The Walking Dead Recap: Welcome to the Tombs

Tonight all Walking Dead fans are in mourning, not just for those that were lost throughout the season, but that we have to wait almost seven months for it’s return in October! For now, here’s the entire recap/review of “Welcome to the Tombs” and as always, there are FULL SPOILERS.

As the scene opens, The Governor punishes Milton for his insubordination and our prediction of last week proves to be correct, that he knew that the whole walker BBQ was Milton all along in an attempt to at least stop the Governor as using people as a weapon against other people. Clearly though, it doesn’t work out that well as he takes Milton to the room where he’s been keeping Andrea and repeatedly stabs him in the stomach and leaves him for dead, knowing he’ll bleed out and reanimate. He leaves with a haunting reminder; “In this life you die or you kill, or you die to kill.”

-Back at the prison we see our survivors packing their things, and Carl takes a look at his fathers Sheriff badge that he still carries with him, as well as the photo of their family he retrieved a couple episodes back so that Judith would know what her parents look like. Carl has seemed to have shut down already and become colder; it seemed at first he would be fine following the loss of Lori, as fine as a kid could be after killing his own mother but—at least now he’ll probably stay in the house. Or prison.

Rick and Michonne talk about the first day she came to the prison and how Rick wouldn’t have taken her in if she didn’t have the baby formula, though Michonne’s argument fell to the fact that they did take her in when they could have just taken the formula and let her be walker bait. And I couldn’t be the only one that saw the way they’ve been looking at one another… something has to come of that someday…

At Woodbury, Tyreese and Sasha decide to stay behind, not wanting to fight since it isn’t their battle and they don’t believe in what they’re doing, though they know better than to directly defy the Governor so they say they’ll stay behind to protect the civilians in case any of the prison survivors come here to attack—who knows for how long though because I really hope they spring into action to help the prisoners against the Governor and his minions.

With Tyreese and Sasha protecting the town, the Governor and his men roll out with four vehicles, bringing about thirty men and women with them to fight on their side. But, when they arrive at the prison (and following Martinez shooting walkers in half), none of Rick’s men are outside waiting. Was anyone else hoping for a grenade or shotgun booby trap when Allan opened the door into the prison? The survivors are nowhere to be found, but they couldn’t have run from them, could they have? The prison seems devoid of people, and a bible waits on a nearby table for the Governor that reads:

Seriously. Where did the highlighters come from!?

There are some noises coming from the tombs; whether they are the survivors or walkers we don’t know—that is until the Governor and his men venture inside and the survivors use the flash bangs and the prison sirens and lights to confuse and scare them, a couple of walkers thrown into the mix as well. They make a hasty exit and are shot at by Maggie and Glenn dressed in full riot gear (a great nod directly from the comics) and they take off like cowards.

Outside the prison, a straggler from the Woodbury group accidentally stumbles across Hershel and Carl in the bush. They demand the kids rifle be put down, but that doesn’t stop from Carl gunning the kid down in cold blood as he was complying with their demand. Stop the presses, he’s finally a little badass like in the comics that I’ve been waiting for! But wait, he’s not the only one killing people in cold blood…

Down the road from the prison the Governor makes the convoy pull over. He’s clearly seeing red and is incredibly angry at everyone that they allowed themselves to be chased off by the small party of survivors he knows reside there. He sees so much red, in fact, that he guns down the entire troupe that came with him, save for Martinez and The Bowman who stare blankly but don’t dare defy the man. Only one person survives the Governor’s slaughter, and that is a young woman who uses another persons body to hide the fact that she is still very much alive—and needs to get out of there before those corpses reanimate.

All this time Andrea has been locked in The Governor’s little torture chamber with a dying Milton, who has informed her of the pliers he left behind the chair so she can break out. Now she’s stuck in there with a ticking time bomb and Milton is fading fast, bleeding out and dying. Andrea knows first hand that reanimation doesn’t take long, but does she really have to have a conversation instead of, oh, I don’t know, getting the pliers to get the Hell out before Milton dies and reanimates?

In the prison courtyard, Rick and Carl talk about Carl’s blatant assassination of a kid surrendering his weapon, Rick pointing out how Hershel said it really happened and that’s when Carl loses it and tells his father how it is now. Because of stupid decisions, like not shooting the Governor in the face when he had the chance, innocent lives were lost (and in Merle’s case, not so innocent)—apparently it’s now the Carl dictatorship—a Carltatorship?

“No dad, shut up, I’m the leader now.”

Back to Andrea, she’s still struggling with the pliers and Milton begins to move again, though we know it isn’t him in his throes of death; Milton is already gone and he’s reanimating, snapping his jaw as he becomes aware of the prey in the room. Andrea panicks, freeing one hand and desperately attempts to free the other. Luckily, she’s good at hand-to-hand combat (screwdriver in the eye walker, anyone?) and she should fare well, despite the cliffhanger they leave us with before a commercial break…

At Woodbury, Tyreese and Sasha face off against Michonne, Rick and Daryl as well as Karen, the woman who narrowly escaped the Governor’s rage on the way back to Woodbury; Karen convinces the pair that the Governor killed everyone else and they all decide to team up. The brother and sister duo try to help Rick and company find Andrea’s location and when they do find her, things are looking grim…

Andrea reveals she has been bitten in the juncture of her neck and shoulder by Milton before she killed him. At least she gets a heroes ending, surrounded by people she cares about and getting to pull the trigger herself instead of reanimating and becoming one of the dead. There is an emotional exchange of glances before we too are taken out of the room with Daryl, Rick and Tyreese sitting outside. There is a very long and painful silence until we hear the gunshot, and we know that Andrea is gone. Some people suggested that after a very teary-eyed Laurie Holden appeared on The Talking Dead with Chris Hardwick that something was going to happen to Andrea; they were right!

I’ll admit, the ending of the season was lackluster. I’m happy that Tyreese and Sasha have finally joined the survivors at the prison but I’m not sure it’s such a good idea to bring the Woodbury survivors back with them. Sure, they’ll be safer with Rick and company than they would have been at Woodbury with a man who gets mad and likes to shoot people, but that’s so many more mouths to feed and people to house—not to mention it looks like the median age of the Woodbury refugees is about fifty. And someone make that man take off that bucket hat, there’s only one man in The Walking Dead that can wear the bucket hat and that is Dale!