SPOILERS AHEAD!!!
A calm retreat this week, or is it? On opening, we see Tara has been washed up at sea, onto the beach somewhere…I don’t know. Is it Florida? Where is it? I initially got confused since at the end when she walks back to Alexandria, it barely takes her long at all. And as far as I know, Alexandria is very far from the sea. Anyway, as I was saying.
She’s found by two new female characters, one of whom we see more of than the other. The youngest insists on killing her (who later Tara shoots her the middle finger, and boy was that funny!), but Cindy, the oldest, says no. They thought she was a ‘bobber’ at first, which is what they call ‘walkers’. I laughed at that. They have a rule, apparently, that they are to kill any strangers on sight. So it was something to see, as they spared her.
When Tara wakes up, she sneaks after the Cindy, looking to see where she is and comes across a settlement full of women. Oceanside. A signal goes off, and then she’s being hunted. She’s tied up and questioned. Tara initially lies about where she’s from and says she was on a fishing boat named Larder. Until she’s told that a Larder is where meat are kept cold. Oops.
We see a number of flashbacks to how Tara ended up in that settlement. She’d been travelling with Heath, who we also haven’t seen much of lately – and we don’t see much this time, either – for about two weeks, looking for supplies. They find a bridge with a mound of sand and when Tara pulls at what she thinks is a bag, the mound collapses and out pop a load of walkers. So naturally they’re under attack and Tara falls off the bridge.
Turns out all the men were killed by Negan and his men aka The Saviours. It really is a small world, after all.
Tara weasels her way out of the camp, a few of them go with her to find her friend, but she manages to escape her chauffeurs with only Cindy (who helped her escape) to keep her company. It’s worrying that when she gets back to the bridge, Heath is nowhere in sight, and it’s jarring when they jump to a flashback because there was hardly any way to tell it was one, other than the fact there weren’t many walkers in one shot, but loads in the other. Anyway, Heath is walking – driving? – somewhere with no glasses, as they’re lying on the ground. Broken. It’ll be interesting to see if he turns up alive.
Back in Alexandria – after a surprisingly short clip of her walking – Tara finds out that Denise, Glenn and Abraham are all dead. It’s been only two weeks…but it feels like years for us, since Denise died back in season 6. I know a lot of people claimed this episode was boring, but actually, I found it fascinating. I enjoy the times we see other characters and their character development. It doesn’t have to be blood and guts all the time to be deemed worthy. Some people are just ungrateful, in my opinion. I look forward to next week, though, as we see more of Negan.