Episode 502: Strangers – Recap and Discussion

It’s time for another Walking Dead episode! What will this week bring? Will we learn Beth’s fate? Will Morgan show up? Will Father Gabriel be introduced? Will Eugene cut his mullet?! Let’s find out!

After some very ominous music and a slo-mo shot of Rick appearing over a slight rise (we’ll revisit this shot throughout), we see the group at camp. Rick tells Tara that Glenn told him that she saved his life. Tara: “He saved mine.” Rick: “That’s how it works with us.” Then they fist bump. Awkward.

Now over to Tyreese and Carol, getting water at the stream. Tyreese is telling her how he’s talked to some of the people in the group about how he’s explained what she did at the Prison and it’s ok. But he doesn’t want to tell them about the girls. He says he just wants to forget it.

The group continues. When they pass a walker, Michonne offers to take care of it and then comically overacts reaching for a sword that is no longer there. I get anxiety seeing Michonne without her katana. Will she get a new one? Is her old one buried in the rubble at Terminus? What the hell?

Abraham watches as Michonne stomps the walkers head in and goes “Right there is why we’re waiting for our moment.” I guess he’s upset about Michonne losing her sword as well. Kidding! I think he’s uneasy about how hardcore Team Rick is. Rosita agrees but her heart isn’t in it. She loves this ragtag group as well.

That night, Rick talks to Carol. “I owe you everything,” he tells her. Carol responds, “You owe Tyreese, he was at the prison.” Carol pulls Rick’s watch out of her bag and gives it back to him. He offers her watch back. She refuses. Rick kind of admits regret at sending her away and then notes the irony of kicking her out and then having to live with her on the road. “Will you have us?” he asks. She nods.

Carol sits with Daryl and tells him that she can’t talk about “it,” she just needs to forget. Daryl hears something in the woods but then… nothing. But ominous music plays and a shadow crosses the screen so… probably wrong.

After the opening credits, we see that Daryl’s been squirrel hunting. He tells Rick that he couldn’t find any tracks or anything, but he had a “feeling.” It shows how much Rick trusts Daryl that he orders the group to tighten up.

Abraham asks Rick if he’s ready to find a road and vehicle. Rick agrees.

Sasha and Bob play a game where she points out the bad aspects of a situation and Bob finds the silver lining. This couple is too happy. Even Tyreese is happy about the two of them.

It’s not long before screams for help are heard. Sheriff Carl urges them to action. Enter Father Gabriel. He’s climbed up on a boulder and surrounded by walkers. The group takes care of them and Rick asks him if he’s ok. He throws up.

Father Gabriel tells the group that the word of God is the only protection he needs. “I called for help, help came!” Then he asks for food. Carl is quick to offer pecans or something that sounds like pecans. The group just kind of stares at Gabriel. He tells them he has a church. Rick frisks him while he asks the three questions.

“How many walkers have you killed?”
“Not any, actually.”

“How many people have you killed?
“None.

“Why?”
“The Lord abhors violence.”

(Bonus Q) “What have you done? We’ve all done something.”
“I am a sinner, I sin almost every day. But those sins I confess them to God, not strangers.”

Rick can tell that something isn’t quit right. Father Gabriel takes them to his church. He denies having watched them and he says “Nowadays people are just as dangerous as the dead, don’t you think?” Daryl: “No, people are worse.”

Gabriel jokes about leading them into a trap. It doesn’t go over very well. They arrive at the church. Rick insists on checking the church before letting Father Gabriel in. Everything checks out. No one else there, no evidence of anyone else there. Lots of empty cans of food. Lots of churchy stuff. Rick whistles the all-clear.

Abraham says that there’s a bus out back that he can fix and they can use. But Rick and his crew want to resupply and rest while they can. Abraham is against it. “We take a breath—we slow down—shit inevitably goes down.” Glenn tells Abraham that they’re doing what Rick does and they’re sticking together. I think Abraham is getting annoyed that there’s a leader everyone is listening to instead of following the mission.

Gabriel tells Rick that he’s survived this long because the canned food drive happened to be just before the world went to hell. He tells them about another stockpile of canned food but it’s overrun with a dozen or so walkers. Bob and Sasha volunteer to go with them, Tyreese stays behind with Judith. He’s Mr. Nanny and it looks like he loves it.

Rick pulls Carl aside and says he doesn’t trust Father Gabriel. Rick asks Carl why he trusts him. “Everybody can’t be bad.” The things kids say! Rick tells Carl to stay alert. “You are not safe. No matter how many people are around or how clear the area looks, no matter what anyone says, no matter what you think, you are not safe. It only takes one second. One second and it’s over. Never let your guard down. Ever.” Carl tells him that they’re strong enough that they can still help people.

The group (Rick, Bob, Sasha, Michonne, Father Gabriel) heads out for supplies. Bob tells Rick that he wasn’t wrong about wanting to take out the Termites, but he cautions him against losing his humanity. Things will get back to normal, he says, and you can’t give up who you are because you won’t be able to get it back.

Carol and Daryl go for water. Daryl says that they can start fresh, but Carol seems reticent to let go of what she’s been through. They come across an abandoned car. The engine won’t turn over but there’s a battery charger in the trunk (correct me if I’m wrong here, it was a quick look). She starts it and says that they’ll leave it there just in case. Hm….

Tara, Glenn, and Maggie hit the gun store. Glenn finds three silencers in a mini fridge. “Rule number one of scavenging: there’s nothing left in this world that isn’t hidden.” We’re reminded that scavenging is what Glenn was best at back in Atlanta.

Rick’s group arrives at the Food Bank/donation center. There’s a large hole in the middle of the floor. Water had been leaking in through the roof all this time, rotting through the floor and flooding the basement, which is now swarming with waterlogged walkers. They’re pretty disgusting. The plan is to jump in, create a barricade with the shelves, and kill through the openings. What could go wrong?

A walker keys in on Father Gabriel and he flips. It’s wearing glasses and it has him really disturbed. Does he recognize her? He panics and bolts for the stairs, which of course snap off and fall.

The group breaks their formation to go get Gabriel. They push the shelf over on top of three walkers and fan out. As the spectacled walker advances on him, Gabriel grabs onto the wall and looks away in a very Jesus-like pose. Rick kills the walker (brutally, of course) before she can reach Gabriel.

With things seemingly calm, Bob heads for supplies. BUT, a walker reaches up from the water and pulls him under. He pops back up and impales the walker on a rod, where Sasha smashes it’s head in with a crate. It’s all delightfully disgusting.

As they leave, Gabriel apologizes and Rick calls him out for recognizing the walker with the glasses. Rick suspects it has something to do with Gabriel’s secret and walks off annoyed.

As they make their way back Rick asks Michonne if she misses her sword and they talk about how she found it and how she got so good with it. Yes, she misses it, she picked it up at the outset, and she got good because she was on her own in the early days.

When they get back, Rick finds Carl out back doing some sleuthing. Seems like Encyclopedia Grimes has found some clues in the Case of the Furtive Father. Some people had tried to break into the church and then wrote “YOU’LL BURN FOR THIS” on the wall. Rick could be a little more supportive. Maybe give Carl a houndstooth cap and a jaunty pipe or something. But Rick just looks concerned. Who have they teamed up with now?

That night as they sit around eating and talking, Abraham makes a toast. “I look around this room and I see SURVIVORS. Each and every one of you has earned that title. To THE SURVIVORS!” Then he goes on and challenges them. He tells them that they can survive. They’re good at it. But wouldn’t they rather get to DC and save the world? He has Eugene lay out what’s waiting for them in DC: Infrastructure. Civilization. Safety.

“Come with us. Save the world for that little one. Save it for yourselves. Save it for the people out there that don’t got nothing left to do but survive.”

Rick smiles, Judith coos. Rick says “She’s in. I’m in. We’re in. Let’s do it.” The group claps and gives out a couple whoops.

Sasha gets up to hold Judith and Bob kisses her and gives her a longing look before heading outside. Hmmm…

Tara goes to talk to Maggie. You can tell this has been weighing on her. She tells her the truth: that she was with The Governor [remember that Glenn had lied to Maggie about how he found Tara]. She doesn’t want it to be a secret. Maggie looks at her. “You’re here with us now.” And then she hugs her. That Maggie!

Rick goes to talk to Gabriel. He thanks him for letting them in. He confronts him again about hiding something. “These people are my family. And if what you’re hiding somehow hurts them in anyway, I’ll kill you.”

Outside and through the woods, Carol is prepping the car they found earlier, getting ready to leave when Daryl shows up. Daryl: “What are you doing?” Carol: “I don’t know.” Daryl says “Come on,” does he mean back to the church or that he’ll go with her? It doesn’t matter because right then a car with a white cross drives past (not the car that scooped up Beth but the same symbol). Daryl busts out the taillights of the abandoned car and they take off after it.

Bob stands outside the church and watches the people inside. His big smile slowly fades and he walks off. He starts crying against a tree and then SMACK! Knocked out from behind.

Bob comes too next to a fire. It’s the Termites. Gareth, Tyreese’s hostage, and some others. Gareth goes into another rationalizing speech about why they HAD to take Bob. “Now [after the destruction of Terminus] we’re out here like everybody else, trying to survive. And in order to do that, we have to hunt.”

His speech plays out over a montage of Rick’s group in the church. One of the shots is Gabriel looking at a photo of the walker in the glasses (when she was alive obviously).

Back to Gareth as his speech wraps up: “As much as we hate all this ugly business…” wide shot and we see Bob’s leg has been amputated and wrapped, “a man’s gotta eat.” Gareth takes a bite of Bob’s cooked leg. “If it makes you feel any better, you taste much better than we thought you would.” We see a shot of Bob’s foot on the grill and the episode ends.

Woohoo! The Hunter’s storyline has circled back to its origins in the comic! How gnarly was it seeing Bob’s foot there on the grill while they all eat him? SO GROSS.

Comic fans! Let’s try and keep spoilers down below to a minimum for people that aren’t familiar! I don’t want Father Gabriel’s secret revealed just yet! Maybe we’ll get that next episode, or maybe… something else! Find out next week!

Comment below! Our favorite comment will win a two-pack of our Skybound minis!

UPDATE: And our favorite comment belonged to lisama, who pointed out some of the awesome Biblical motifs hidden in the episode. Congrats!