Aside from the internal group dynamics comes what may be more reminders that the real monsters of the zombie apocalypse are human beings. Daryl, while on his first mission as recruiter with Aaron, spots a light in the distance, and while following that light, they discover a couple of things that have been ongoing disturbing details through the second half of the season. One is the recurring appearance of walkers with a ‘W’ carved on the their foreheads, and the other is random piles of body parts.
There’s been so much going on the last couple of weeks that we might be forgiven for forgetting in episode nine, the survivors’ encounter with that car full or arms, legs and heads, as if someone were treating walkers like kids with a captured fly, tearing its limbs off for kicks. The ante was upped though with the discovery of a woman tied to a tree near another pile of parts. She too had a ‘W’ carved into her head, but the twist was that she was alive when she was tied up, her torso torn up and fed upon by walkers. Was she bait? And who is this screwball carving ‘W’ onto the heads of walkers?
One mystery that was resolved was the question of who took Rick’s hidden gun. Nicholas was the answer to that question, even if his intentions remain, at best, unclear. My guess is that there’s some secret that connects Alexandria and the ‘W’ guy. Perhaps ‘W’ is a former resident exiled and is now obsessed with trying to rally walkers (as much as anyone can rally zombies) and unleash them against the population of Alexandria when they venture beyond the wall. Rick’s offhand comment about how exiling people can make them vulnerable seems less like a justification for Rick killing Pete, and more like a bit of foreshadowing if you think about things in that context.
So, where will the show go in its final episode until October? Clearly Rick’s going to have to make some tough decisions about who he wants to be and how far he’s willing to go to make Alexandria a little less vulnerable. Admittedly, a lot of what Rick was saying in his monologue after thrashing Pete made sense, but it’s a little hard to get over the crazy when he’s covered in blood and waving a gun around. Ultimately, maybe Rick sees a little too much of himself in Pete, not as someone who would beat his wife and child, but as someone who has difficulty coming to grips with reality.
Perhaps it would not be so unreasonable to expect that Rick will soon be shown the door and see himself exiled, thus suggesting his words are more prophetic than forewarning. Unwilling to conform, and downright medieval in his stance on crime and punishment, perhaps Deanna will have Rick exiled, and thus force him to consider the weakness of Alexandria and ponder a takeover. Maybe he’ll finally even meet up with Morgan Jones, who presumably is still wondering around the byways of the zombie apocalypse, following the map to Washington that Rick left behind at Gabriel’s church.
In fact, given the Spartan use of Lennie James in post-credit sequences, I’m calling it: season five of The Walking Dead will end with Rick turning around and seeing his old friend Morgan standing there.