‘The Walking Dead’ Recap: ‘Someone Showed Me Enemies Can Become Friends’

Warning: This recap for the “New Best Friends” episode of The Walking Dead contains spoilers.

This week’s episode is all about friendship: Richard trying to forge one with Daryl in the hopes of changing Ezekiel’s mind about joining Rick’s war efforts; Daryl renewing a friendship with one of his most beloved humans; Rick acknowledging a the importance of his recent friendship with a former enemy; and Rick and the group’s new relationship with a strange new pack of survivors who may be a key cog in the Alexandrian effort to raise an army to take on the Saviors.

And then there’s that relationship Tara forged earlier in the season, one that also seems certain to collide with Rick’s plans, and soon.

Related: ‘The Walking Dead’: Norman Reedus on Daryl and Carol’s Emotional Reunion

The Kingdom Vs. The Saviors
On the heels of rejecting Rick’s request to have the Kingdom’s citizenry join in with Alexandria and the Hilltop in taking on Negan and the Saviors, King Ezekiel is dutifully making another tribute drop-off to the Saviors. Led by Gavin, and accompanied by the bully Jared, the Saviors meet up with Ezekiel and company, and initially charge that the load of supplies looks light. Ezekiel insists it is not, and the meeting looks like it will end uneventfully until Jared again instigates a fight with Richard. He wants the gun in Richard’s hand, and insists Richard should not be allowed to carry a gun at all in future meetings. The discussion escalates until the Saviors and the Kingdomites are holding guns on one another, prompting Gavin to ask where they go from here.

Related: Meet Cooper Andrews, the Man Behind ‘Walking Dead’ Fan Favorite Jerry

“That’s right, your majesty,” Richard says to Ezekiel. “Where do we go from here?”

Ezekiel orders Richard to hand his weapon to Jared, and Richard does, telling Jared to “suck on it, you little idiot.” Jared tries to hit Richard in the face with the gun, but Morgan blocks him with his staff. Jared takes the staff from Morgan and strikes Richard with it, then Benjamin uses his staff to take down Jared. Morgan suffers an ear injury in the fray.

Gavin warns Ezekiel to get his people under control, lest his next warning become more “visceral.” As the Saviors prepare to leave, Morgan dares to ask Jared if he can have his stick back, the one given to him by Eastman. Jared is angered by the polite request, and asks Gavin for permission to “tune up this dips***.” Permission denied, but Gavin tells Morgan, “Read the goddamn room, Sensei!”

Back at the Kingdom, Ezekiel praises Benjamin’s quick efforts with the staff, but also tells him he shouldn’t be so quick to employ them. “Just because you know how to fight, doesn’t mean you should seek one,” the King tells him. Ezekiel simply tells Richard he will speak to him later. Jerry tells Benjamin he was “sick with the stick,” earning him a “Jerry!” rebuke from Ezekiel.

Kingdom guest Daryl walks up and sees the group’s return, and tells Morgan he assumes they were meeting with the Saviors, since Morgan is returning with a bloody ear. Daryl asks if Morgan knows what the Saviors are, and Morgan says he does. Daryl then tells him, tauntingly, that if Carol were here, and saw his ear, and knew about Glenn and Abraham, she’d be leading Rick’s group right to them, ready to kill them all. “She would,” Morgan agrees. “And that’s why she left, man.”

Disgusted, Daryl walks away and happens upon Richard, who’s practicing archery sills. He tells Daryl he’s trying to boost his skills, because the Saviors are smart enough to realize he shouldn’t be allowed to have guns around them. He tells Daryl Morgan says Daryl is a bowman, and he hands Mr. Dixon a crossbow.

Related: ‘The Walking Dead’ EP Scott Gimple on ‘New Best Friends’ And Daryl’s Unselfish Decision

“Why?” Daryl asks.

“Because we want the same things,” Richard says. “I need your help.”

As Richard leads him to the hidden trailer that’s packed with a supply of guns and DIY bombs, Richard explains he knows they need to band together, Alexandria, the Hilltop, and the Kingdom, to strike against the Saviors before it’s too late, to save the lives of “dozens and dozens and dozens of good people.” He then leads Daryl to an area behind an old semi-truck along a portion of the road the Saviors often travel, and he shares a plan: he and Daryl will use their guns, crossbow, and Molotov cocktails to surprise the Saviors who drive by, killing them. Other Saviors will soon find them, and, seeking revenge, will find a trail Richard left to lead them to a cache of weapons. That cache is near a cabin in the woods, which houses “some loner” Ezekiel cares about. When the Saviors find that person, they will kill her — and that, Richard figures, will be the personal hit that will finally propel Ezekiel to join in with Rick. Good plan, if you’re willing to sacrifice an innocent human in the process. And Daryl just might be, until Richard mentions it’s a “she.”

Related: The Most Romantic and Bromantic Moments on ‘The Walking Dead’

“It’s a woman?” Daryl asks.

“What’s the matter?” says Richard. “She’s got more balls than you and me.” That detail only makes Daryl press him further about this woman, and Richard is reluctant to offer any additional details.

“Say her damn name!” Daryl demands.

“Carol,” Richard admits, realizing that this is going to be a problem. “I hoped you didn’t know her. But I didn’t think you’d care, ‘cuz you know what needs to happen. Maybe she’ll live.” Daryl packs up his supplies and starts to leave. Richard tells him Carol’s just out there in the woods waiting to die, so what’s wrong with sacrificing someone who doesn’t want to live to save a lot of people who do? Just then, a group of Saviors cars are approaching on the road, and Richard’s ready to put his plan in motion. Daryl knocks him to the ground, instead, holding him down and punching him with both fists until the cars have passed.

Richard tells Daryl there will be other opportunities, and he’s going to take them. Defeating the Saviors requires sacrifice, he says, and Carol might as well be dead, anyway, living out there in the cabin on her own. Daryl disagrees. Strongly.

“She gets hurt, she does, she catches a fever, she gets taken out by a walker, she gets hit by lightning, anything… anything happens to her, I’ll kill you,” he tells Richard.

Richard: “I would die for the Kingdom.”

Daryl: “Why doncha?”

Junkyard Wars
That group that surrounded Rick and his people at the end of last week’s episode? It is the group referred to on the Interwebs as the “Garbage Pail Kids,” as its members do indeed reside in a junkyard, which is where Rick, Michonne, Tara, Rosita, and Aaron are being held. The GPKs also have Father Gabriel hostage, and their leader, a woman named Jadis, tells Rick her people own their lives. Would they like to buy them back?

Rick points out they have nothing to buy their lives with, which the GPKs know, since they stole all of Alexandria’s supplies, along with Gabriel. Gabriel is brought out and we see that he’s okay. Rick continues, and confirms why he was smiling at the end of last week’s installment: he says he and his group already belong to the Saviors. If the GPKs kill them, the Saviors will come looking for revenge, and that would leave Jadis and company with two options: get owned by the Saviors or get killed by the Saviors.

Or, the only good option, says Rick: join the Alexandrians in forming an army to take down the Saviors.

Jadis rather quickly rejects that last offer, and an attack on Rick’s group seems imminent. But Gabriel takes GPK Tamiel hostage with a knife to his throat, and pleads for the GPKs to reconsider. The Saviors have lots of supplies — guns, cars, food, anything they could want — and defeating them would mean sharing in that haul. Gabriel says Rick can do anything — he tracked Gabriel and the GPKs down with very little info, after all — and Gabriel promises Rick’s group will show them what they can do.

Related: ‘The Walking Dead’: Andrew Lincoln on How Rick Got His Groove Back

Jadis offers a way for Rick to prove himself, telling her people Tamiel and Brion to take Rick “Up, up, up.” They led him to the top of one of their tallest garbage heaps, where Jadis says they changed once, when the apocalypse began, and maybe it’s time to change again, as their supplies are dwindling. “We need to know you’re real with this… [that] you’re worth it,” she tells Rick.

And then she pushes him off Mt. Garbage and into a garbage pit below.

Rick’s okay, though he’s at the bottom of a deep garbage pit, which Michonne and the others can see from the portholes constructed into Mt. Garbage. Almost immediately, though, getting out of the pit isn’t his biggest problem… staying alive is, because a monster-like walker sporting a spiky armor on his head and body — think Pinhead meets a Mad Max character — starts coming at Rick. And there’s a human skull on the ground that suggests at least one other person in the pit was not so successful in fighting off Spike.

Rick picks a computer keyboard off the garbage wall and hits Spike with it, but of course, it shatters against his metal head. Rick tries to hit him with his hand, but lands on one of the blades in his head, which goes through his hand. Rick then kicks Spike away and tries to climb out of the pit, but falls back down. Thankfully Michonne has kept her eye on the action through the porthole, and yells at Rick to use the garbage wall against Spike. So Rick pulls something from the wall, making a big portion of it tumble down on Spike. He pulls more down and traps Spike, then uses a sock to pick up a shard of broken glass to stab Spike over and over again.

He yells up at Jadis and asks if she can believe in him now. She tosses down a rope so Rick can climb up, and hear her offer. “Guns. A lot. A lot. And then we fight your fight,” she offers. “You know we will win?”

Rick smiles. “Oh, I know it,” he says.

Both are tough negotiators, but they finally settle on this: The GPKs will get the guns Jadis asked for, they will keep half of the food they took from Alexandria, and they get a third of the booty after the Saviors are defeated. For that, the GPKs will join Rick’s army.

Jadis and Rick shake hands, and he asks if they had created Spike to test people. Jadis says no. He was a guy named Winslow. Rick also asks what they planned to do with Father Gabriel. Jadis doesn’t answer; she tells him to “Go,” as their deal has an expiration date.

Rick happily shares the news that he and Jadis struck a deal with his group, as they pack up half of the houseboat goods and plan to return home. Rosita wants to go find guns immediately, but Tara tells her they need to return the supplies to the people at home, and that Rick needs to patch up that spiked – er, Winslow-ed — hand. Rick also gets the whole story of how Gabriel ended up with the GPKs — he didn’t steal the supplies, they kidnapped him and forced him to load them into a car and drive them to the junkyard. Gabriel thanks Rick for believing in him, saying he had begun to lost hope, but the fact that Rick trusted him and made the effort to find him has renewed his faith. “We will set things right,” Gabriel says. “But things are going to get very hard before that time. We have to hold on. I will.”

But he has to know, what made Rick smile when the GPKs surrounded the group, what made Rick so confident the interaction would turn out positively? “Someone showed me enemies can become friends,” Rick tells him, putting his hand on the man he once hated, the man he now trusts with his baby’s life.

A Very Special Reunion
Carol is at her cabin, and is drawn outside when someone trips her alarm. It’s Ezekiel, Jerry, and a few other Kingdomites, out to clear some walkers, Ezekiel says. We, and Carol, know he really just wanted to see her — the King is crushing pretty hard on Carol — but she reminds him of her wish to be left alone. He’ll comply, but Jerry excitedly tells her he has a gift for her first: a big dish of cobbler, which he delivers with his trademark smile. She frowns, but accepts the cobbler.

Back on her couch to return to her reading, Carol is annoyed to hear a knock on her door. She was all prepared to chastise whoever planned to interrupt her solitude again, but she couldn’t: it’s Daryl! The two haven’t seen each other since Carol left Alexandria in Season 6’s “Twice as Far,” and Carol still doesn’t know about Glenn and Abraham. When she and Daryl see each other, they get teary and hug each other tightly. He lets go first, though, and with his voice cracking, asks her, “Why’d you go?”

“I had to,” she tells him.

Inside, Carol cooks dinner for them over the fireplace while they talk. Carol tells Daryl why she left. “I couldn’t lose any of them. Couldn’t lose you,” she says. “I couldn’t kill them … I could. I would, if they hurt any of our people, any more of them, that’s what I would do. And there wouldn’t be anything left of me after that.”

She hesitantly asks if the Saviors came, and Daryl says they did. But when she tearily asks if everyone’s okay, he hesitates. She asks again, crying harder. Finally, Daryl tells her the Saviors came, but they got ‘em all. The ones they didn’t, they made a deal with, just like Ezekiel, he says. The sacrifice Daryl makes in lying to her — he was there to tell her the truth and draw her into the big plan to take on the Saviors — does provide her with comfort and relief, and Daryl covers the intensely emotional moment by asking, “We gonna eat, or I gotta be a king or something to get food around here?” Carol laugh-cries, and tells him to “shut up,” before ladling up a bowl of vittles.

Daryl asks her if she thinks Ezekiel is okay. “Yeah, I think he is,” she says.

Daryl leaves shortly after, walking out into Carol’s front yard. He turns back and hugs her, and tells her to watch out for herself, before taking off around the corner. She watches him leave and starts into her cabin, but pauses and begins to turn back towards Daryl for a split second. Then she turns back towards the cabin door and goes inside.

The Tiger Whisperer
Daryl returns to the Kingdom, where he’s sitting beside Shiva’s cage. Because, of course, if there is one other character besides Ezekiel who would bond with a tiger, it’s Daryl. Morgan comes into the room and notes the connection, saying Ezekiel will be impressed with how good Daryl is with Shiva.

“Figure any guy that has a pet tiger can’t be that bad,” Daryl says. “He’s okay by Carol. Yeah, I found her.” Daryl tells Morgan he understands why Morgan has let Carol be alone, then says they really need the Kingdom, and that Morgan has to make it happen. Morgan says he’s sorry, truly sorry, but he can’t be the one to talk Ezekiel into it.

“Whatever it is you’re holding onto, it’s already gone, man,” Daryl says. “Wake the hell up!” Morgan says the two of them are the same. Daryl protests, but Morgan tells him, “You didn’t tell Carol what happened. You didn’t, because she’d be here otherwise. And I’m glad for that. We’re all holding onto something.”

Daryl doesn’t deny it, and puts his hand inside Shiva’s cage. She rubs her face against it. He tells Morgan he’s returning to the Hilltop. The next morning, the Kingdom guards open the front gates, and Daryl walks out, looking back at Morgan, who looks up at Richard watching Daryl leave.

Zombie Bites:

* Rick wanted Daryl to stay at the Kingdom to try to change Ezekiel’s mind and for safety reasons, so he’s probably not going to agree with his BFF’s decision to travel back to the Hilltop. Plus, the Saviors have stepped foot inside the Hilltop, which puts Daryl at risk of being found there. Plus, how does he know the Saviors don’t have someone surveilling the front gates at the Kingdom?

* When Rick and Michonne are discussing where they might find a gun supply to give Jadis and her people, Tara is standing nearby, and Rick says since she’s been out further than the rest of the group while she was on a supply run, she can at least tell them where not to look. Tara says yes, as she plays with the bracelet on her wrist, the one given to her by Cyndie from the Oceanside group of survivors. With her own group’s war efforts and survival at stake, will Tara keep her promise to stay mum about the Oceanside women? Or will she tell Rick and the others about the women and their huge shed full of artillery, and try to broker an alliance? It’s probably more a question of when she reveals the existence of the Oceansiders, because there’s no way they don’t reappear before the end of Season 7, right?

* That wire cat sculpture Rick swiped from the junkyard for Michonne? He told it was to replace the one she lost. He’s referring to that “gorgeous” rainbow cat sculpture she got from the King County Café in Season 3’s “Clear,” one of the series all-time best episodes.

* What we know about the GPKs so far: Jadis mentions they “changed” before, are willing to change again. They clearly have been together for a while, as Jadis can communicate with them via simple hand signals, and they have constructed the elaborate garbage heaps and pits, with portholes. And they’re running low on supplies, but their motto is they “take, not bother,” which is why they watched Rick and Aaron retrieve the supplies from the houseboat instead of retrieving the goods themselves. Methinks they’ve possibly been a group, a collective, a cult (?) for a long, long time, maybe even pre-apocalypse. What say you? And do you think Rick is wise to trust Jadis and her people to honor the deal they made?

* Favorite Ezekiel quote of the episode (aside from his latest “Jerry!”): “The dead are quite inconsiderate when it comes to those who are wanting to be alone,” said to Carol as an excuse for why he’s in her front yard.

The Walking Dead airs Sundays at 9 p.m. on AMC