'The Walking Dead' Recap: 'Your World's About to Get a Whole Lot Bigger'
Warning: This recap for the “Knots Untie" episode of The Walking Dead contains storyline and character spoilers.
Jesus: Friend or foe? The answer becomes a lot clearer in “Knots Untie,” as Jesus offers the Alexandrians a solution to their worsening food woes (after he accidentally spills the tea about Richonne). It requires another big road trip, and maneuvering the insufferably pompous leader of another survivor camp, and from it all emerges the sharp, competent leader Deanna always knew Maggie would be… and an impending showdown with the man who’s almost certainly going to be responsible for the death of (at least) one of our most beloved group members.
The Richonne Secret Is Out
It’s dawn, and Maggie and Glenn are talking while she’s planting some veggies. They see Denise and Abraham running, and follow to see what’s wrong. Meanwhile, at Rick’s house, Jesus is sitting on the steps, looking at a painting, when Carl comes up behind him, gun aimed at Jesus. “What the hell are you doing in our house?” asks Carl. Jesus says he’s waiting for “your mom and dad to get dressed.”
Carl’s surprised, and out walks Rick, without a shirt, Michonne right behind him. And making their way up the steps, with their guns drawn: Daryl, Abraham, and Glenn, who also witness the accidental unveiling of Richonne as they come looking to head off any trouble happening at Casa Grimes.
Rick to Jesus: “You said we should talk, so let’s talk.”
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A Whole New World
Downstairs at Rick’s, everyone gathers around the table, and Jesus says he escaped because one guard can’t cover two exits. “Knots untie, locks get picked,” he adds, and says he had the chance to scope out the town. He sees they have a lot of weapons, but way too little food for all their people. He says he knows he, Rick, and Daryl got off to a bad start, but he knows they’re good people. He’s from a place a lot like Alexandria, he says, and his job is to look for other communities his can trade with. His community has livestock and crops, and he says he can take a group of them there to check it out.
“You’re looking for more settlements?” Maggie asks. “You mean you’re already trading with other groups?”
Jesus, smiling: “Your world’s about to get a whole lot bigger.”
The Hilltop
Rick, Michonne, Daryl, Maggie, Glenn, Abraham, and Jesus pack up the RV and head off to Jesus’s home, The Hilltop. Carl says he’s going to stay behind to help keep everyone safe, and because “a kid with a messed up face probably wouldn’t make the best first impression.” He also tells Rick he’s cool with him and Michonne, and he asks his dad if he’s sure he can trust Jesus.
“No, but if he’s telling the truth, it could be the start of everything,” Rick says.
On the drive, Rick squeezes Michonne’s leg, and they hold hands, and that’s the sum of the afterglow basking they’re going to be afforded on this day. They see a car accident along the road and stop, and Jesus says it’s a car from his community. The others wonder if this could be a trick, so they handcuff him and follow tracks to a nearby office. Inside, they rescue four members of The Hilltop, including one who’s injured, and another, Harlan, who’s a doctor, and who’s very grateful to Glenn for saving him. Glenn asks if he has any prenatal vitamins in the bag of medicine he procured during his supply run, and upon learning about Maggie, Harlan tells them he’s not only a doctor, but specifically, an obstetrician. “I’d say you two just hit the jackpot,” Harlan says.
The group arrives at The Hilltop, which is enclosed by walls, like Alexandria. There are two men atop lookout posts at the entrance gate, and they’re armed with homemade spears. They see Rick and his group with guns drawn, and they demand they drop their weapons. The Alexandrians refuse, and peacemaker Jesus and Harlan vouch for Rick and company. Rick’s uneasy, and wants Hilltop leader Gregory to come outside the compound to talk, but Jesus tells him it’s safe to enter. He trusts them, he says, and asks that they trust him. Besides, he confides, The Hilltop ran out of ammo months ago.
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Inside, Jesus gives the group a rundown of the settlement, which has chickens, gardens, trailers from a FEMA camp, and a blacksmith. He says it used to be the materials field for a nearby power company, which is how they built the walls. There’s also a fancy building in the middle of the property. It’s a large, colonial-type home, and it’s called Barrington House. Jesus says it was a history museum, and before the apocalypse, “every elementary school within 50 miles came there on field trips.” Inside, the beautiful, meticulously decorated and maintained surroundings elicits a “Good gracious, Ignatius” from Abraham, and Jesus tells them Hilltop-ians live in the trailers and the house. They’re always building, he says, because there are “babies being born.”
Just then, the gang meets Gregory (24 alum Xander Berkeley), as he walks out of his office, wearing a sportcoat, and looking like he never gets his hands dirty. Before he’ll entertain a conversation with anyone, he tells them they can go upstairs to get cleaned up. Gregory “keeps the trains running around here,” Jesus says, but Gregory states his position in stronger terms.
“I’m the boss,” he says, and cuts off Rick’s attempt to introduce himself by telling him “it’s hard to keep this place clean.” Rick’s annoyed, and as everyone agrees to head upstairs to freshen up, he tells Maggie, “You clean up first, you talk to him.” Why, she asks, not thrilled to chat with Gregory.
“I shouldn’t,” Rick says. “And you gotta start doing these things.”
Don’t Call Me Natalie
And she does. Maggie heads into Gregory’s office, where he greets her. “Natalie, right?”
“Maggie,” she corrects him.
“That’s pretty close,” he says.
“Not really.”
“She calls ‘em like she sees ‘em,” he says with bravado that only makes his self-satisfaction more irritating. He goes on to try, unsuccessfully, to impress her further, showing off a painting, and telling her “You’re looking at it… I’m good at this,” when she asks how The Hilltop has survived.
Maggie smiles politely, but then gets down to business. She tells him her group came there to trade, and asks if he has enough supplies to do that. He gets even more haughty and condescending when he tells her Jesus said the Alexandrians don’t have enough food, so he’s willing to help, but not for free. He’ll let them work at The Hilltop for supplies. And he creepily intimates he has another offer for Maggie — even after she mentioned she has a husband — telling her she’s smart and beautiful, calling her “honey,” and saying he can “make it worth your while.”
“Stop coming on to me and calling me ‘honey,’” she tells him. “You don’t have any ammunition. You’re low on medication. You need things, we need things.”
“You can give us a bottle of aspirin and a box of bullets?” he asks in a short-sided view of his community’s current, and likely temporary, position.
“Thank you, Natalie. Good talk,” he says, dismissing Maggie.
The group meets with Jesus, who asks them to give him a few days to talk to Gregory, after Rick says they came there for food, and they’re not leaving without some. “We’ll work this out,” Jesus insists. “Circumstances change. We’re doing well now, and you will next. I will make [Gregory] understand that.”
Michonne speaks for the group and says they’ll give him a few days to work it out, and just then a Hilltop-ian comes into Barrington House and announces, “They’re back.” Gregory comes out of his office, and he and Jesus go outside. Rick and his group follow.
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Outside, a Hilltop group has just returned home, and a man named Ethan says two of their people are dead… Negan. Negan is also holding Ethan’s brother, Craig, and will not kill him if Ethan delivers a message to Gregory. He then steps to Gregory, apologizes, and stabs him in the gut.
Chaos ensues. Rick goes after Ethan, who tells everyone that he’s doing what he has to do to save his brother. Ethan pins Rick down and holds a knife to this throat, but when Michonne distracts Ethan for a minute, Rick stabs him in the throat. A Hilltop woman punches Rick for killing Ethan, and Michonne knocks her down. A Hilltop-er named Andy tries to choke Abe, but Daryl pulls him off of him, breaking his arm. Jesus runs to the middle of the action, and yells, “This is over! Ethan was our friend, but let’s not pretend he was anything more than a coward who attacked us. He did this, and these people stopped him.” Jesus urges Rick to stand down, too, telling him things aren’t as simple as they might seem.
Jesus goes on to tell Rick and the others about Negan and the Saviors. Negan is the group’s leader, and he and the Saviors showed up at The Hilltop as soon as the walls went up. He threatens them, demanding half their supplies, lest he kill them. To prove he’s serious, he beat a 16-year-old Hilltop-er named Rory to death the first time he came to The Hilltop. “Said we needed to understand right off the bat,” Jesus says.
Rick’s group is shocked at the deal Gregory made with Negan. “Gregory’s not exactly good at confrontation,” Jesus explains. “He’s not the leader I would have chosen, but he helped make this place what it is, and the people like him.”
Daryl wonders why they don’t just kill Negan. “Most of the people here don’t know how to fight, even if we had ammo,” Jesus says.
Also, they don’t know how many people Negan has in the Saviors, though they’ve shown up in groups as big as 20 people.
“So they show up, kill a kid, and you give them half of everything?” Daryl says. “These d–ks just got a good story. The boogeyman, he ain’t s–t.”
Abraham tells Jesus that a month ago, they ran into some of Negan’s men, and took them out. “Left them in pieces and puddles,” he adds.
Daryl decides to bottomline the chatter: He tells Jesus they’ll take care of Negan, and his men, if Gregory will hand over food, medicine, and one of the cows.
Rick: “Confrontation’s never been something we had trouble with.”
Jesus says he’ll take the pitch to Gregory, while Rick and his group confirm that this is the trade they need to make: their ability to handle trouble in exchange for food and medicine.
All agree, but Maggie adds the very ominous, “It’s gonna cost us something.”
Jesus returns and tells Maggie that Gregory wants to talk to her. She enters his bedroom, where he’s recovering from the stab wound. He’s in a lot of pain, he tells her, trying to get sympathy, but Maggie’s having none of it now. “Could have been worse,” she says. “You’re lucky we were here.”
Maggie tells him her group has handled people like Negan before — permanently — and they’ll take care of the Negan problem — permanently — in exchange for supplies.
Gregory, jerk that he is, thinks the offer is funny. He says this is what he proposed before, that Rick’s group work in exchange for supplies, and Maggie balked at the suggestion. Now, he says, that’s exactly what they’re proposing. He was just using the leverage he had, he tells her, adding he’ll take the deal, and give them some supplies.
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“Half,” she says. “Half of what you have. I saw what happened out there. Negan’s expecting more supplies from this place. And more, and more. And if it keeps going like that, soon you won’t have anything left… so, half of everything you have, right now, or the deal’s off. You see… I have leverage.”
Gregory knows he’s beaten, and even claps for Maggie’s dealmaking skills. As Rick’s group loads up the supplies Gregory authorized for them — prompting to Jesus to point out that even Negan didn’t get this much up front — Rick tells Andy he needs to go with them to confront Negan, since he’s the Hilltop delivery guy and knows the layout of the Saviors’ living space. Jesus also volunteers to go on the dangerous mission.
Abraham’s Got the Feels
Abraham’s surprised/disappointed when Sasha tells him she’s taking a new job in town, and will no longer be his patrol partner. That sends him straight to Rosita, where, after a romp in bed, she gives him a necklace she made for him, and he tells her she’s nearly perfect. Then he continues to daydream about Sasha.
While on the way to The Hilltop, Abraham sees Glenn with his hand on Maggie’s tummy, and he has a question for Glenn. “When you were pouring the Bisquick, were you trying to make pancakes?” It takes Glenn a second to understand the query. “It’s something we talked about, yeah,” he says.
“Given the precarious state of affairs on any given Sunday, I am damn near floored that you, or anyone else, would have the cojones to make a call like that,” Abe says.
Glenn: “We’re trying to build something, me and her, all of us.”
Abraham: “For the record, I see rain coming, I’m wearing galoshes. I double up.” Glenn grins and nods, perhaps wondering why he is in possession of that information.
But Abraham is clearly following through on what he told Sasha when they holed up in the insurance office in “Always Accountable,” that he was looking at the future and considering making some moves. After the gang saves Jesus’s car crash victim pals, Freddie, Jesus’s injured friend, says when he thought he was going to die, he saw his wife, clear as day. When Abe joins the fray after Gregory is stabbed, and he’s about to be choked to death, he hears Sasha’s voice. He’s happy about that, and doesn’t even realize, when Daryl helps him up after the fight, that the necklace Rosita gave him fell off and is still on the ground.
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Does this mean Abraham is going to definitively break up with Rosita, and pursue Sasha more seriously? And maybe try to make a “pancake” of his own?
The Offspring
Maggie had demanded one more thing from Gregory: She wanted Harlan to perform a sonogram of her baby. She and Glenn hold hands as they view a live shot of the Rhee to be, and Harlan prints out a photo for them.
In the RV, with everyone on their way to confront Negan — a mission TWD comic book fans know ends in a shocking death in issue 100 — Glenn shows the sonogram photo to Michonne, who smiles, then looks a little sad, then passes the pic to Daryl. He sorta smiles, every so briefly, for a split second (it’s Daryl), and gives the photo to Abraham, who flashes a big smile at Glenn, about the new life who’s going to help continue the new world they’re all trying to forge.
Zombie Bites:
* Rick asks Michonne if she’s up for the trip to battle Negan. “It’s gonna be a fight,” she says. Rick: “We’ll win. We have to.” Michonne: We’ll win.”
* Abraham asks Daryl how long he thinks Michonne and Rick had been “’umpin buglies.” Daryl doesn’t know. “You ever think about it? Settlin’ down?” Abraham asks. Daryl: “You think s–t’s settled?”
* Abe tells Sasha a story about his military days, when, he claims, a camel ate his unit’s vehicle keys, and they had to wait for the camel to poo them out. She says camels don’t nosh on keys. “They do, it did, and it s–t it out,” he says. “I s–t you not.”
* Jesus is given a cookie at Rick’s, and he gives his compliments to the chef. “She ain’t here,” Daryl says, and we assume he means cookie maker Carol, which brings up the question, where the heck is Carol, and Morgan? They’ve both been MIA since the devastating walker battle in the midseason premiere… wouldn’t Carol be among the group members you’d want most to accompany you to The Hilltop? When Daryl said she’s not there, did he mean not there in the room, or not there in Alexandria?
OK, Dead-heads, let’s hear your reactions to “Knots Untie”: Are you loving new confident leader Maggie? Did the trip to The Hilltop convince you that Jesus can be trusted? What about Gregory: Are you seeing his leadership abilities, or does he just seem like a boasting bully? Where are Carol and Morgan? And we can only imagine how brutal, and likely deadly, the trip to visit Negan and the Saviors is going to be. Should Rick and the others be trusting that Andy guy to lead them there?
The Walking Dead airs Sundays at 9 p.m. on AMC.
