The Walking Dead “The Grove” Recap

Tonight we see exactly what Robert Kirkman was talking about when he said, “the show takes an incredibly dark turn”. This was not an episode for the weak of heart.

We are back with Carol, Tyreese, Lizzie and Mika who are on their way to Terminus. During an overnight rest stop, Lizzie is awake and talking with Carol who has the night shift. She casually asks if she had a daughter, and Carol relents. She finally mentions Sophia, saying she “didn’t have a mean bone in her body”, and that was her downfall. Later, she says the same about Mika to Tyreese — could it be foreshadowing that Mika’s death is soon to come? Tyreese begins to realize, with Carol’s help, that there just isn’t something right with the two girls, especially Lizzie, who always has that distant, psychotic look in her eyes.

The four find a farm set back from the train tracks they’ve been following to Terminus with some pecan trees and a well for fresh water. As Tyreese and Carol check the house for walkers, one comes out and falls over a porch rail near where the little girls are waiting. We see Mika finally step up and she’s able to dispatch the walker, much to Lizzie’s devastation. They all decide that they could stay for a little while but as they get used to the coziness of a small home, they start to consider staying for longer instead of making the journey to Terminus.

Everything seems to be normal when Carol notices that Lizzie is outside ‘playing’ with a walker, letting it chase her but never quite getting her. Carol goes outside and quickly dispatches the walker that is about to take a bite out of Lizzie, and the little girl goes into a rage. She screams at Carol that she’s killed her friend and that they don’t understand. Carol attempts to explain that the only thing the walkers know are how to kill, but it still doesn’t seem to be getting through to Lizzie.

This is apparently evident when Mika sees her sister leaving the property with a box and finds her down the railroad tracks, feeding the walker that Tyreese left alive on the tracks earlier. We see her feeding a rat to the walker, much like what happened at the prison. Was Lizzie the one doing that the entire time?

“Super-crispy” walker.

She explains to her sister that she could be like them, a part of them, and holds out her hand close to the walkers mouth to let it bite her, but they’re interrupted by more walkers appearing from the brushes, clearly having walked through a large fire that the four of them noticed earlier. (Side note: Would walkers brains not be affected by the severe heat of the fire?) The two girls run back to the property yelling for Carol and Tyreese where Mika very narrowly escapes being walker bait. They dispatch them relatively easily after that, and even Lizzie kills one or two of them. Did her sisters close call change her mind?

That night, they have a relaxing night in and Lizzie seems to come around that she has to kill walkers. Maybe things will be alright after all?

The next day, after Tyreese and Carol have a heart to heart where Tyreese admits that he sees Karen in his dreams and that sometimes they’re good, and other times they’re bad (hence the night terrors), they head back to the house in agreement that they don’t need to be around people again for a bit. Maybe they can stay at the house that they found that seems to be able to provide for them in every way that they need.

Unfortunately all is not well in their little paradise as they come across Lizzie, covered in her sisters blood, Mika dead behind her. She explains that she wants to show everyone that Mika will just come back and be fine, and that she was about to do the same to Judith.

Carol manages to defuse the situation and later that night her and Tyreese talk about what needs to be done with the young, murdering psychopath. Tyreese tells Carol that Lizzie admitted she was the one that fed the walkers rats at the prison, and the one that opened up the rat like an autopsy. It seems they have a unanimous decision, and the next day, Carol takes Lizzie out back (kind of like Old Yeller) to ‘talk’ to her. Lizzie is worried that Carol is mad at her for pulling a gun on her, and Carol distracts her by telling her to look at the flowers, then puts her out of her misery.

“Just keep looking at the flowers, Lizzie.”
Image courtesy of AMC

That night, Carol confesses to Tyreese that she was the one that killed Karen and David. She explains that it was for the greater good, and Tyreese, even though he’s angry, manages to see through that anger to realize that Carol did the most rational thing. She knew they most likely wouldn’t get better, so she killed them and burned their bodies to prevent any possible disease from spreading. We see Tyreese struggle with the news and his hand hovers over a gun on the table; Carol tells him that he has to do what she feels necessary. It takes a couple minutes for him to calm down, but he reluctantly lets go of the gun and suppresses her anger. Finally, Tyreese tells her that he’ll never forget what she’s done, but that she’s forgiven. He knows that Carol will live with what she’s done for the rest of her life. They decide that there are too many bad memories at the farm house despite what it offers, and that they will leave in the morning.

When day breaks, the two pack up their belongings and baby Judith and begin back down the tracks again, leaving what they had to do behind them, and begin back on the way to Terminus.

Will Carol be able to live with the guilt of killing a child? Will we see her take a turn for the worse like in the comics? Do you think she was prepared to die when she tells Tyreese that he should do what he feels is necessary? Leave us comments below and don’t forget to check out the sneak peek for next weeks episode.