TV Review: The Walking Dead S6 E09, “No Way Out”

By Laury Scarbro

It feels like forever since we last saw a new episode of The Walking Dead. If you need a reminder of what happened before last night’s episode, here’s a run-down.

At the beginning of season 6, we learned about the quarry full of walkers–no, really, there must be hundreds. A plan is hatched to lure the walkers out of the quarry and away from Alexandria. That plan doesn’t go so well because this is The Walking Dead, after all. The walkers end up heading towards the town instead of away from it.

We also learned about The Wolves, another group of survivors whose nihilism makes Rick look like a Disney movie character. During the ill-fated plan involving the quarry, people die, and Rick and crew get separated. For a while no one (including the audience) knows if Glenn is alive or not, which makes things stressful for Maggie after she reveals to Aaron that she’s pregnant.

The Wolves bust into Alexandria and kill a bunch of people, while Rick and company are outside of the town’s borders trying to get back. Morgan secretly holds the Wolves’ leader captive unknown in hopes of changing his murderous ways, which doesn’t work (duh!) and becomes an even bigger problem when Carol finds out and the Wolf leader takes Denise prisoner before taking off.

The church tower collapses after the residents of Alexandria attempt to return to normalcy after the Wolf invasion. This busts a massive hole in the wall and all those walkers head in and start attacking. In the process, Deanna is bitten. She begins to succumb to the infection and makes a last stand against the walkers to help Rick and the others escape. They’re covered in blood and gore from a walker corpse to mask themselves, but Sam’s unnecessary talking threatens to draw attention.

Oh, and Ron still hates Carl.

The post-credits stinger of the last episode we saw, “Start To Finish,” shows Daryl, Abraham, and Sasha being stopped on their way home by a group of armed men, who inform them that all of their belongings now belong to “Negan”.

That brings us up to the Season 6 mid-season premiere. What follows WILL contain spoilers, so you have been warned.

This episode begins with the aftermath of the walker invasion, the dispersal of the core group, and as we’ve seen in the past, the sanctity of one pure, untouched haven of safety being violated. The unnamed Savior–played by Christopher Berry of 12 Years A Slave and Django Unchained–orders Daryl and company to turn over their weapons. He’s the kind of polite, somewhat sarcastic guy you want to be held up by. Don’t form any attachments though, because thanks to Daryl and that glorious RPG making its presence felt, the Savior gang goes up in a magnificent explosion. Abraham does not disappoint in this sequence, delivering a few very witty remarks that we have come to expect from him.

Father Gabriel takes strides towards redemption, offering to take Judith to the church for her safety so the others can retrieve the vehicles from the quarry, and Jessie wants Sam to go with him, but Sam begs to stay with her–cue the song from Sweeney Todd, “Nothing’s Gonna Harm You.” Later Sam’s actions cause his own death, Jessie’s, and Ron’s, as well as the loss of Carl’s eye. I’m about as torn up over the loss of Jessie as Rick is, which doesn’t seem like much. I’m not even heartbroken at Sam and Ron being killed off. Maybe it makes me a horrible person, but I learned quite some time back, kids do not have a long life expectancy on this show. Sam is the kind of kid that makes you root for a semi-psychotic gun-toting PTA Mom like Carol, hoping she’ll lose it and off the little brat in a fit of anger before she goes back to check on her casserole. That doesn’t even begin to cover my feelings for Ron. Give me a few more episodes with the unnamed Savior and the Alpha Wolf; it would make for better storytelling.

Elsewhere, Denise and the Alpha Wolf are trying to escape. She thinks she’ll just slow him down, but he argues that he needs her and wants her to stay with him. Is she sincere about not wanting to slow him down? Does he really mean he wants her with him? Those are questions that are never really answered because later, Carol ends up shooting him, and he wants Denise to keep going. It seems to me that if he were unchanged and had no care for anyone but himself, he wouldn’t have done that.

Unfortunately he turns and is later killed by an apologetic Morgan, so we will never know the extent of what he could have become. Denise, now free of the Alpha Wolf, finds confidence in herself once she returns to the infirmary where she tends to Carl’s eye. Enid learns a valuable lesson in staying true to who she is from Glenn, and I suspect that her growth as a character will continue in a positive direction with him as a mentor. Father Gabriel and Eugene made some interesting strides in terms of character development as well, finding the testicular fortitude to do what must be done. Several others of the town were inspired to fight too, proving that they could accomplish great things and that they weren’t as helpless as previously thought.

One of the most nail-biting moments occurs when Glenn and Enid attempt to rescue Maggie and Glenn tries to live up to the nickname Maggie gave him back on the farm: Walker Bait. I’m fairly sure that fans of this show have been on pins and needles since he fell off the dumpster in the first part of the season. Most of us are probably scared that every time Glenn is in danger is going to be the moment he bites it. And none of us want it to happen.

Daryl and company arrive just in time to save Glenn, and then the town, by unloading the fuel truck into the pond and setting it ablaze. By sunrise, Alexandria is littered with walker corpses. Carl is still unconscious, but Rick is at his bedside talking to him about wanting to build a new world for Carl and Judith. After watching is potential love interest die just hours earlier, I’m quite surprised he can find hope in anything. In the final scenes, Carl closes his fingers around Rick’s hand.

Overall, this is the exact episode that fans have been waiting for, packed with intensity and action, promises of character development, and threats of things to come that fans of the show and graphic novel alike can look forward to. To my disappointment, the anxiously-awaited appearance of Negan–Jeffery Dean Morgan a.k.a. John Winchester of Supernatural–has not yet happened. Will we see a return of the Wolves? I fear we have only just experienced the calm before the storm, with greater tragedy and still greater triumph to come. What did you think of this episode? Let us know in the comments!