The Walking Dead: Always Accountable, Foreshadowing and Frustration

This episode might be a lot more exciting for comic readers than for people who have only watched the show. I’ll discuss that at the bottom with a spoiler warning so I won’t talk about it in the main part of the post.

My heart almost lept out of my chest when Abraham, Sasha, and Daryl found themselves suddenly under attack by people in cars with automatic weapons.

Then of course we end up with the group split and Daryl on his own in the woods, all injured and sad.

Daryl, be careful. Bad stuff is about to happen.

Next he gets knocked out when we think maybe he just found some harmless ladies in the woods. And he wakes up tied up by a tree and gets to say his now trademark line, “I ain’t who you think.” (He had this exact conversation with some Wolves, didn’t he, last season?)

I honestly couldn’t care less about Abraham and Sasha’s story this week. I don’t buy the alleged budding romance between them at all. Sasha as they have written her thus far would want nothing to do with Abraham. Short recap: he’s annoying, she seems annoyed, he does stupid things including smoking a cigar on a bridge.

Meanwhile Daryl runs around in the woods helping these jerks who tied him up, because he’s a good guy. I haven’t spent a lot of time thinking about why Daryl is such a favorite but I think this article makes some good points. I’ve liked him a lot since season 2 (?) where he went out on his lone quest to find Sophia for Carol. #teamdaryl (By the way, I wore my Daryl t-shirt by Rob Go yesterday, by happy coincidence!)

There is some talk in the woods about not wanting to kneel anymore and earning what they took, which Daryl doesn’t understand. They seem to be insisting that he is someone he’s not. When they finally understand he isn’t (because the people they’re actually afraid of show up) he tells them about how he’s from someplace else where people aren’t about being harsh and making them “kneel” etc.

Daryl, shhhhhh. I know you’re a good guy and you’re kind of the community recruiter along with Aaron, but you don’t know that you want to recruit these people.

Of course, we find out he should have left a little sooner, like, maybe not taken them to his motorcycle.

Let’s just say there should be some pretty interesting things to come, and I don’t think we’ve seen the last of these characters.

Below are spoilers – so skip to the comments if you’re not a comic reader.

What did you think? Oh, and the big talk of the episode – who is that on the walkie at the end and what are they saying? Leave your comments below!

Comic spoilers below, only read if you don’t care about them or if you’ve already read the comics.

First, obviously all this “we earned what we took” and talk of rules, and of harsh leadership and not wanting to “kneel” anymore is pretty strong foreshadowing for Negan and The Saviors.

(By the way, in case you missed it, Jeffrey Dean Morgan has been cast to play Negan.)

I didn’t even think of looking into this, because honestly I thought the characters Daryl ran into in the woods were just to foreshadow future happenings and not important in and of themselves, but because some people on the Internet pay way more attention to everything than me, I can now tell you that it appears that they included Dwight and Sherry – Dwight of course being the person who in the comics helps Rick overthrow Negan, and later becomes the leader of The Saviors. Sherry is his wife in the comic. You can find confirmation here on IMBD.

In addition, there is some talk apparently that the voice on the walkie at the end might be Dwight, because he took Daryl’s bag which had his walkie-talkie in it. I’m not so sure how likely I think that is, but it’s an interesting option. Most people think it’s Glenn. But that’s a touchy subject here. Ha.

Here is a YouTube video discussing the theory that it’s Dwight on the walkie talkie.