Speaking of Rick, he more of less spent the finale subdued. A year’s worth of feelings that have been stewing in him came to a simmer, as he confessed to Michonne that he still felt as if he were back in that train car in Terminus. Inside the walls he feels trapped, and you can’t trust appearances because inside another wise ordinary build can be a slaughterhouse for people. The reactionist approach obviously didn’t work very well with the people of Alexandria, and Rick seems to appreciate that now. It’s not that he doesn’t think that the community doesn’t need to get on the same page of what life is like out in the real world, but he’s ready to be more diplomatic about it.
Meanwhile, as Rick tried to deal with life, other characters were confronting death. Sasha quietly laying down amongst the walkers she was burying made a lot of sense, or at least made more sense than going out into the woods and playing Rambo with a bunch of zombies. Gabriel, who we last saw telling Deanna that the people who saved his life were not worthy of her paradise, went outside the wall for a walk with only the “Word of God” as his weapon. This coming from the guy that burned his collar.
Sasha’s quiet surrender made a lot of sense to me. Living through the death of Bob and Tyreese one after the other and then finding relief inside Alexandria was like going from one extreme to another, to go from such potent reminders of the utter lack of safety in the world to finding somewhere that’s actually safe, it’s hard to adjust. Gabriel is selfish though, and has always been selfish, and his sudden desire to sacrifice himself to a zombie seemed really false and hollow. Plus, he’s got some nerve acting all holier than thou, throwing the people that saved his life under the bus while he, a priest, let his own flock die because he refused to give anyone shelter.
Selfishness is not a unique trait in Alexandria. Glen tries to confront Nicholas again, but this time, Nicholas shoots Glen in the shoulder because, well, I guess because Glen called him out for being a coward. Alone in the woods, surrounded by walkers, Glen might have been forgiven if he had decided to put Nicholas out of his misery, but being the bigger man, Glen took the higher path. It was a remarkably tense sequence as Glen had Nicholas at gunpoint while Sasha had Gabriel at gunpoint. She went to see him for advice on how to deal with her feelings of alienation, but he throws it back in her face. Given everything that happened, would anyone miss either Nicholas or Gabriel? Doubtful, but there’s deep meaning that even in the face of justification, everyone walked away alive. Well, almost.
