The Walking Dead
Episode 7.6 “Swear”
Starring Andrew Lincoln, Norman Reedus, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Lauren Cohan, Chandler Riggs, Danai Gurira, Melissa McBride, Lennie James, Christian Serratos, Sonequa Martin-Green, Josh McDermitt, Khary Payton, Austin Amelio, Tom Payne, Katelyn Nacon, Alanna Masterson
AMC
Air Date: Sunday, November 27, 2016

Warning – SPOILERS for AMC’s The Walking Dead…

Last week’s episode of The Walking Dead mostly took place back at the Hilltop Colony, where Sasha had brought pregnant Maggie to receive medical care. The women earned their place at the colony after taking out the walkers that Negan’s Saviors herded in to send a message. While Hilltop’s leader Gregory thought it was too dangerous to keep the ladies there, Jesus backed them up and pushed for it. Meanwhile, over at Alexandria, Rick and Aaron set out to scavenge for Negan, as that is their new lot in lot, while Carl and Enid snuck out to Hilltop, where Enid visited Maggie. As we learn more and more with each episode this season, Negan is in charge, and everyone is at his mercy.

On this week’s episode, 7.6 “Swear,” we meet another community, Oceanside, that we find out is in hiding from the Saviors.

The episode opens with Tara (Alanna Masterson), who we haven’t seen since the middle of Season 6, washing up on a shore. A young woman named Cyndie saves her, while a little girl named Rachel wants to kill Tara, because, she says, that’s what she’s “supposed to do.” When Tara comes to, she sneaks into the village, which is all women and children, and comes face-to-face with one of the women, Beatrice, who is about to shoot her. Tara disarms Beatrice, but doesn’t kill her; instead, she knocks her down and runs, but then is quickly caught by the rest of the women, who want to shoot her, but Cyndie interferes, saving her once more.

We see in flashback scenes what happened to Tara and Heath after they set off to scavenge for Alexandria all those episodes ago. They had planned to be gone for only 2 weeks, and when we see them, it’s been 2 weeks and all they’ve found are 8 rusty cans of okra and a bottle of aspirin. While Heath is deflated from the situation, Tara wants to keep on going, because they need to bring back supplies to trade with Hilltop. “Rule #1 of Scavenging: There’s nothing left in this world that isn’t hidden, you just have to find it,” she says, which is something that Glenn had told her. Heath starts ranting about how everyone is out for themselves now, and that nobody’s in this together anymore, but Tara thinks that’s total bullshit, saying that that’s not how he is and it’s not how she is either.

At this point, both Tara and Heath have NO idea what happened with Negan’s people: that the satellite station they attacked was just an outpost and that there’s actually tons more Saviors out there; that Negan had killed Glenn and Abraham, and are now making the Alexandrians work for him; and that Tara’s girlfriend, Dr. Denise, is now dead from an arrow through the eye shot by Savior Dwight.

Continuing the flashback, we see Tara and Heath head towards the shore to scavenge. They get to a bridge, that is in a dangerous area. Tara, of course, wants to go forward, so they do, but she ends up emptying out sand from a truck onto them, which brings on a walker attack. The two are separated, and it appears that Heath leaves her behind to save himself, which seems plausible now based on his earlier rant about every man for himself. But we still don’t know at this point how Tara ended up washed up on the shore at Oceanside.

Back to present day at Oceanside: The leaders of Oceanside — Natania, Kathy, and Beatrice — are trying to do decide what to do with Tara, who lies about where she came from (the Alexandria Safe Zone), and says it was only her and her friend out on a fishing boat all this time. While typically the Oceanside women kill intruders on sight, Natania says she can tell Tara is a good person who could be an asset if she stays in their community; plus, Natania’s granddaughter Cyndie has repeated risked her own life to save Tara. It’s clear that we’re meant to see that both Tara and Cyndie have retained their humanity and are still good at heart, and are not just out for themselves. Tara doesn’t want to stay though, because she needs to find her friend Heath back at the bridge; she also mentions her girlfriend she wants to get back to (again, she doesn’t know Denise is dead!). Later, over dinner, Natania gets Tara to admit where she is really from, and Tara wants the two communities to become allies. Natania then decides that Kathy and Beatrice will go with Tara to find Heath and then continue to Alexandria. We learn here that Cyndie’s mom and 11-year-old brother had been killed during a skirmish with another group, where none of their men survived. After that, the women and children snuck away with just the clothes on their back and formed this new village in secret, which is why they kill anyone who finds them.

The next day, Kathy, Beatrice, and Tara head out, but halfway to the bridge, Tara realizes that the women plan to kill her, so she makes a run for it, but is quickly caught again by Beatrice. Beatrice tells Tara that the group who killed their men were the Saviors, and that the satellite station Tara’s people attacked was only an outpost. “You have no idea what you started,” she tells Tara, referring to the outpost attack, claiming that it’s already too late for the Alexandrians. The Saviors had lined up all the Oceanside men and boys over 10 and shot them in the head after they tried to fight them. The women were supposed to stay and keep working for Negan, but instead they fled, which is why they are so terrified of being discovered, and why they can’t let Tara go back to Alexandria. (Umm… doesn’t it seem highly unlikely that these women would get away and start a new community right on the water not far from the other communities, and Negan’s men wouldn’t soon find them? Seriously?)

Just as Beatrice is about to shoot Tara, Cyndie shows up and stops her, giving Tara a chance to run. They eventually catch up with each other, and Cyndie says that the Oceanside killing intruders and the Alexandrians killing the Saviors at the outpost are just people doing what they need to do to survive, because “no one is evil,” she believes. “Some people are evil,” Tara says, I’ve seen it.” Cyndie then makes Tara “swear” she’ll never tell anyone about Oceanside and will never come back. “I swear,” Tara promises. They then head off back to the bridge, where Cyndie plans to help Tara cross. Tara asks why Cyndie is not like the rest of them, and she responds, why aren’t you? Again, this establishes that the two women are similar and still have their humanity, and do not want to just kill out of fear.

At the bridge, Tara makes her way across as Cyndie covers for her, shooting walkers in her path. When Tara gets to the place she last saw Heath, she remembers what happened: He did not leave her there. He actually was shooting at walkers to save her, and had become overwhelmed himself. He had yelled to her to save herself, but she was saying no, we’re in this together. “I know,” he shouts to her, but she is soon overcome by walkers, who push her off the bridge and into the water. So, not only did he not leave her and save himself, but in the end, he lets her know that they are in this together and it’s not every man for himself. In the distance, Kathy and Beatrice have arrived to bring Cyndie back, and Tara continues onto the road to look for Heath. She finds what seems to be Heath’s glasses on the ground, and some tire tracks that she hopes is from him. On the ground near the tracks is a key card that has PPP written on it, that she hopes is a message to her from Heath.

Tara then makes her way back towards Alexandria on foot. She stops at a sunglass and novelty shop, where she sees a doctor bobblehead statue. She settles in, eating the fish that Cyndie brought for her, and finds a seashell necklace in there for her. It seems like things will work out for her. Eventually, we see her walking up to the gate at Alexandria, wearing a pair of colorful sunglasses, a huge smile on her face. But Eugene is guarding the gate, and he looks upset and starts crying when he sees her.

The last scene is Tara sitting on the floor of the infirmary holding the doctor bobblehead she brought back for her doctor girlfriend, Denise. She clearly has been brought up to speed on the horrors that have occurred over the last two-plus weeks she’s been away. Rosita is there with her, wanting to know what Tara found out there, if there’s anything they can use to their advantage. Rosita says she doesn’t care how dangerous it is, she will go. “There’s gotta be a place” they can go to to get guns and ammo, so that they can “square this,” Rosita says. “We can’t,” Tara says, “because I didn’t see anything like that out there.” Tara kept her word, the one she swore by — she did not disclose that she found the Oceanside community, thereby once again showing that she’s a good person. Honor is not dead.

Image Gallery

Video

The Walking Dead Ep. 706 Official Sneak Peek: ‘Nothing Left’

Tara and Heath fight about whether or not to head back to Alexandria.

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