3/30/2015

What’s Up with “The Walking Dead”: Recap of season five finale “Conquer”


“Luck runs out.”

Another season of The Walking Dead is complete with last night’s fifth season finale “Conquer,” and I’ll go ahead and say that I think this season may have been the most successful of the show so far (aside from the first season, which probably had the strongest scenes overall).

Yes, the whole Dawn storyline was terrible, and yes, Beth’s protracted death sentence wasn’t great, and oof, Sasha’s characterization is still pretty underdeveloped and melodramatic. But I think “Conquer” continued to do a lot of things right that the show, as a season, has done right so far. The deaths mattered; I’m still torn up about the loss of Tyreese. The suggestion that maybe Rick isn’t a good guy resonated; the final shot of this episode, contrasting Rick and Morgan, exemplified that wonderfully. The notion that any kind of constructed social order is undeniably futile in this new world, and that “civilization” can make you weak, was hammered home in Alexandria to solid effect. Those were all good things!

To be fair, “Conquest” still dragged its feet a bit. We don’t get a clear answer, necessarily, about what the carved “W” means in the walking dead; yes, the dude who threatens Morgan gives half an answer of cult-like mumbo jumbo, but clearly we’re just setting up next season’s big bad at this point. There haven’t been any repercussions for Father Gabriel, despite his continued sabotage of Rick and Co. and Alexandria as a whole. And although we finally reunited Morgan and Rick, that was a scene that has been seasons in the making. It needed to happen now, lest the dragging-out of that subplot get fully ridiculous.

But let’s talk about the five things that were most important in “Conquest,” and briefly theorize on what will happen next season …

+ “Put that down. Because I want it. I want everything you have. Every last drop. … I’m taking you, too. And you’re not exactly gonna be alive.” Great cold open for the show this week as we finally see a living person with the “W” carved into his forehead. I don’t think he was introduced with a name, but the guy displayed maximum creepy factor while threatening Morgan, yammering on about “wolves” and “natives” and how wolves are “back now” and “transformed into men” to get their revenge on people or something? I don’t know, it was all very cult-like. (For my comic book readers, I think that the “wolves” are going to be the show’s version of that guy with the thing who uses it against the other guy? If you know what I mean?) But Morgan wasn’t having any of it, whipping out some amazing ninja skills with his walking stick and beating up both the main guy and his co-hunter who tried to surprise-attack him… yet they managed to survive, and we see them again at the end of the episode, showing up at the food factory where Aaron and Daryl almost died and acting like they owned the place.

So what is my takeaway here? These guys are soldiers of some other leader, someone else who helped design the insane traps of the food factory, and they’re coming for Alexandria next, since Aaron dropped his supply bag with pictures of Rick and Co. in it. Obviously.

+ “Wasn’t nobody’s fault.” All the fan-fiction writers who thought Daryl and Aaron would kiss in that car, sorry all your dreams got crushed when that didn’t happen. And yet! Daryl doesn’t have many friends, and it’s clear that he cares about Aaron and sees him as an ally—why else offer to essentially sacrifice himself to save Aaron’s life? Clearly he sees Aaron’s mission of bringing new people to Alexandria as a viable, worthy one, and I think Daryl honoring those intentions by giving up his own life is an important step.

But of course neither of them had to die because MORGAN SHOWED UP AND WAS AMAZING, and honestly this whole subplot was great. From Aaron and Daryl trying to find and save the guy in the red poncho (basically a redo of the subplot with the horse Buttons from a few episodes ago) to stumbling upon the food factory and tripping off all the elaborate traps (those undead corpses hanging from meat hooks will haunt me for a while) to Daryl decapitating three zombies at once with the chain whip to then finding that chilling note in the car they hid out in (“Trap bad people coming don’t stay”), it all worked. Excellent tension! I didn’t even notice how that one female zombie crawling toward Aaron and Daryl under the truck had strangely, blindingly white teeth that looked like she just visited a dentist. Didn’t notice that at all!

Also, the spray paint on the black SUV, “WOLVES NOT FAR”—did the “wolves” themselves do that? As a way to advertise themselves during hunting sessions? I didn’t get it, but it was a powerful image to end the season on, I suppose.

+ “Something’s gonna happen. Just don’t make something happen.” So, Rick killing Jessie’s husband, Pete—do we consider that a real turning point for Grimes? He’s killed people before, people who threatened his group; don’t forget the slaughter of the cannibals in Father Gabriel’s church (which, honestly, might have been what fully pushed Father Gabriel over the edge). And to be fair, killing Pete was justifiable not only because of his abuse of Jessie and his sons, but also of course for his killing of Deanna’s husband Redge with Michonne’s stolen katana sword. But while Michonne warns Rick to not “make something happen,” isn’t everything that has happened in Alexandria since Rick and Co.’s arrival technically his fault?

That’s not to say Aiden wasn’t an idiot. He was. That’s not to say Pete wasn’t a jerk. He was. But Deanna had some kind of false happy society constructed, and Rick, with his reality of what the world is really like now, smashed that all apart. He didn’t make Pete kill Redge, but he set events in motion that theoretically crafted that possibility. And so when he executes Pete, and when Morgan sees it, the suggestion is clear: Is this Rick Grimes the same man as all those seasons ago when he and Morgan first met? Morgan, the man who just saved Daryl and Aaron because “all life is precious”—what is he going to think of the man he just traveled all these miles to reconnect with? On the map Abraham left for Rick, he said the world needed him, and that was the argument Maggie, Michonne, Carol, and the rest made at the Alexandria public meeting to discuss his fate. Carol couldn’t have said it more clearly: “People like me, people like us, need people like him.” But you have to wonder which version of Rick Grimes is the best one, and whether killing Pete is the Rick we need or just the one we’ve got.

+ “The word of God is the only protection I need.” Goddammit, Father Gabriel, you are the worst! I want great things for Seth Gilliam and I’m happy that he has work, but ugh, how much longer can we go on like this? Father Gilliam tries to offer himself up to get eaten in a suicide-by-zombie death wish, but can’t go through it. After failing, he then leaves the door open to Alexandria, letting zombies walk in (although, you could blame Deanna’s son, the one played by Julian from One Tree Hill, for also being an idiot, but still). Then he antagonizes the suffering Sasha and encourages her to kill him. Get your shit together, Father Gabriel! You can’t go on like this!

And yes, Maggie is a good person for breaking up the fight between Sasha and Father Gabriel and then praying with them instead of finally acting on the knowledge that Father Gabriel tried to sway Deanna against the group (did she really not tell anyone about that earlier?), but Father Gabriel is, at this point, dead weight. How long until he tries to sabotage them again? I have concerns!

+ “They need us. They’ll die without us.” Carl got significantly better as a character this season, but this conscience? It’s not sustainable. Not when Rick is right about how “the ones out there, they’ll hunt us, they’ll find us … try to kill us.” And sometimes, even the ones on the inside will try to kill you, too—how else to explain Pete? “Luck runs out.” And as good as Carl’s intensions are, it would be good for him to remember that—for everyone in Alexandria to remember that.

And finally, some odds and ends:

+ I have been irritated with the Sasha storyline for the past few episodes, but that image of her lying on top of the bodies in the mass zombie grave she was digging—OK, that was powerful.

+ Tara wakes up! And Eugene and Abraham make up! (“I almost killed you.” “Yeah, there’s that.”) Rosita is one very happy camper.

+ Morgan grabbing the rabbit foot from the car after evading the “wolves”—a good way to bring in the “luck” theme running through this episode.

+ This week’s choice Abraham line, delivered while defending Rick to the Alexandria public: “There is a vast ocean of shit you people don't know shit about.” Fact!

+ Michonne is so ride or die with Rick, I love it: “That was for you. Not them,” she says of her punch to knock him out during the fight with Pete last week. I believe her—if he had killed Pete then, they definitely would have gotten kicked out of Alexandria immediately. But diffusing the situation bought them time, which of course Michonne would be smart enough to understand.

+ Carol is Rick’s personal Lady Macbeth, and I adore her for it. Can’t argue with her Alexandria assimilation tactics—“Just tell them the story that they want to hear. Because these people are children, and children like stories”—as well as her cold analysis of all it would take to overpower them—“We still have knives. That’s all we’ll need against them.” And her hissing at Rick to “do it” when Pete shows up at the meeting, brandishing Michonne’s katana? Excellently done.

+ “I screwed up, and here we are” could be the title of Rick Grimes’s autobiography, honestly.

+ Anyone think that the “wolves” are probably led by the people Deanna sent away, the “two men and a woman” that Aaron describes to Daryl? “I brought them in and I had to see them out,” he says—and I wouldn’t be surprised if he sees them all over again next season.


+ Michonne slinging her katana back on at the end of the episode = all is right with the world.