‘The Walking Dead’ Recap: ‘We’re the Ones Who Live’

WARNING: This recap for the “Rock in the Road” episode of The Walking Dead contains spoilers.

Welcome to the second half of Season 7, which kicks off with an episode that lets us know right away that Rick Grimes and company, and The Walking Dead itself, are ready to get back to the butt-kicking business we’ve come to know and love over the last seven years.

The first half of the season was sometimes tough to watch, from the tragic murders of Abraham and Glenn to the aftermath of the Alexandrians’ initial meetup with Negan and the Saviors, which scattered the core group and left even super-confident leader Rick doubting that there could be a future under Negan’s rule.

Related: ‘The Walking Dead’ Postmortem: EP Greg Nicotero On That Epic Zombie Slaughter

But in the series’ best, most fun, and most hopeful episode since Season 6’s “The Next World” (a.k.a. “the Butch and Sundance” adventure with Rick and Daryl), the midseason premiere sees Rick and his group making plans, forming new alliances, and taking some big risks, all in the name of regaining their freedom from the charming, but ruthless baddie with the barbed wire-wrapped baseball bat.

Father Gabriel
Gabriel is on watch duty at the front gate of Alexandria, but he seems to be preoccupied with something. He appears troubled, and after reading something in his Bible, his expression suggests he’s made a decision. Gabriel leaves his post, walks to the Alexandria pantry, and after a clattering noise that leaves some of the food storage shelves upended, Gabriel packs the town’s already practically diminished rations into bins. He continues packing up all weapons and other metal goods, and places them into the back seat and trunk of a car, which he then fills with gas, and drives away from Alexandria in the middle of the night.

The Hilltop Army
Rick, Michonne, Tara, Daryl, Jesus, Rosita, Carl, Maggie, and Sasha are meeting with Gregory in his office at the Hilltop, trying to talk him into encouraging his people to form an army with Alexandria, all in the name of stopping the Saviors from continuing their murderous, supply-stealing ways. Stubborn, deluded Gregory continues his cowardly ways instead, saying he doesn’t even want to continue to be trading partners with Alexandria. In fact, after their recent attempt and failure to defeat the Saviors as they’d promised, Rick and his people are strangers as far as Gregory’s concerned.

Rick asks him if he wants to remain under Negan’s thumb, pointing out that is the best that can happen if they all don’t band together to attack the Saviors, but Gregory persists. “Sometimes, Ricky, you have to count the blessings you have,” he says condescendingly. He continues, telling “Margaret” that the Hilltoppers are farmers, not fighters, and they won’t be interested in joining Rick and company in resisting the Saviors. Who would train them anyway, he wants to know, prompting those in the meeting to volunteer to do that very thing. “Rhetoricaaaal!” Gregory shouts in a sing-songy exaggeration that is funny, but also suggests perhaps the Hilltop leader is starting to crack from the mounting evidence that he is not fit to lead his people in the face of increasing danger from the Saviors.

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

Daryl accuses Gregory of talking out of both sides of his mouth, and the group leaves when it becomes clear that trying to reason with Gregory is a dead end. As they gather outside his office, Enid enters and asks them to come outside. A small group of residents has assembled, and tells Maggie they are grateful for saving them during the Saviors’ most recent attack. They ask her if she really believes they could defeat the Saviors, and she says she does. They all pledge to join the fight, then, so Rick and his crew get a little win. They also discuss the reality of their numbers, which, even with these latest soldiers signing on, are grossly insufficient to take on the Saviors.

“We find the right stuff, maybe we don’t need the numbers,” Daryl says. He wants to blow the Saviors up; he clearly still has some feelings about those dog food sammiches and endless replays of “Easy Street” the Saviors subjected him to, and, of course, the senseless murders of his friends. “Blow ‘em up, burn ‘em to the ground” is his philosophy.

They’re Off to Meet the King
From the Hilltop, Rick suggests he needs to get back home, in case the Saviors decide to make a pop-in visit. Jesus tells him not to worry: When he and Carl made their uninvited visit to the Sanctuary, he swiped one of the Saviors’ long-range walkie-talkies, so they can listen in on their conversations. So Jesus thinks this is the perfect time for Rick and the gang to meet King Ezekiel at the Kingdom.

Rick, Michonne, Carl, Tara, Daryl, Rosita, Sasha, and Jesus pull up to the Kingdom in a truck, are quickly greeted by Richard and an associate on horseback. Richard knows Jesus, so the group is granted entrance to The Kingdom and an audience with the King. Jesus tells the uber-serious Richard he’s never seen him smile, and he thinks that may change today.

Once inside, the group’s first impression of the Kingdom is the size of its population. “They have the numbers,” Michonne says.

Next, Tara spots a familiar face among those numbers: Morgan. She and Sasha hug him. Rick does not, but he and Daryl do greet Morgan and ask about Carol. He tells them she had been shot by a Savior, but is okay. He also tells them he killed one of the Saviors — breaking his “all life is precious” code — and then says Carol didn’t want him or anyone else to find her, so after the Kingdom’s doctor patched her up, she left.

It’s time to meet the King in his auditorium, and when the group enters, they also see Shiva. Jesus realizes from the looks on their faces that he hadn’t told them about the King’s pet. “I forgot to mention…” he says, before Rick cuts him off: “Yeah, the tiger.”

Intros are made, and Rick delves right into why he’s there. Hilltop, Alexandria, and the Kingdom are all under the Saviors’ menacing control, he says, and his people defeated them once, before they knew there was more than one outpost. Rick says he knows the Kingdom has a deal with the Saviors, which irks King Ezekiel, who demands to know why Jesus told Rick this confidential info. The King says his people don’t know about the deal, and he doesn’t want them to. Jesus explains he only told Rick’s group because Rick has a plan.

“And what plans have you, Rick Grimes of Alexandria?” Ezekiel enquires grandly. Rick tells them he wants the King to join his people with Rick’s to form an army to take on Negan’s people. Michonne adds that Negan has already killed several of their people, “good people.”

Morgan asks who died, and Rosita tells him: Glenn, Abe, Spencer, and Olivia. She adds that Eugene was taken, and Daryl had also been kidnapped, but escaped, and remains a target for the Saviors. Rick says Negan beat Glenn and Abe to death, and Sasha shares that he has since terrorized the Hilltop and set walkers loose on them, just to make a point. Jesus tells the King he used to think they could just live with the deal with the Saviors, but the uptick in the frequency and severity of the Saviors’ behavior has changed that.

“So let’s change the world, your majesty.” Jesus implores Ezekiel.

Rick continues addressing Ezekiel, saying he wants to be honest about what a challenge it will be, because they don’t currently have enough people or weapons. That prompts Richard, one of Ezekiel’s trusted advisors, to jump in. He says they do have people and weaponry, and feels it’s time to jump into the fray and take the Saviors on, because things are only going to get worse if they don’t.

Ezekiel asks what Morgan thinks. Morgan is surprised by the request, and puts more strain on his friendship with Rick when he tells Ezekiel a lot of people would die in a war with the Saviors. He thinks they should try to find another way, maybe one that involves simply capturing Negan. Rick closes his eyes as Morgan talks, frustrated.

Ezekiel rises, saying it’s late, and that he has been given much to ponder. Rick tries one more time to sway the King, shrewdly employing a well-told story that had been told to him by his mother when he was a child. It’s about a rock in the road, a rock that would ruin wagon wheels and cause horses to break their legs and die. One family, taking a cask of beer to the market, lost the beer when the rock caused their wagon to crash and the beer to spill. The family’s female child sat in the road and cried, wondering why everyone had let the rock remain in the road to keep hurting other people. So she dug at the rock herself, for hours, until her hands were bleeding. But she removed it, and when she did, she found a bag of gold. It had been put there by the local king, who thought the person who finally dug up the rock to help others deserved to have his or her life made better forever.

Ezekiel has been listening intently to the story, and then invites Rick and his friends to “sup” with them. Rick says he needs to get home, but Ezekiel insists he will give them his answer in the “morrow,” so Team Rick is having a sleepover.

Morning comes, and as Rick awaits Ezekiel’s decision, he and the group see the Kingdomites training, running and practicing their archery skills. Several of them are missing an arm or a leg. And that factors into the King’s call. Despite the encouragement of Richard and young Benjamin to join in with Rick’s fight against the Saviors, Ezekiel tells Rick he can’t help. He asked his people to fight against the walkers, and several are now missing limbs, several children lost their parents; he can’t ask them to do battle again, he says. Rick tells him this isn’t the same: “The dead don’t rule us.” And not everyone outside the Kingdom walls have such good lives. Still the King says he has to worry about his people. Even though an angry Daryl tells him he’s not acting like a king, Ezekiel does offer asylum to Daryl, who will be safe at the Kingdom, because the Saviors never step inside the walls.

“How long you think that’s gonna last?” Daryl asks.

Morgan walks Rick and the rest of the group to the Kingdom gate, and Rick tells Morgan he could change Ezekiel’s mind, but he knows he won’t. Richard is walking with them, and reiterates his position. He says the Kingdom has to get involved, now, or they will be under Saviors rule forever, pointing out that every day they and all the other communities give the Saviors supplies, they just make them stronger and harder to beat.

When they get to the gate, Rick doesn’t let Daryl walk through. He tells them he has to stay there, where it’s safe. Daryl starts to protest, but Rick tells him he knows it’s the smart play. Besides, Rick teases him, he can “try to talk to Ezekiel … or stare him into submission,” during his time at the Kingdom. “Whatever it takes,” Rick says. “We’ll be back soon,” but Daryl still looks like an abandoned puppy when Rick walks away.

A Very Romantic Mass Walker Kill
On the drive back to Alexandria, the gang runs into a roadblock, obviously created by the Saviors, who’ve parked rows of cars across the highway to create an impasse. While moving them to get by — with plans to move them back so as not to alert the Saviors — the group spots a walker-blocker the Saviors have concocted, using cable strung across the highway, with various explosives attached to it. They decide they have to take those explosives — remember Daryl’s idea that they blow everyone up? — which they do carefully, only to hear Negan on the walkie-talkie, calling for a group to go to Alexandria to search for Daryl.

As if the gang is not under enough of a time crunch, Carl then spots a herd of walkers trudging right towards them at the other end of the highway. So even though the Saviors will definitely notice things are askew, most of the group gets back in the truck, while Rick and Michonne hotwire the two cars the cable is tethered to, with one car situated on each side of the highway. They get them going at the same time, and Rick drops his hand, signaling for he and Michonne to race the cars down the road, while the cable cuts the herd of walkers coming down the median in half, like a piano wire slicing through a block of soft cheese. Their windshields are covered with what looks like hamburger, and when they get to where their friends are in the truck, they hop out, make it through the remaining pack of walkers and speed away. Rosita is upset at their exploits, especially after one of the explosives they left behind detonates.

An out-of-breath Rick admits he pushed it, but Michonne is thrilled, telling him they made it. “We’re here!” she says. “You can smile. We made it… we can make it. We’re the ones who live,” she whispers in his ear, celebrating what may be the oddest, and oddly sweet, Valentine’s Day adventure ever.

On the Homefront
Rick and the others return home, and are about to warn everyone that the Saviors are on their way to look for Daryl, but right then the Simon-led Saviors convoy pulls through the Alexandria front gate. Rick and the others pretend they think the group is there for a supply pick-up, but Simon tells them Daryl has escaped, and they’ve come to get him. “If he’s here, we really need you all to see him die,” Simon warns.

The Saviors look everyone around town, breaking as much property as they can along the way, just because they can. While searching the pantry, Simon notes it’s empty, warning them Negan will be expecting some supplies to await him soon.

Finally, Simon and his men leave, but warn Rick that whether it’s two days, two months, or two years from now, Daryl is still fair game, and that if they ever do find him in Alexandria, it won’t turn out well for anyone.

As soon as the Saviors are gone, Rick asks Aaron, Tobin and the others what happened to all the food in the pantry. They tell him it’s cleaned out, and Father Gabriel hasn’t been seen since he was on guard duty at the front gate. Rosita immediately concludes that he took their only remaining food and ran, but Michonne says she doesn’t want to believe it, that he returned to his cowardly, selfish ways.

“I don’t believe it,” Rick says. “That’s not Gabriel.”

Rosita says she thought he changed, too, but that it can’t be anything else.

“Yes, it can,” Rick argues, and goes looking for clues. He looks through Gabriel’s Bible, noting that it’s weird that he left it behind on the floor. Then he looks through Gabriel’s notebook, and finds the word “BOAT” written on the last page.

“How would he know we were there?” Aaron asks of what Rick assumes is a clue, referring to the house boat where Aaron and Rick found supplies in “Sing Me a Song.”

“He didn’t leave a note,” Rosita says. “He obviously doesn’t want to be found.”

“Yes he does,” Rick says.

Rick Smiles!
Eric tries to talk Aaron out of accompanying the rest of the gang, but Aaron joins Rick, Michonne, Tara, and Rosita as they return to the houseboat and start tracking footprints through the woods. As they continue on, they hear a noise, and run into someone pointing a gun at them. That someone becomes dozens of people carrying various weapons, all ready to attack Rick and the others. Soon, Rick and his group are surrounded on all sides by the strangers, and while everyone else looks scared, Rick slowly breaks into a giant smile, maybe the largest smile we’ve ever seen on Rick Grimes.

Zombie Bites:

*What, or who, do you think makes Rick smile?

*Benjamin runs into Carol in the woods, while he’s allegedly out there to practice his gun skills. Maybe, or maybe he was really out there to check in on Carol and let Ezekiel know how she’s doing. Carol perked up when Benjamin mentioned to her that Ezekiel worries about her. Ezekiel, too, was extra attentive when Benjamin mentioned he’d talked to Carol. Still think that Carekiel romance could happen?

*Carol gives Benjamin some advice about walking in the woods and avoiding the danger of the walkers. He asks her if she shouldn’t take that advice herself. “You’re not me,” she points out to the sweet but naïve newbie.

*Daryl’s not the only one who’s carrying a mess o’ anger on his shoulders. After Ezekiel refuses to join up with Rick’s battle against the Saviors, Sasha tells Rosita it ticks her off, even though it’s what she suspected he’d say. Rosita’s ticked off at Sasha. “What the hell are you telling me for?” she asks. “We both had sex with the same dead guy,” Rosita says. “Doesn’t make us friends.” So that’s how she feels about that.

*On the walkie-talkie, the gang hears Negan “eulogizing” Fat Joey, who Daryl killed during his escape in “Hearts Still Beating.” Says Negan, “Without Fat Joey, Skinny Joey is just Joey, so it’s a goddamned tragedy.”

*Daryl’s in the Kingdom. Carol’s staying nearby. Carol doesn’t know yet about Glenn and Abe yet. Think Daryl will be the one to tell her? If so, do you think it will be enough to pull her out of her self-imposed exile and join Rick’s fight to take down the Saviors?

*The episode is dedicated to the memory of James Heltibridle, a member of The Walking Dead props department, who was killed in a car accident in November.

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

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