*Spoilers*

Since this season is focusing on the War between the Saviors and… well everybody else, I suppose we should see a few battles taking place, otherwise it would be a bit poor to call it a war aye? This episode had so many more bullets being fired than in the previous episode, which is surprising as they laid waste to the glass at the Sanctuary. Some scenes were completely ascent of noise other than the sound of gunfire, and it also made me wonder how easily it was for most of the seemingly normal people of Alexandria, the Hilltop and the Kingdom, and how easy it was for them to shoot their fellow man in a surprise attack. I know the world has gone to shit, but some of these people have only been about for two seasons, yet they are happy to take up arms and shoot some guy they don’t know because the other person’s leader is a bit of dick. Granted that is what war is… but these people are not soldiers, they are just normal everyday people, most of whom have been living normal lives at their respective safe-zones until Rick and his crew showed up, took over, and now have got them to fight for their home.
I suppose it is fine for the sense of the series, but I do have a little hard time swallowing it at some points, especially when characters like… emm… that guy who Carol became mates with back at Alexandria (I have no idea about his name) and how eager he is to shoot a bunch of guys dead at the drop of a hate.
Thankfully this episode did deal with this in the sense of Jesus refusing to shoot that random guy, but it seems like he is the only one who does not agree with just slaughtering everyone they meet.
This episode also helped me with another point I had about the innocent people living with the Saviors, but I will get to that later on.

So the story of the episode was just 4 separate battles that took place after the initial attack on Sanctuary, one of which occurred in the last episode and continues on here.
One thing that has struck me as odd is that the four battles are taking place at certain outposts that belong to the Saviors. They have already attacked and decimated (as far as we know) Sanctuary, so it is clear that they are going after these so they cannot launch some kind of counter attack? But isn’t these outposts designed and set up to keep Sanctuary safe? It seems like Rick and the others drove up to the main HQ unopposed, destroyed it and then decided to take out the outposts. It feels a little like cutting off the head, only to then focus on the knees. Really they should have worked their way up, but then that wouldn’t have made for a very enjoyable opening episode, I assume.


Anyway, so one team was Carol and Ezekiel dealing with the aftermath of last week’s explosion. They are hunting a single soldier as he runs back to tell his boys that they are under attack.
Most of their scenes involved Ezekiel and Carol talking about how they should be dealing with the current situation, as well as Jerry swinging his axe into a few Walkers (I can see Jerry dying this season, but I do think he is one of the best characters in the show).
Eventually they catch up to the fleeing Savior, but Shiva makes short work of him as she eats his neck while Ezekiel and the rest stand around watching and smiling… for some reason, as a helpless man is horrifically mutilated on the floor by a fucking tiger!

Elsewhere, Aaron and Eric lead and a surprise attack (very surprise in fact) against a group of Saviors who appear to refuse to go inside their outpost and would instead fight the enemy out in the open. Here is where we had a constant supply of gunfire (the amount of bullets shot must have been in the tens of thousands. How many bullets did they really have time to make or acquire? They must be running out soon what with these scenes and with the window target practice in the last episode).
Eric lead some kind of… I want to say flank, but I don’t really know what he was doing to be fair, until he was eventually shot in the stomach. We saw many unknown people getting killed here, and I am sure we care just as little for them as we did about Eric being shot. We did not see if he died or not this week, as Aaron carried him off at the end of the episode, but I am sure we will have a bit of a moment with these two next time.
Not much happened here other than the exchange in bullets between the two factions, purely to help make this ‘war’ a little more… war-ey.


The other two stories were a little more in depth and enjoyable. One focused on Daryl and Rick, while the other showed Jesus, Tara, and Morgan leading an attack against the Saviors at the outpost with the large dish on the top of it.
The assault on the outpost showed the group using very quiet stealth tactics, such as using bows and arrows and silencers (where did they get so many silencers??? I would have no idea where to get silencers from), as well as kicking in every door at the same time to lay waste to a large amount of the enemy, which was pretty well done, except for one guy that got a little too trigger happy and almost got Morgan killed.

Morgan has gone a little made as of late. A season and half ago he was living a “No Kill” policy, but that seems to have gone out of the window as we saw him going pure John Wick as he traversed the outpost laying waste to anyone who got in his way… with duel handguns, then finding surrendered Saviors and attempting to kill them (mainly the long haired little snot one who was causing Morgan and Richard a bit of trouble last season, who I personally wouldn’t mind seeing strung up) before the rest of his team pulled him to the ground.

Tara and Jesus came to clashes with their disagreement as to how to deal with a surrendered Savior, who had wet himself. Tara wanted revenge for the death of Denise, while Jesus thinks that they are just lost lambs following a devil (my words, not his). It turns out that this bloke is just as big an arsehole as Tara says he is (saying how hard it is to piss yourself on purpose, as well as how they are all going to die, but saying it in the meanest way possible), when he gets the gun off Jesus and puts it to his head, but thankfully Jesus knows every possible martial art and thankfully brought him down to the ground. Tara was going to shoot him, but Jesus is standing by his morals on this one, which lead to a really interesting exchange when Tara told him that Maggie might listen to him, but she knows that Rick will listen to Tara, making it out that Rick is some kind of trump card in all of this.
There is also a point when someone in the background (someone from the good side) takes a polaroid of the surrendering Savoirs

Finally we come to Rick and Daryl’s adventures. I am not 100% if this is the same location as Aaron and Eric’s gunfight, or somewhere different, so my apologies for this. Daryl didn’t really do much except for walk around and discovers a room not unlike the one he was locked into last season, along with some handcuffs and some food on a plate nearby, which made Daryl remember the gruelling half a season he spent being Negan’s prisoner.

Rick, on the other hand, following a map draw for him by Dwight, was looking for some Savior weaponry when he was suddenly attacked by a guy he was forced to kill in a very… very gruesome way, if not a little obvious that it was going to happen, since the ‘weapon’ in question was always in the camera shot. But needless to say, it was still enjoyable. It was even more horrific when Rick, checking over the body, noticed the guy’s tattoo about someone named Gracie, to which Rick then entered a room to find a sleeping infant girl inside a cot with the name Gracie painted above it. To Rick’s horror he realised he has just murdered the girl’s father, at which point he notices himself in the mirror, covered in blood.


I did think that last week the ‘good guys’ did not care one bit about any normal people inside Sanctuary, as there must be children and old people in there, along with other innocent people, just trying to get by but have now been punished because they came across Negan first and now live under his rule.
This moment made Rick realise that there are going to be some real aftermath from this war, and now there is a little girl who no longer has a father.
I am unsure as to what Rick is going to do with the girl, but I have my theory. It seems like he just walked off and left her, but surely AMC are going to go back and address this in the next episode?
My theory is the character at the end is going to take her and go off, but I will have to wait and see.
Being a parent, and now a colossal worrier when it comes to children now, I will be watching and waiting for this with a keen eye haha.

So, the episode ending with Rick being caught off guard by a Savior who reveals himself to be Morales; the guy who with his family from the Atlanta camp back in season 1! I did always wonder if we would see him every again. He does not appear to remember Rick, but Rick remembers him (and his awkward name). It looks as if he is going to shoot Rick, but we all know that isn’t going to happen. It would be quite cool if Morales was to join them again, but I am sure he and his family will head off once again (only this time hopefully taking baby Gracie with them).

Overall the episode was okay. It showed us some key battles in the war against the Saviors, which I suppose were needed to be shown, if not at times it felt as if it was just a little bit of filler.
Some key moments in this episode (which I have only really thought about in depth whilst writing this review) made this episode enjoyable, but, as I said before, this is just the middle of the story, with the ending hopefully being finished next week before we move on to Negan’s counter-attack or something similar.

So far the season has been… okay, but nothing great. I believe that we might have a beginning of season 6 on our hands, in the sense that the first half of the season will all take place over the same period of time. I can see that happening again with the introduction to this war, as we have yet to see what happened with Negan and Gabriel, and will have to wait another week to find out!

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