenn. I still think what we’ve seen from season 7 so far could have been condensed, but it’ll take a little more to get back to where it once was. Let’s hope, too, that Ezekiel and his CGI tiger have more to do in the second half.