“We are all Negan”

If you haven’t watched the newest episode of The Walking Dead, then I would suggest not reading any further, because there will be spoilers. You have been warned.

 

The Kidnapping

“The Same Boat” picks up with the last scene of Maggie and Carol from “Not Tomorrow Yet.” Maggie and Carol are watching the perimeter when the alarms go off, and Carol refuses to let Maggie go to help. As the two are having a stare-down, a man comes running through the woods, gun pointed, and Maggie shoots him. A few seconds later, the rest of his group shows up and take Maggie and Carol hostage,

After a few radio calls, Polly, the leader of this mini-group, refuses to make a trade with Rick, despite the fact that Donny needs medical attention. She doesn’t believe that a two for one trade is all that fair, especially after Rick and Co. just killed so many of their people. Instead, Maggie and Carol’s hands are bound, their heads covered, and they are led to a safe house.

 

The Safe House

Once reaching the safe house, Maggie and Carol’s feet are bound and they are sat on opposite ends of the room. As a walker is dragged out of the room, Carol grabs the rosary that falls from its hands, and so begins another “weak Carol” acting spree. She puts on an “I’m harmless” façade, hyperventilating to have them remove the gag. She then proceeds to act as if she is religious, clutching the rosary beads in her hands and begging them not to hurt Maggie and the baby.

As the episode goes on, Donny’s condition only worsens. As Maggie informs them, his nerves are dying and he will not last the 30 minutes that it’s going to take for the scouting group to get to the safe house. She urges Polly to accept the trade with Rick; the man that they have, Primo, may be able to save Donny. Donny is upset with Polly’s decision and hits her, causing Maggie to kick his feet out from under him, Donny to kick Carol, and Polly to hit Donny. (Yeah…a lot of fighting).

After the brief scuffle, Maggie is taken to another room where she is interrogated by one of the women. They want to know where Maggie and Carol are from. By the nice clothes that Maggie is wearing, it’s evident that they come from a decent community, someplace safe. Maggie, however, remains silent, refusing to give up the whereabouts of the Alexandria Safe Zone.

Alone now, Carol’s facade keeps up. Polly believes her to be weak and wonders aloud how she even made it this far into the apocalypse. Carol, keeping with her “I found religion” spiel, tells her that her faith got her through; it’s her faith that got her through the death of her daughter, Sophia. Carol then proceeds to provide an explanation as to why her people were killing the Saviors in the first place. She confesses that a group ran into a group of Saviors on the road, and that is how they found out about Negan. Being so terrified of Negan, Carol says that her group felt that their only option was to kill the Saviors. They are acting in self-defense. “We’re all Negan,” a woman with a cigarette informs Carol.

The confession time continues as Polly begins to tell Carol about her life before the apocalypse. She was a secretary in D.C. When the evacuations began, everyone of importance was evacuated first, and Polly was stuck with her boss and not her family. Polly ended up killing her boss in order to survive. She has since lost count of how many people she has killed; she stopped counting once she reached double digits. Polly isn’t afraid to kill. She tells Carol that they are nothing alike. Oh, Polly, you’re so silly for underestimating Carol.

Carol informs Polly that it is Polly who is afraid to die, and that if she doesn’t accept the trade with Rick, she will die. Making the trade is the only option if Polly wants to live. Carol confesses that she doesn’t want to be the one who kills Polly. Eventually, Rick calls over the radio, and Polly “agrees” to make the trade, telling Rick to meet them by a sign reading “God is dead.” Polly, however, believes that the deal made was too easy and that the static-free radio conversation means that Rick’s group is close, perhaps even waiting for them outside of the door. This prompts Polly to want to kill Rick and Co.

 

The Escape

Left alone in the room as Polly and her posse prepare to attack Rick and Co. should they come, Carol uses the crucifix on the rosary to cut the duct tape binding her hands. She then hurries to find Maggie, helping the woman free herself from her bindings. Carol wants to leave, but Maggie doesn’t want to leave the group alive. She knows the dangers of leaving people alive; they’ll go back to their leader and inform them of what happened. Polly and her group have to be killed. Maggie and Carol have to finish what was started.

Donny, who is now a walker, helps them begin their killing spree. Maggie ties the zombified man to a post, and when the smoking lady comes into the room, she is greeted by a bite to the arm. Maggie quickly finishes the job and takes her gun. As the two women make their way down the hallway, walkers stop them. Polly is using the walkers to keep them in, but keep any outsiders out. And cue Polly, who begins shooting at Carol and Maggie, having realized her mistake and that the two women have killed the others.

Carol points a gun at Polly and urges her to run. Carol doesn’t want to kill her, and she gives the woman the chance to live. Maggie, on the other hand, begs Carol to kill Polly. They have to finish the job. Before Carol can act, a walker frees itself from a pole that it is impaled by and knocks into Carol. The woman who had been interrogating Maggie makes a reappearance, and she and Maggie get into a fight, the woman slashing at her with a knife and almost catching Maggie’s stomach (don’t you dare hurt the Gleggie baby!). Thankfully, Carol shoots the woman before anything more can happen. The gun is then knocked from Carol’s hands by Polly, who is then pushed into a pole and bitten by a walker.

The scouting group that was supposed to be coming to the safe house call over the radio, and Carol, after composing herself, tells them to meet them on the Kill Floor. Maggie and Carol hide in a room and have a brief discussion. Carol is regretting not killing Donny in the woods. If she had, they wouldn’t be in this predicament now, and she would have less blood on her hands. As the group of Saviors arrives, Carol lights a cigarette, taking a brief inhale before tossing it into the room that the Saviors are in and locking them in. The floor is covered in gasoline and the men burn to death.

 

Final Thoughts…

Carol was amazing this episode. The woman that she was in season one is long gone, and the woman that she was in season four is haunting her. The woman that she is now is something still in question, something that she isn’t even sure of. All of the lives that she’s taken have been for a reason. She’s never just killed to kill. Every death has served a purpose; every death has saved someone. Regardless of the reasoning behind the kills, though, the blood that is now coating her hands is becoming too much for Carol to bear. She had killed 18 people, but after “The Same Boat,” more have been added and that number has gone up. She isn’t okay, just as she tells Daryl.

Maggie, on the other hand, isn’t struggling in the same way that Carol is. She knows that all of the deaths were necessary. When she decided to make the deal with Gregory to kill Negan and his group, she knew that they would lose something. She knew that with every kill, they would lose a part of themselves. This couldn’t be more evident than it is with Carol. But how will this kill-or-be-killed experience affect the two women moving forward?

“We’re all Negan.” Well, that’s not something that anyone wants to hear. The Saviors aren’t a group to play around with. As far as Rick knows, Negan could be dead, or he could be alive. With their one hostage now dead, there is no way of knowing how many Saviors are left, if Negan is dead, or where the rest of the group could reside. Now it’s a waiting game, because there’s no way that Rick and Co. are escaping this so easily and so relatively unscathed.

 

Bullets

• Maggie is choosing to do more than just surviving, she is choosing to live, unlike Polly, and that is why she has faith that her pregnancy will turn out fine.
• Really? You’re in a zombie apocalypse and you’re going to die because you smoke?
• Polly, you clearly didn’t know who you were messing with. Taking Carol and Maggie was your first mistake. Underestimating Carol was your biggest mistake.
• Be the water with coffee in it…not the egg in water or carrot in water. Be the pot with coffee in water.
• Carol’s back to burning people.
• Gleggie reunion…again. They really need to stop getting separated. Let them stay together and neither of them get harmed. Please and thank you.
• Daryl and Carol moment. We need more of those. Who do I have to pay for more of those moments?
• Carol squeezing the rosary so tightly that her hand bleeds…ouch.

 

Don’t miss an all-new episode of The Walking Dead Sunday at 9 EST on AMC.