‘The Walking Dead’ season 7, episode 9 review: Did Ezekiel join Rick’s army against Negan?
It has been a very long wait for new episodes of “The Walking Dead” and after what was a very dark first half of the show we were left with a glimmer of hope after Michonne and Rick decided to find a way to gather their group and fight back at Negan. Most of the crew is back together (except for Carol and Morgan) and even though Alexandria and the Hilltop clans don’t have nearly enough people to fight Negan’s organization they have a few things that should help them. Daryl, Carl and Jesus have been inside Negan’s compound and Michonne knows where the compound is.
Rick’s group has headed out to talk to Gregory to start building an army to fight Negan, but he’s such a coward that he’s not entertaining the idea (is anyone surprised by this?). While Gregory doesn’t want any part of this, the people of Hilltop want to fight and tell Maggie they are on board. It’s still a very small group, and with Jesus having one of the Saviors walkies they have an advantage of knowing when they are moving on them, so they have some time to gain more resources.
Jesus introduces Rick’s group to King Ezekiel to see if they can get him to join the fight against Negan. When they see how big the community is, Rick starts to become hopeful and that hope only grows when they see that Morgan is in the kingdom. So did we see Daryl and Carol reunited? Nope – Morgan tells him that Carol is gone even though she’s just really hiding out in her own little place.
When Rick meets Ezekiel he explains what his plans are and what he hopes to accomplish if they all work together against Negan. After hearing what they are planning, Ezekiel tells him that he will think on what Rick has offered, knowing that a lot of people will die for this and that they may not even have freedom at the end of it. After sleeping on it, Ezekiel decides that the kingdom will not help in the fight against Negan, but offers Daryl asylum there… which he turns down at first (Rick later convinces him to stay for now). With Ezekiel depending on Morgan’s opinion, Rick pushes for him to change the king’s mind and asks Daryl to try to work some magic on him too.
With such a small group, they have to look for other opportunities to take Negan down and on their way home from the Kingdom they come upon the perfect opportunity. They find one of Negan’s booby-traps, so they dismantle it and take the explosives. Time for Rick’s group to get a little creative if they are going to beat Negan.
When they hear over the walkie that Negan’s men is coming to Alexandria to see if an escaped Daryl has returned there, they rush back home to confront them. They tear the town apart, destroy everyone’s houses and can’t find him, but what they do find is that father Gabriel has stolen everything, grabbed a car and took off… at least that’s what it looks like to everyone but Rick. After finding a note with the word “boat” written down, Rick’s group heads out to find out what he’s up to, but instead runs into a group of armed people. With a bunch of guns trained on Rick, why is he smiling??? Is this army of people gathered by father Gabriel?
We knew that there were going to be a few slower episodes to build up to the big battle against Negan, but tonight’s episode was quite slow. That being said we did see one of the best zombie kills as Rick and Michonne drove a barbed wire in between two cars decapitating hundreds of zombies and then blowing them up with some hoopty dynamite. That was an A+ moment! The entire episode though felt a little lacking. Episode grade: B-
What did you think of tonight’s episode of “The Walking Dead”? Leave us a comment in the box below with your thoughts.