The Walking Dead’s Michonne lays down the law in Episode 515, “Try.” The woman who lost it all, including herself, found her way back to civility, but can she do the same for the rest of her group?
Tensions run high as most of the Grimes gang falls apart in the Alexandria haven. Sasha copes with the loss of her brother and her broken promise to Noah by hunting walkers. Her therapeutic slaughter resonates with Michonne, but will Sasha let Michonne help her?
Michonne takes up arms, along with Rosita (a refreshingly dynamic interpretation of her comic counterpart) to help Sasha annihilate a group of walkers, but her efforts seem rooted in preserving her skills.
Her search for Sasha is the first time she’s been outside of Alexandria’s walls since she and the rest of the group found the safe-zone. Since her group’s stay is in a tenuous state, perhaps she wants to make sure she still has what it takes to survive in the world. Her efforts are pragmatic unlike Sasha’s post-traumatic shock killing spree.
Has Sasha teetered over the edge? Will she, like Michonne, find her way back to herself, or has she lost too much?
Michonne attempts to pull another one of her compadres from the edge later in the episode. Rick, covered in blood, waving his gun like a mad man, pontificates about the way of the post apocalyptic world. Michonne, who gets Sasha safely back to the watch tower, intervenes– she knocks him out cold.
Is Rick’s behavior an indication of his Caesar-like arrogance? Or is he deliberately sabotaging his Alexandria residency? Either way, his timing couldn’t be worse.
Deanna is already suspicious of Rick and his group after her son’s death, Father Gabriel’s warning, and Nicholas’s false account of Aiden’s death. Time will tell if Gabe is right. Rick is, after all, a shadow of his former self. Hopefully Michonne knocked some sense into him. Still, there are worse things than walkers on the other side of Alexandria’s walls– forces Rick may not be prepared to face in his current state.
Much attention has been paid to the mysterious W walkers in the back ten of The Walking Dead. Daryl and Aaron discover more dismembered walkers not far outside the Alexandria Safe Zone walls. Worse, they discover a woman who was left tied to a tree and devoured by walkers. There was a W carved on this poor woman’s head.
Whoever is responsible for these heinous atrocities are worse than any group Rick and his group has faced. It is questionable if Rick and his group are prepared to face this new threat. If Rick’s group is ill prepared, though, there is no hope for Deanna and her sheltered Alexandrians.
The question remains, who are the W butchers? Deanna is in the business of exiling ill behaved Alexandrians- a business, ironically, that she finds more merciful than execution.
With the W walkers wandering so close to Deanna’s walls, could the W butchers be Alexandria exiles? While in Shirewilt Estates, the place of Tyreese’s death, Rick’s group discovers the dismembered walkers and the heads marked with Ws; the estate’s walls were also tagged with graffiti, “Wolves not far.”
Clearly- the wolves are closer than Deanna could imagine. Are the wolves an allusion to what strangers may call the Grimes gang, or are the wolves a heinous new threat- an interpretation of the comic counterpart’s Saviors? Is the W that is carved into the walkers for wolves?
Next Sunday’s 90 minute Walking Dead finale will likely reveal more about this new outside threat. In the mean time, it may be safer for Carl and Eden to refrain from woodland frolics until Daryl and Aaron get to the bottom of the W mystery.
You can leave insights and predictions in the comment section while we lament the end of yet another fantastic season of The Walking Dead.