Welcome to Walking Dead Weekly! As the title implies, each week (bearing a new episode of course), we’ll be taking a look at the latest episode of the AMC series. I’ll let you know how I felt about each weekly offering, and will also compare it to what Robert Kirkman and Charlie Adlard were doing with the comic at the same time.

Last week, the Scott Gimple penned This Sorrowful Life brought some much needed life back into the series after two very lackluster weeks. This Sorrowful Life saw Merle kidnap Michonne with the intention of bringing her to the Governor (after all, Governor did say that he’d leave everyone else alone if she was given up). Merle was quite clearly already a pariah among the group, and he proceeds to “do the dirty work”, not for recognition, and certainly not for acceptance, but simply to save his brother and the people he loves. Then, suddenly, with only a few miles to go, Merle has a change of heart, sets Michonne free, and drives off into the horizon. He heads to the barn (where Rick and the Governor “negotiated”), and has one final stand against the Governor and his men before he is overpowered and killed. The episode ends with a heartbreaking scene: Daryl discovering his undead brother.  Aside from the few happy moments in the episode (Glenn and Maggie getting engaged), This Sorrowful Life was somber, heartfelt, and certainly heartbreaking. An excellent penultimate episode to a mostly excellent season.

What’s next? The entirety of season 3 has been leading up to this: a final battle between the prison and the inhabitants of Woodbury… or so we thought. Who comes out on top, who do we lose along the way, and what happens next? Read on and find out! As always, there are plenty of spoilers below, so don’t read any further until you’ve watched the episode! You’ve been warned!

Episode Thoughts – ‘Welcome to the Tombs’

Well, that certainly wasn’t the finale that I was expecting.

Welcome to the Tombs opens with a fantastic POV sequence of the Governor brutally beating who we think must be Andrea… but turns out to actually be Milton. Governor knows that it was Milton who started the fire (and not Tyreese and crew as was originally thought), and Milton is getting quite the punishment. The two have quite a history, and it’s clear that Governor wants to teach Milton a lesson, but doesn’t want him dead. “You kill or you die” is a phrase that Governor uses early in the episode, and it’s certainly foreshadowing what’s to come.

Governor gives Milton an ultimatum: he can either kill Andrea and show Phillip that he’s learned something, or he can die. That’s it. It’s an easy choice for someone like the Governor, but Milton, who has repeatedly shown remorse and the simple fact that he has a heart, has a much harder time with it. He takes a few choice steps towards a chained Andrea (at which point I sincerely believed he would do it, an idea that was sending literal chills down my spine), before turning and lunging forward at the Governor… who quickly turns the knife back on Milton and stabs him repeatedly. Damn. Milton collapses to the floor, barely breathing, as the Governor explains that he’ll now die, turn, and make quick work of Andrea. Roll opening credits.

Back at the prison, it looks as though Rick and the gang are packing up. Could the group have chosen to leave instead of stay and fight? Carl’s pissed at Rick (what else is new), so it’s clear that we haven’t fully been filled in yet. Before entering his shiny Hyundai, Rick looks up and again sees a ghostly Lori staring down at him; could this be the last time? Is this goodbye? Carol and Daryl exchange some quick words about Merle, and the fact that what he did gave them all a chance, while Rick and Michonne talk of baby formula and old times.

We then head back to Woodbury, where Tyreese and his group are quick to tell the Governor that they won’t participate in this fight. They’re willing to help Woodbury defend against walkers, but will not attack a living being. You can almost see the Governor’s thought process here, and just as it looks as though he’s about to snap, he instead hands Tyreese a sniper rifle… and thanks him. Weird. He and all of the able-bodied members of Woodbury enter their vehicles, and head to the prison.

One quick cut, and we’re there… it’s clear that these two groups have a ton of fightin’ to do (right?), so it’s great that we’re getting to it this quickly. Grenade launchers and mounted machine guns tear apart the outer walls and the walkers inside them. The army then heads into the prison, which just as we expected, is empty. They then proceed into the prison basement, where they’re greeted with flashbangs and the undead. It becomes a race to get outside, where unsurprisingly, our heroes await. A moment of fire occurs between the two groups, and then… Woodbury flees?

Anticlimactic as fuck; As soon as the battle ended (if you can even call it that), it was hard not to laugh at it. The entire season has been alluding to this, over and over again. We even had a 42 minute long conversation about the coming war, which ended up being nothing but a few minutes of each party not killing each other. Yeah, battles are expensive to shoot, but The Walking Dead is one of the biggest, baddest, and most popular shows on television. Plus, with a source issue as insane as this episode had, it’s really, really hard not to be disappointed. I was expecting a war, and a war I did not receive. Silly, silly me.

Moving on, Carl is certainly becoming quite the little killer. After Woodbury flees, a young member of the conscripted army comes across Hershel, Beth, and Carl. The guy is clearly scared, and immediately offers them his gun… and then Carl shoots him. Hershel looked shocked, and I’m sure that I did too. He later states that he was just doing what he had to do, doing what Rick consistently failed to do, doing whatever it took to save his family. Dang.

Governor orders the convoy to stop, where he proceeds to yell at them to turn back for the prison. When the majority of the group refuses, Governor snaps, and opens fire on them. He brutally murders his entire team, his entire army of loyal followers (minus three: two extra-loyal soldiers, and one innocent who manages to hide) in seconds. His remaining lackeys then silently join Governor in one of the vehicles, and they drive off into the unknown. At least he goes out with a bang; this is the last we’ll see of the Governor in season three.

Back at Woodbury, Milton is dead, and Andrea is moving as fast as she possibly can to escape her cuffs before he turns. Things aren’t looking good however: seconds before we cut away from the scene, Milton’s hand begins to move once again. When we return to the two, Milton is clearly turned, and begins to approach Andrea, who has not yet managed to free herself from her handcuffs. We cut to outside the room and hear the struggle, which does not sound like it will end well for Andrea.

Rick, Daryl, and Michonne decide to go after the Governor, and quickly come across his murder site. It’s here that they meet Karen, a resident of Woodbury who managed to survive the massacre. They head back to Woodbury, where Karen quickly explains things to Tyreese, who has been guarding the wall in the Governor’s absence. Tyreese and company quickly join Rick’s group, as clearly they were wrong (dead wrong) about Governor Phillip.

Tyreese leads the group to Andrea’s location. The door is opened, and it’s quickly revealed that Andrea has suffered a bite. She’s fading fast, and asks Rick to leave her his gun while she can still use it. He hands it to her, the group says their goodbyes, and leaves the room (except for Michonne, who stays until the bitter end). We then get a near-silent wide shot of the group standing outside the door. A heartbreaking amount of time passes here before we hear a gunshot, and the gun subsequently fall to the floor. Everyone has sure hated on Andrea this season (well, and since the show started), but this is some powerful stuff, and I could definitely feel the tears welling up as Andrea spoke her last words.

Somber, powerful music fills the rest of the episode as we see our survivors return to the prison, to their prison. The Governor is gone (at least for now), Woodbury has fallen, and the group is once again, safe. It’s the polar opposite ending from what I expected, but that’s it. Also, it looks as though Rick’s visions of Lori have stopped. The episode fades to black, and season three is over.

I’m pretty torn on Welcome to the Tombs. On one hand, comic comparison and promises of war notwithstanding, this season ended on a note that none of us were expecting. For the first time in a long time, these characters once again have hope. They spent the majority of the season worrying about the Governor and his threats, and now, at least for a time, it seems as though they’ll be able to just simply live. It may not have been the violently cascading, “kill ’em all” ending that many of us were expecting (and hoping for), but one that opened up a whole new world to Rick and company, as well as the survivors of Woodbury… or maybe it was terrible and I’m just trying to justify its existence.

That being said, as I mentioned above, we were essentially promised a war, and then we received the furthest thing from it. That shit was disappointing. I once thought that the scale of the battle would be so large that it would require more than one episode (just like the comic arc required more than one issue), but obviously that isn’t the way things turned out. The season three tagline was Fight the dead, fear the living, and in retrospect, our group spent almost the entire season fearing something that simply fizzled out in the end. Lame as HELL, if I do say so myself.

One of the more powerful moments of the episode was a conversation between Andrea and a dying Milton. Fans all over the world have been wondering about, hating, and laughing at Andrea all through the season for her seemingly stupid decisions. In the end, she just didn’t want anyone else to die. She thought she could fix things, that the two groups could either go their separate ways, or live to help one another, but when it comes down to it, she was just sick and tired of all the death. It was a sad ending for her character, accompanied by an explanation that redeemed her for me. People do dumb things when they feel strongly about something, and that’s all that happened to Andrea (or at least how the writer’s covered it up).

Overall, it was a largely disappointing ending to a mostly excellent season. Season three had its ups (most of the early episodes, Clear), and its downs (Arrow on the Doorpost, Prey, etc.), but it told a coherent, cohesive story about the politics of living in a post-apocalyptic world, and just how evil the living can be. Certainly the best season of the show so far (even with this lackluster finale), and I’m looking forward to next October, when a Scott Gimple-led season four should up the ante even further… I just hope that he writes every episode.

Comic Comparison

If the last few editions of Walking Dead Weekly are any indication, you have some idea of what I’m about to say here: things are very different.

The battle for the prison is a shocking, insane, multi-issue arc in Robert Kirkman’s comic. I don’t want to give too much away due to what conspires in the show, but the battle leads to nearly everyone brutally dying: Tyreese has his head cut off with Michonne’s sword, both Lori and a newborn Judith are obliterated by a shotgun blast, Axel gets a bullet to the head, and many other characters that we’ve yet to even meet in the series meet a bitter end during the battle. It ends up being one of the Governor’s own soldiers that turns on him, finally seeing the evil in his ways, and ending him before he can hurt anyone else. This is the battle I wanted, this is the battle I expected. We saw nothing of the sort… in fact, with all of the bullets flying around during AMC’s short, short conflict, I don’t think a single one hit its target.

Fans of the comic know full well, but Andrea’s character is one that’s nearly unrecognizable between the two versions. While AMC’s Andrea was constantly getting into trouble, making poor decisions, and sleeping with the enemy, the paper version was (and continues to be) an absolute badass, and one of the most helpful members of the group. In the comic, Rick and Andrea eventually fall in love, and make a kick-ass couple. It looks like they’ll never get the chance on AMC, which is good, because the television versions of the characters would make a terrible, terrible duo.

The Governor never made it past the prison in the comic arc, so it’ll certainly be interesting to see what AMC does with his character next year! The comic gave us brutal Governor moments that the show never dared to touch, so it’s possible that we still have no idea just how evil David Morrisey’s Governor can be.

Well, that’s it for this season of Walking Dead Weekly. Let us know what you thought of the episode (and the column) below! As always, thanks for reading!