‘The Walking Dead’ Season 7 Midseason Finale Recap: ‘It Ain’t Just About Getting by Here, It’s About Getting It All’

Kimberly Potts
·Writer, Yahoo Entertainment

Warning: This recap for the “Hearts Still Beating” episode of The Walking Dead contains spoilers.

Negan and his people killed Spencer, Olivia, and Negan’s facial fur, and we’re not gonna lie: A clean-shaven Negan was kinda the scariest of those scenarios. But while the big Saviors baddie left yet more death and destruction in his wake during his second trip to Alexandria, he doesn’t know that he also left behind a rejuvenated Rick. Thanks to a pep talk from girlfriend Michonne and a reunion with BFF Daryl and Maggie and Sasha at The Hilltop, Rick has resolved that, outnumbered or not, he and his group can find a way to fight back against Negan and the Saviors.

Here’s where we left Rick and the gang after the midseason finale, and where we’ll pick up with them when Season 7 continues Feb. 12:

Rick and Aaron
Rick and Aaron take the bullet-hole-riddled rowboat through the walker-riddled lake to a canoe, which gets Rick to the houseboat full of supplies. Aaron has to make a swim for the houseboat after tangling with a walker and tumbling into the water, but he makes it in one piece, and he and Rick load up the truck with boxes of goodies they hope will keep the Alexandrians alive another day.

Daryl
Daryl takes that key and match that someone — Dwight? Sherry? — slipped under his cell door and takes off through the hallways of the compound. A couple of detours allow him to snag some new clothes — we bid you an adieu, gross gray sweatshirt — and a couple of swipes from a jar of peanut butter in Dwight’s room, before he runs outside and into Fat Joey. Just as Jesus comes around the corner, Daryl begins beating Joey with a piece of rebar, and he doesn’t stop beating him until he’s dead. Jesus, who has no idea what Daryl has been through, what he’s seen during his stay at the Sanctuary, looks shocked, but Daryl tells him, “It ain’t just about getting by here. It’s about getting it all.”

Related: The Walking Dead: In Defense of Season 7

Rosita
Rosita’s still committed to her plan to kill Negan with the bullet Eugene crafted for her, though Father Gabriel seems to talk some sense into her when he points out she is a valuable member of the group, and that it is not up to her to sacrifice herself to avenge Abraham’s and Glenn’s deaths. She even makes up with Spencer, apologizing to him for using him while rebounding from her Abe breakup and making plans to have dinner with him that night. Sadly, that dinner will never happen…

Spencer
…because Spencer decides Negan’s presence in Alexandria, during Rick’s absence, makes for the perfect occasion for him to pitch Negan on the idea that he should become the new leader of the town, just like his mother before him. He puts on a clean shirt, takes a bottle of whiskey, and tries to bond with Negan, even taking Negan on in a game of pool. But when he tells Negan Rick is difficult to work with, and offers himself as a replacement, Negan takes offense. Trying to overthrow the Ricktatorship behind Rick’s back is the handiwork of someone with no guts, Negan tells Spencer, and then promptly jabs a knife into Spencer’s stomach, spilling his guts all over the ground.

The townsfolk gathered in the street are horrified, but Rosita is apoplectic. She pulls out her gun and one bullet and fires it at Negan. And misses. She hits Lucille instead — in a scene taken straight from the comics, where it’s Carl who shot Lucille — which enrages Negan, who demands Rosita tell him where she got the obviously DIY-ed bullet. She says she made it, and he knows she’s lying, so he tells his soldier, Arat, to kill someone. She randomly turns her gun on Olivia, and shoots Olivia in the head. Negan demands again to know who made the bullet, and though Rosita insists it was her, a tearful Eugene speaks up and says it was him, sharing part of the recipe so Negan will know he’s telling the truth. No one else dies, but Negan tells Rick — who has returned to town and handed over the supplies he and Aaron found — that he’s taking the bullet maker with him as he leaves Alexandria.

Reunited and It Feels So Hopeful
After Negan flees, Rick is in Morgan’s basement cell, trying to figure out his next move, when Michonne returns. She’s just finished her drive with the Savior woman she hijacked, and she’s learned that the Saviors indeed have a far deeper bench than Rick’s group knew. But she still believes that if they work together, they can find a way to “win,” to get out from under Negan’s rule, and Rick tells her he now knows she’s right: By working together, they can get their lives back.

Together doesn’t just mean Rick and Michonne, though … it means the whole family, which is why Rick, Michonne, and Rosita head to The Hilltop and reunite with Maggie, Sasha, and Enid … and Daryl, who fled there with Jesus. Hugs abound, including a Rick-and-Daryl clinch that is every bit as bromantic as Rick and Michonne’s makeup kiss was romantic.

Zombie Bites:

* Again, a clean-shaven Negan is far creepier than a fuzzy-faced one, right?

* One of the Saviors women catches Eugene staring at her while she’s putting the moves on Spencer. “You like watching, Haircut?” she asks Eugene. Nice callback to Season 5’s “Self Help,” when we learned that, yes, Eugene does like watching Rosita and Abraham knock boots.

* The Kingdom resident Richard visits Carol’s house — where Morgan has also stopped for a pop-in — and tells them he knows Negan and the Saviors will not honor the deal they’ve made with Ezekiel to keep the peace. He wants Carol and Morgan to help him talk Ezekiel into making a preemptive attack on the Saviors, but Carol continues to insist that all she wants is to be left alone. She even makes Morgan promise that he won’t let any of their friends know where she is if he should run into any of them. Hmmm … from the midseason premiere preview we saw during Talking Dead, it seems Carol is likely to be pulled back into the mix when Jesus takes Rick and the gang to The Kingdom to forge an anti-Negan alliance. Every time Carol is out, they keep … well, you know.

* Rosita has now lost another boyfriend with Spencer’s death, and is probably going to be blaming herself for Olivia’s murder and Eugene’s kidnapping. Has she finally learned that she can’t go off on some solo mission to kill Negan, or will she concoct another plan to take out Negan all on her own?

* Did you understand that Michonne did as Isabelle, the Savior woman she hijacked, had asked, and killed her? That was likely another callback, to “The Cell,” when Dwight had to track down Gordon, the Savior who fled the Sanctuary and begged Dwight to kill him instead of making him return to Negan’s cruel rule.

* Gregory’s weasel-dom continues, but after what Maggie and Sasha did to save The Hilltoppers during the Saviors’ last attack, the community is in awe of them, baking them apple pies and saying Maggie should become their president. So, yeah, guessing that ripped-from-the-comics storyline is definitely going to happen.

* Will we get further backstory on Richard and that RV he visited? It must have something to do with the family he says he lost, no?

* Theories on who the boot-wearing stalker of the houseboat and Alexandria is? Is he the owner of the houseboat? Most important, will he prove to be friend or foe?

The Walking Dead returns Feb. 12 at 9 p.m. on AMC.