Walkers, wolves, and the winding road home.
By Matt Fowler
Warning: Full spoilers for the episode below.
Okay, so there a ton of things to talk about with “Thank You” – Season 6’s third installment of (what now looks to be) a four-part same day action adventure story involving the converging dangers of walkers and Wolves. An episode that – if we’re to believe our eyes – contained a huge character death, but I’ll get to that shortly.
Timeline-wise, I can’t quite make things line up exactly – but that just could be me. What I mean is, could Morgan really have gotten to Alexandria that quickly considering how long it took Michonne and the rest of them to trek back? Granted, they had injured to tend to (curse you cliched horror story twisted ankle and coward’s misplaced bullet!). Also, the gunshots everyone heard, when compared to when the horn stopped, felt like they happened way too late.
We want to hear it.
Man…unless there’s still MORE shooting going on back in town that we’re meant to see in next week’s episode. Anyhow, regardless, “Thank You” was another big, exciting gory death-fest that – unlike the first two episodes – actually landed on someone we deeply care about. So let’s fight back the tears and talk Glenn. A character who’s been in our lives since the second episode (and in the pilot as a voice – a moment that got a nice “dumbass” callback here). Sure, Daryl’s more of a the rugged badlands type, but Glenn’s the constant. The lover and the fighter. Brave, quick, and the best at navigating terrain. Until “Thank You,” it would seem.
But here’s where I get crazy and think that Glenn might not be dead.
Please, and I mean this, feel free to skip this chunk as there’s a good chance I’m out of my gourd. I mean, we saw Glenn’s guts getting ripped out.
Or did we?
Allow me to break down my thoughts. If only because it might be part of my grieving process.
- From a pure TV standpoint, would the The Walking Dead kill off Glenn like that and then still have fifteen more minutes left in an episode?
- Would the show also, in a sense, punish Glenn for sparing Nicholas’ life? And then for allowing Nicholas to accompany him on this last adventure? If we’re to buy that this all led to Glenn’s painful demise, is the takeaway here that no one – even Glenn – should show mercy? Which is totally possible, but a pretty grim message even for this series.
- Flip that around now, was Nicholas then never meant to redeem himself at all? Not even in death?
- I’m putting forth here that Nicholas did, unwittingly, save Glenn. Yes, he froze and was rendered useless (as he’d been having that issue all episode), but he also fell down on top of Glenn.
- When Glenn was being ripped to shreds, the angle made it look like guts were being pulled out of his chest, which seems off anatomy-wise. I could be wrong, but that might have been Nicholas’ torso that was being chomped up.
- Glenn dying would also mean that neither husband of the group that was trying to get home made it back. Again, from a TV angle this seems odd.
- (Slight comic spoiler) This moment was not in the comics, though that isn’t really an argument for or against. This show splinters off from the comics a lot.
- My Shaky Conclusion: Glenn lives – because Nicholas inadvertently became a body shield. And then his guts masked Glenn’s scent. Glenn and guts go together like Michonne and scowls
- Second conclusion – GLENN’S DEAD AND I”M WRONG AND EVERYTHING IS TERRIBLE!
Anyway, you’re the worst, Nick. Even though you tried to make things right – and even came face to face with the sins of your past – you were gross.
“Thank You” followed the Away Team as some tried to make it home and others tried to get out ahead of the herd and re-wrangle them. Daryl, who’s been way underutilized during these first episodes, made the call at the end not to go back to Rick. Prompted, of course, by Rick’s own speech about pushing forward and not making personal calls based on emotion. It looked like Daryl was turning back, but the reveal was that he’d really charged ahead and met back up with Abraham and Sasha.
We want to hear it.
Meanwhile, Rick took out a cluster of Wolves (the same a-holes that Morgan set free!) and found some baby food on them. So it looked like he was about to break his own rule, the one that he’d just speechified about, to save Judith. But the RV died and the herd descended upon him for the final pull up, pull out moment. A cool ending (especially Rick flat out murdering Wolves) that makes you wonder how Rick will survive (and what will happen to his injured hand!).
It was Michonne and Glenn’s trudge back to town that brought the most thrills though. The weak and the cowardly fell along the way (because they just do, Rick’s even called it out now as a show-rule), but so did those who tried in earnest. There were a lot of close calls here (the fence, the dumpster) as our heroes found themselves cornered after staying too long in a death trap of a podunk town.
We want to hear it.
During this trial, Heath (Straight Outta Compton’s Corey Hawkins) clashed with Michonne over what everyone’s best practices should be. But only, as she severely pointed out, because he didn’t/couldn’t know what to do because he’d never been forced to make a hard decision. Fairly quickly though, he would be. And he’d see his own blood-covered face and retroactively understand Michonne’s words. A lot of this felt like a war movie featuring hardened soldiers and new-to-the-front-lines privates crumbling under pressure. The prevailing idea is, I’d imagine, that one just can’t have a rule about saving people. You can try, but these decisions need to be made on the fly. In the moment. Context is important. And I’ll give a shout out to Annie here who basically told everyone to leave her to die after she fell for the umpteenth time.
We want to hear it.
The same goes for Scott, who also volunteered to be left behind at some point – though he did make it in the end. And – hey! – not to make a huge deal out of it but we did get to see three African American characters, and no one else, walk out this clusterf*** mostly intact. That’s not nothing for a show that’s been criticized in the past for possibly playing revolving doors with its black actors.
“Thank You” was a giant, action-packed odyssey filled with gruesome deaths (possibly a huge one *cries forever*), shocking moments (that Wolf bursting into the RV and shooting at Rick gave me a jump), and some memorable visuals (Glenn and Nick on top of the dumpster, regardless of outcome, was quite the sight). But none of this meant that I wasn’t going find the death of that one guy (sorry, I don’t know every random backgrounder’s name) very funny. You know, the guy who was complaining about Rick while they were running through the woods. The one who somehow allowed a walker to chomp down on his neck about a minute later, like an idiot. I’d like to think he was bit mid-complaint.
“Thank You” may have repeated more than a few well-worn Walking Dead themes regarding tough choices and those unfit for the zompocalypse, but it still thrilled in all the right ways. Though at times it was tough to figure how a group with a half hour lead on a herd could allow them to catch up. I know there were wounded folks among them, but it still felt like an avoidable error.
Also, and this is just me, I hope Glenn’s “death” does turn out to be a fake pass since it didn’t feel like it exactly got top billing here. If not, so be it, but a show exit this big should end an episode. Maybe I’m just being snobby.
