Check out this week’s episode recap of The Walking Dead, where Noah heads home. Following the recap, both Josh and Violet share their thoughts about the episode. This is a very Tyreese focused episode, so if you’re a fan of the character, let us know what you thought about the episode in the comments!
Don’t need the The Walking Dead episode recap for What Happened and What’s Going On? Click here to jump directly to Violet’s thoughts on the episode!
To see Josh’s thoughts on this week’s The Walking Dead episode, What Happened and What’s Going On, click here to get directly there!
Episode Recap of The Walking Dead, Season 5 Episode 9: What Happened and What’s Going On
The second half of the season of Walking Dead opens with a grave being dug, and scenes of Noah crying, Maggie crying, and the priest eulogizing. Scenes of the prison, photographs shoot across the screen. Scenes of Lizzie and Mika show up saying, “It’s better now”, and then a creepy scene of blood dripping on to a picture of a house is shown.
Then moving to Noah talking with Rick, Noah tells Rick about his and Beth’s plan to go to Noah’s house. Rick seems to think it is a good idea. The group seems skeptical as does Rick, but they seem to be running out of “goals”.
A team heads out in a van–Rick, Tyreese, Noah, Glenn, and Michonne. Rick keeps in contact with the rest of the group by radio. On the way, Noah tells Tyreese the trade was the “right play”, referring to trying to get Beth back. Tyreese says, “it went the way it was supposed to”. Tyreese talks a little bit about his past–his father telling him to keep watching the news so they could face the bad stuff. Noah talks a bit about his past, and wanting to get back to his family.
Getting close, Rick wants to pull off the road, and go in by foot, “just in case”. Glenn, meanwhile, seems to be in a bit of a funk, looking into a CD, then snapping it with his hands. Noah leads the group to his gated neighborhood, and they find the entrance. Looking over the walls, the look on Glenn’s face provides the grim answer–the town is no more. Noah refuses to believe it, and hops the fence himself. Inside is just as bad as outside the walls, rundown, and full of walkers. The rest of the group hops over, and Noah begins to run in blindly, but stops completely shattered emotionally. Tyreese tries to calm him down.
Michonne now also seems in a downer mood, sounding exasperated, and kills the close walkers. She gets snappy because they have no further goal other than rounding up supplies. But they resolve to do a sweep of the town, while Tyreese stays with the distraught Noah.
On their run, Rick and Glenn talk about how this mission was for Beth, and how unfortunate it was that it didn’t work out. Glenn also talks about how much they have lost–Washington and Beth, and how hard it has become for them. Michonne interrupts, telling them that they have been out too long, meaning they need to settle down.
Back with Noah, Tyreese tries to cheer up Noah. Noah decides to heads to see his family’s house. Tyreese refuses to let him, but finally caves. Tyreese leads in, and there is nothing but death inside. Noah mourns what appears to be his dead mother. Tyreese looks around, finding rooms filled with walkers, doors closed. Tyreese looks at some photos of two young kids, and seems stuck looking at them. Suddenly, from behind a walker bites Tyreese arm. Noah is able to take the walker out, and he runs for help from the rest of the group as Tyreese falls to the ground, bleeding.
Scenes then begin flowing across the screen–the photo of the house from the beginning of the episode, the prison watch tower, and the wreck of cars the group parked at. Then Tyreese sees an old foe–Martin. He begins telling Tyreese that things could have been all different if things played out different. Bob then shows up, telling Tyreese things went the way they were supposed to. The radio talks about carnage happening somewhere in the world. Then the Governor shows up–saying, “the bill has to be paid” and tells Tyreese he has to earn his keep. Mika and Lizzie show up, telling Tyreese it is better now.
Tyreese snaps out of his haze to see another walker attacking him. Tyreese has to use his already hurt arm, shoving it into the walker’s mouth, then finishes it off. Tyreese collapses back to the ground, and blood begins dripping on the picture of the house.
Back with the trio, Michonne tries to reason that this place could still work. Rick says that the place could be swarmed by whatever took out the town before. Michonne pleads, and wants to show Rick something. Unfortunately, Michonne is greeted by a massacre of arms, and legs–the torsos and heads are missing. Michonne comes up with another plan–head to Washington, still. Rick looks at her with a puzzled face, but seems to want to see Washington. Noah is heard screaming though, and the three rescue him from some trouble he had gotten in. The four then head back to Tyreese.
The radio continues its noise, changing to music from Beth for Tyreese. He then sees her singing with a guitar. More visions from The Walking Dead’s past flash across the screen. All of the visions talking to Tyreese, saying their “side” of what Tyreese should think. The Governor really gets to Tyreese, and stands up to him. He makes his proclamation that he is not giving up, but says that “people like me, can’t live”…
Suddenly, Tyreese is being grabbed by Rick, and Michonne katanas the infected arm off of him. The group then gets Tyreese to his feet, and they make a run for it, as the walkers have gotten really riled up. After a lot of walker flaying and carrying the big Tyreese around, the five finally make it back to the van. All the while Tyreese is still having flashes of his various visions.
Rick heads back to town, and preps Carol to cauterize Tyreese’s wound. As they pull away from their parking spot, bodies fall out of another vehicle–torsos with heads still attached…
On the way back, the visions remain for Tyreese, and he says, “turn it off”. Bob, Beth, Mika, and Lizzie all reassure him that, “it is better now”.
The car then stops in the middle of the road, Tyreese is taken out, and then buried. He has died. It looks like Michonne prevents Tyreese from being a zombie, and he is taken back to the group for a funeral. The priest again performs a eulogy, and the group takes turns throwing dirt on Tyreese, as he lays peacefully in the dirt. Rick finishes the rest of the burial himself.
Josh’s Thoughts: The Walking Dead, Season 5 Episode 9: What Happened and What’s Going On
I still am a little unnerved by the episode. I wasn’t expecting such a character specific episode, and wasn’t expecting a character to die so soon after the start of the episode. I guess that is a good way for the writers of The Walking Dead to keep us on our toes. I actually thought Tyreese might make it out of the episode with just an arm, considering how hard he seemed to be fighting to stay alive, and the episode pushed so hard that way, with Michonne cutting the infected limb off, and the group hauling big Tyreese out of there. Of course, when the brake lights of the van turn on at the end, everyone knew why.
But before all that, I am curious to know exactly what was going through Tyreese’s head. We get some idea with the hallucinations, but what happens in the end seems to contradict what I would thought would happen. In the beginning of the episode, Tyreese has conversations with Noah about facing the atrocities even before the apocalypse, and even had a name for it, “Paying the high cost of living”. I am not sure why that changed over the course of the episode, as the hallucinations seem to say he has given up on living. It seems like a stark change in his attitude.
I think it is a little disappointing to lose Tyreese. I really dislike that the world has turned into only the killers survive. Is there no way for a “good guy” to stay alive in an apocalypse? Now, don’t get me wrong, I am certain that violence is necessary to survive to fend off the dark forces of the apocalypse-human or walkers-but defending love ones or their one right to survive versus someone like the Governor, Gareth, or even to some extent, Rick who variously have gone past the breaking point, should have a chance in this world.
But I will say this episode really left me feeling unsettled. Bringing back all these characters in the capacity that they did really disturbed me. Then the song that Beth was singing just put it over the top. Tyreese will be missed for sure, and I guess he was a “struggling man”, and for him it is, “time to move on”.
As for the rest of the episode, it was no big surprise that Noah’s hometown was destroyed. I would guess everyone who watched the episode expected that. But it looks the this season might be looking into why and how this happened. The big clue that this wasn’t just a walker invasion is the fact that the walls were closed up, which by itself doesn’t mean a whole lot, but at the end of the episode, the reveal of the torsos of Walkers were loaded into a truck, still biting, seems to indicate there was some sort of torture going on…
I am curious to see if the gang still heads to D.C. like Michonne wanted. If we are going to deal with these new marauders, then I am not sure they will be going. It is a 100 hundred mile journey, which is hard when you don’t have enough vehicles, gas or sustenance. I guess we will see what happens!
Violet’s Thoughts on Season 5 Episode 9 of The Walking Dead: What Happened and What’s Going On
I was a little confused about the geography aspect of this episode. When we last left our survivors, they were in Atlanta. Now, they were in Virginia, which is hundreds of miles away. I found it odd that they had made it so far without us seeing any of their progress, when in the past, they always run into trouble when they try to go just a few miles from where they were. This is definitely the furthest that the group has traveled, so it’s weird that we didn’t see any of that journey, and that the show just jumped ahead to this point. I also wasn’t sure just how far away the rest of the group was, but upon re-watching it, I figured out that they were 10 miles away, and that they have traveled 500 miles from Atlanta. It’s a little hard to accept, and makes you wonder how they made it so far. Was it by foot or by car, or some combination of the two? Will we get flashbacks to their journey, or will we just move forward from here?
Sometimes I complain about how certain episodes of the show don’t seem to progress the show any further, but I feel like this one was a big jump ahead, while at the same time progressing backwards, due to the appearance of all of the dead people to Tyreese. It was a nice surprise to see all of them again. But it was a shock to lose Tyreese, especially so soon after Beth. I say “so soon,” but I guess in the show’s time it has actually been awhile, given how far they have traveled. Exactly how much time has passed, I wonder? In any case, it was unexpected that Tyreese would die, especially from something so simple as a kid walker sneaking up on him, considering all of the close calls that he’s had with death. He’s fought his way out from a horde of walkers alone, more than once, and each time we thought he was a goner for sure, but he came back. So it was ironic that such a small thing would be the cause of his demise.
So, what happens now? Will the group still head to Washington, D.C.? Where exactly is the rest of the group anyway? What kind of accommodations do they have, if any? It doesn’t sound like they really have anything, considering Michonne’s desperation to settle in Noah’s town, and her idea to go to D.C. I’d like to see them head to D.C., personally, and see what’s going on there, even if Eugene doesn’t have the cure. In any case, I’m looking forward to seeing what the group is up to this half of the season!
Scenes from The Walking Dead, Season 5 Episode 10: Them
Here are scenes from next week’s The Walking Dead episode titled Them:
