The Walking Dead
Episode 8.13 “Do Not Send Us Astray”
Directed by Jeffrey J. January
Written by Angela Kang & Matthew Negrete
Starring Andrew Lincoln, Norman Reedus, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Lauren Cohan, Danai Gurira, Melissa McBride, Lennie James, Christian Serratos, Tom Payne, Khary Payton, Austin Amelio, Alanna Masterson, Katelyn Nacon, Steven Ogg, Pollyanna McIntosh
AMC
Air Date: Sunday, March 25, 2018

Warning – SPOILERS for AMC’s The Walking Dead…

On last week’s The Walking Dead, at the Hilltop, a mysterious woman named Georgie and her two companions arrive to barter with valuable information for the future and Maggie was agreeable to it. Dwight reluctantly found himself back at the Sanctuary, while Father Gabriel was back in Negan’s clutches. Negan, meanwhile, had a grand plan to attack Rick’s group with contaminated weapons. In route to the attack, Rick caught Negan and the duo finally had an epic one-on-one battle. During Negan’s absence, Simon and Dwight took over leadership of the Saviors. At episode’s end, Negan escaped Rick only to find himself captured by Jadis. Will she team up with him against Rick, or make him pay for the deaths of her people?

In this week’s episode, 8.13 “Do Not Send Us Astray,” Simon follows through with Negan’s plan to attack the Hilltop, except he’s altering the goal: instead of merely infecting them with the walker virus, he plans to put an end to all of them. On the other side, Maggie prepares the Hilltop for the Savior invasion and the way it ends is something she could never have fathomed.

The new episode begins with showing us Morgan, who by season’s end will be making his transition to the network’s spin-off series Fear the Walking Dead. He’s in the woods and he’s hallucinating seeing Gavin, who was killed in a previous episode, and the Savior is telling him “You know what it is.” This warning is repeatedly throughout the episode.

Meanwhile, everyone at the Hilltop is preparing for the Savior invasion they know is coming. Young Henry of course wants his own gun so he can fight too, but King Ezekiel and Carol tell him no. “If you go outside, you’ll die,” Carol warns him. Anyone want to guess what happens? Well, he doesn’t die, but he does go outside. More on that later.

At the Hilltop infirmary, Siddiq reports for duty, but Dr. Dana, who’s running the show there, gives him a hard time, drilling him on his past experience, wanting to know whether he’s ever had to hold someone down to do an amputation. After taking her berating, Siddiq pushes back, saying most of what he’s done during his survival is stuff he’s never done before. He can adapt. This changes her mind about him. “I like you,” she tells him.

Outside Hilltop, the Saviors arrive, with Simon leading them. He tells his people that their goal there is now “conclusion,” meaning, he wants to put an end to the Hilltop community. Dwight is along with him, but we know that his real goal is to see the end of Negan.

And where’s Negan? We don’t know, but Maggie is waiting for him because he’s her real target. But for now, she tries to negotiate with Simon. She addresses herself to him as Maggie Rhee “The Widow,” and tells him she has 38 Saviors captive and that they’ll stay alive if he leaves. If not, she has 38 bullets to use on them. Simon responds that her captives are now “damaged goods” who should have figured out their “own shit.” “Screw them!,” he shouts to end the negotiation.

As Simon readies the Saviors for attack, Dwight asks him if he really wants to change up Negan’s original plan because they don’t know whether he’s still alive, and the consequences if he is could be dire for them. Simon basically doesn’t care. “It’s better to beg for forgiveness than ask for permission,” he says. (How he rose in the ranks with this kind of attitude, I don’t know.) This is when Daryl begins the Hilltop counterattack on the Saviors, and the battle breaks out in gunfire. Rick also arrives on the scene after having gone one-on-one with Negan in the previous episode. The Saviors are shooting tainted arrows though, and we know what their plan was – to infect the Hilltoppers with walker blood so that they’ll turn and kill each other. In the scuffle, Dwight shoots Tara in the arm to prevent Simon from injuring her with his bloodied axe.

Eventually, the Saviors retreat after suffering some casualties, but the Hilltoppers do too. Maggie tells Rick she’s disappointed that Negan didn’t come, and Rick tells her about how he’d gone after Negan just before the battle. He reveals that he tried to kill Negan, and she is thankful for it, because that’s what she wants (because Negan killed her husband Glenn).

The next morning, Tara talks to Daryl about how she used to be a part of the Governor’s group, so she knows that people can change sides. Daryl is still bitter at Dwight for what he had done before he teamed up with them. But she says she saw how Dwight helped them and that he had saved her life, even though she tried to kill him, and that things are square with them now. Daryl doesn’t feel the same way; he thinks Dwight switched sides again, as evidenced by his presence with the Saviors the night before, and that he actually tried to kill Tara.

Inside, Rick is unboarding the windows because Maggie had to turn off the generators to conserve energy. He’s still closed off after Carl’s death, but he eventually reveals to Michonne, who had tried to comfort home, how he went after Negan when he saw him with the convoy. It was something he felt he just had to do.

At the graveyard, Maggie tells Alden, one of the POWs, that he can take the bodies of the Saviors and bury them outside the gates. But he doesn’t identify the previous night’s attackers as “his people.” Simon had made it clear that the captives meant nothing to them. Therefore, he’s glad to see them dead, but he buries them anyway.

Dianne commends Maggie for her leadership, but Maggie isn’t sure that she should get this praise. After all, she did everything to provoke Negan into attacking so she could kill him to get revenge. She wanted Glenn’s grave to be the last thing Negan saw before he died.

Carol goes to visit her former lover Tobin at the infirmary. He asks if what they had had was real. She explains that she was just trying to live a life, but then had to leave when she realized more Saviors were out there and her life would be all about fighting. She tries to comfort him by revealing that perhaps what they had was turning into something real, that she wouldn’t have had to “pretend.” This goes back to what she previously had told King Ezekiel – to pretend until it’s real. Tobin asks her what will happen when this is all over, but she doesn’t believe it will ever end.

Outside, Siddiq tries to console Rick over Carl’s death by talking about a prayer that ends with, “Do not send us astray after them”¦” but Rick can’t handle this. He stops the man and walks off. We saw his love Michonne try to comfort him, and he wouldn’t let her, so he’s definitely not going to allow the man who inadvertently caused the death of his son to do so. He also likely doesn’t want to hear anything about not going after Negan.

That night, the Hilltoppers gather together in rooms and hallways with their candles to sleep. One of the injured praises Maggie on her leadership the way Dianne did. He says that if Gregory had still been in charge, they wouldn’t have survived because he was all about himself. Again, we know that this whole battle was Maggie’s way of getting revenge on Negan, so she put these people at risk. And little do they know, it’s only going to get worse.

As everyone sleeps, we see Tobin die suddenly. In a little over an hour later, he turns and attacks the unsuspecting residents. We then see other people who had non-life-threatening injuries turn as well, and chaos ensues! And guess what happens in the darkness? Rick has to hold someone down while Siddiq amputates their infect arm!

Looks like Negan’s plan worked. The contaminated arrows did the trick in killing and turning the Hilltoppers. Daryl realizes that these are their own people who have turned, including Tobin, who of course Carol, after some hesitation, has to put down. (Unfortunately, one of zombie Tobin’s victims is Dr. Dana.) Rick remembers that Negan’s bat was covered in walker blood when they fought, so now they know that infecting the Hilltop was Negan’s plan all along. Rick, Daryl, and Michonne head to where Tara, Rosita, and Enid are holed up, and see that injured Tara has not died and turned, but it’s clear she thinks she will eventually. She recalls to Daryl how badly she wanted Dwight dead and couldn’t let that idea go, and now here she is in this predicament. “Karma’s a bitch,” she says.

Outside, young Henry goes to the prisoners’ pen and demands to know which one of them had killed his brother. No one comes forward, though the murderer is there… Jared, the worst of the prisoners who’ve repeatedly said should not have been spared. Alden tries to reason with him, but the boy threatens to start shooting if the murderer doesn’t reveal himself. Unfortunately, he unlocked the pen so when one of the captives turns and starts attacking, the prisoners are able to push passed Henry, disarm him, and run to freedom. But some of them, like Alden, stayed behind and did what they could to close the gates from the inside, showing that they were loyal to the Hilltop, not to the Saviors who abandoned them to their fate. Also, Maggie had witnessed that Alden actually saved Siddiq from a walker.

The next morning, Carol and King Ezekiel are looking for Henry, who hasn’t been seen since the prisoners escaped. Enid says those who remained told her that Henry had opened their pen and been inside it when the walker attack occurred. We then see Morgan once again hallucinate a bloodied Gavin saying, “You know what it is.”

As the Hilltoppers bury their dead, Maggie watches on with a troubled look. When Dianne asks her “What is it?,” Maggie replies, “The cost,” referring to the lives lost in her attempt to fulfill her wish for vengeance on Negan.

We know Negan is still alive, but what will Jadis do to him? She believes he ordered Simon to massacre her people, which Negan still doesn’t even know about. If he gets her to believe this, she might team up with him again against Rick, who left her to die on her scrap heap surrounded by her former Scavengers turned walkers. Negan always says that people are a resource, and the Scavengers certainly were to him, so it looks like Simon is going to really get it this time (I can’t wait!!!). In the meantime, will Rick and Maggie plan to retaliate against the Saviors?

Video

‘Do Not Send Us Astray’ Official Sneak Peek Ep. 813 | The Walking Dead

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‘Maggie Takes a Stand’ Ep. 813 | The Walking Dead

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[Photo Credit: Gene Page/AMC. Courtesy of AMC. Used with permission.]

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