Recap: Rick makes final stand on ‘Walking Dead’
Spoiler alert: This story contains significant details from Sunday’s episode of “The Walking Dead.”
Sunday’s episode of “The Walking Dead” was touted by AMC as “Rick Grimes’ Last Episode.” By the end, however, the zombie action-thriller’s leading man appears to be 180 degrees from the show’s title: He isn’t walking, but he isn’t dead, either.
What that means for Rick, since this is the last series episode for the character and the actor who plays him, Andrew Lincoln, is anybody’s guess. (Remember Glenn’s fake-out death a few seasons ago?) But we’ll get to that.
At the end of last week’s episode, viewers saw Rick impaled on rebar jutting from a concrete slab after his horse threw him as a swarm of walkers approached. But there was no way Rick was going to end up as zombie chow.
As Sunday’s episode opens, Rick is back in the hospital room where the series began. It’s clear he’s in a hallucinatory state as he’s talking to his bedridden earlier self, who had awakened from a coma to find the zombie apocalypse had started.
Back in the real world, the resourceful lawman pulls a MacGyver, throwing his belt over another piece of rebar and pulling himself up. He escapes and, in true selfless form, attempts to lead the walker horde away from his comrades’ camps even while bleeding profusely.
At the same time, junkyard Jadis (Pollyanna MacIntosh) – who has abandoned her alter ego Anne – is trying to escape from Father Gabriel (Seth Gilliam), Rick and the other survivors after her secret partnership with a mysterious group that owns a helicopter is found out.
She has made a deal for exfiltration; she has to deliver a survivor, although she can’t bring herself to take Gabriel. The Jadis back story will play a significant role later in the episode.
The action shifts back to the main stage as fading Rick starts to hallucinate again, taking longtime fans back to memorable moments and characters.
Rick comes to again just in time to escape the ghoulish masses, taking refuge in an abandoned house. He drifts off. During his hallucination, he runs into a familiar face, former sheriff partner Shane (Jon Bernthal), who became a rival killed by Rick way back in Season 2.
When Rick says he’s searching for his family, Shane says it could be his, since Rick has long believed that his daughter, Judith, is really Shane’s child from a relationship started with Rick’s wife, Lori, when they thought he was dead.
Suddenly, Rick revives from his trance as a walker is about to bite him. He escapes; his horse, of course, is standing right there. As Rick is riding, he passes out again and finds himself on a beautiful farm with the long-dead Hershel, Maggie’s father and a wise mentor for Rick. As Rick explains he needs to find his family, Hershel (Scott Wilson, who died in early October) sagely advises that he doesn’t before warning him to wake up – because the zombies are approaching!
In his next hallucination, Rick is back in the first hospital, walking through the doors that were barred to hold back walkers. He enters an area strewn with bodies, including ones that look from behind like his son, Carl, and Hershel’s daughter, Beth, who both died earlier in the series. Suddenly, another deceased survivor, Sasha (Sonequa Martin- Green, perhaps beaming down from “Star Trek: Discovery”) rises and tells an upset Rick that all is OK.
“You did your part, like I did mine,” she says.
Sasha then tells hallucinating Rick to wake up, just as he’s falling from his horse in reality. He fights off a few walkers, then heads toward the bridge he had been so focused on repairing in early episodes this season. When he gets to the bridge, he imagines his allies – Daryl, Carol, Eugene and his beloved partner, Michonne – coming to his rescue, but they’re not really there. He revives again, but the hope that the bridge might collapse under the horde’s weight doesn’t materialize.
The zombies approach, as do Daryl and the others – this time for real – but they can’t save Rick. A walker knocks over some dynamite on the bridge, and Rick chooses his final option. He shoots the explosives, blowing up many zombies – and apparently himself.
Michonne silently screams as Maggie and Carol try to console her. A despondent Daryl walks away.
The scene cuts to Jadis, still awaiting her own evacuation before seeing Rick, barely alive, on the shore. The helicopter, seen in an earlier episode, flies them both away. “You’re going to be OK,” Jadis tells Rick. “I’m going to save you.”
The action cuts to another scene where strangers are struggling to stave off another group of walkers. An unseen sniper shoots some walkers, allowing the people to get away. The shooter is Rick’s daughter, Judith, but she’s no longer a toddler. She’s at least a few years older, a young authority figure wearing her dad’s hat, her brother’s favorite accessory, and armed with a gun, a reminder of her father, and a katana sword, the symbol of Michonne, who has become her stepmother.
It’s the future. And Rick is no longer there.