Season 6, Episode 12
- The Alexandrians begin their campaign against the Saviors.
Carol makes several batches of cookies, and hands them out to Francine and several other Alexandrians. She visits Tobin, who's pleased to see her, and she offers him a cookie she made with beets and acorns. They're interrupted by the return of the party from the Hilltop, and after handing over their new supplies to Olivia, Rick calls for a meeting in an hour, and informs Carol they have a new enemy.
Carol visits Sam's grave, and leaves a cookie. Morgan arrives and tries to talk to her, but Carol is having none of it and orders him to leave.
The Alexandrians are gathered in the church. Rick outlines their deal with the Hilltop to kill Negan and the Saviors in exchange for food and supplies. Insisting it's a group decision, Rick asks anyone who opposes to speak up. To nobody's surprise, Morgan does, and Rick and Aaron shut him down, refusing to allow another incident like the Wolf invasion to befall them. Morgan is overwhelmingly overruled by the crowd who agree with Rick to kill the Saviors before they find and subjugate them.
Carol visits Tobin, who is not going to join the fight. Tobin remarks that Carol is seen as the den mother of Alexandria... but she's something else to him. She scares him, but he respects how she can make the tough choices. They kiss, but Carol leaves soon afterward.
The group begins to make their preparations for war. Andy outlines an observatory that Craig was taken to, and is able to give a good layout of the place. Maggie elects to take part in the raid, since she's the one who brokered the deal. Jesus and Andy note that the only way they'll get in close without being shot on sight is if they bring in Gregory's head. Rick decides to decapitate a walker and use its' head as a decoy, and Jesus says he'll stay out of sight.
Meanwhile, Denise tells Tara she won't join since she's needed at Alexandria, and Tara says she's never done something like this before, and says she loves Denise. They kiss before Tara leaves. Elsewhere, Abraham is packing up his stuff when Rosita enters their room. Abe announces he's leaving. Rosita realizes what he means and angrily begs him to answer why. Abraham says it's just how it is, and that he only hooked up with her when they first met because he figured she was the last woman on earth... and now he knows she's not. He storms out leaving behind a crying Rosita, and Eugene's lame attempt to comfort her utterly fails.
The next day, a large contingent of the group is on the road on the way to the Saviors' compound. They stop, and Gabriel assures Rick he's ready for this. Glenn and Heath find a walker to use for the Gregory decoy, and Heath asks if he's nervous. Glenn says he is, especially since neither of them have ever taken a human life. Carol questions Rick as to why the pregnant Maggie is on this mission, and Rick says it was her choice. Rosita confronts Carol, wishing to expose Morgan's sheltering of Owen the Alpha Wolf to Rick, but Carol asks her to keep quiet since it will incriminate Denise.
That night, Andy drives up to the observatory, and announces he's brought back Gregory's head. The Saviors let him in, and ultimately they fall for the decoy and go to retrieve Craig. While one of them goes to fetch him, the rest of the group swarms in and silently kills the remaining Savior and hides his body. Once Craig is outside, they kill the other guard. The group files in, silently killing Saviors they find in their sleep as they search for the armory.
Glenn and Heath find a room, and the former is just able to muster up the courage to take his first human life, and has to do it for Heath as well. The two find to their horror several pictures on the wall of gory piles of blood and gore that were once human heads...
Outside, Tara tells Gabriel she lied to Denise about taking part in such a raid, but Jesus says she knows what she's fighting for.
The operation goes smoothly until Abe and Sasha are discovered by a Savior, who is able to sound the alarm before he's killed. A fierce battle breaks out between the Saviors and the Alexandrians. Outside, Craig is driven to safety, and Carol orders Maggie to stay put despite her wish to join the battle. Gabriel goes to help the others, and after reciting a prayer, executes a Savior on his own.
Glenn and Heath are chased into the Savior's armory, and they use their newfound supplies to annihilate a group of Saviors on their tail. The next morning, the group is relieved at their victory and exits the facility, though Michonne ponders which of the Saviors they've killed was Negan. Suddenly, a Savior tries to flee on none other than Daryl's motorcycle, but Daryl stops him. A woman orders Rick to stand down over the Savior's walkie-talkie, the group apparently surrounded.
The Savior tells Rick that they have Carol and Maggie captured, and suggests that they might want to discuss it...
- Actually Pretty Funny: Believe it or not, but Rick actually laughs about Gabriel's joke on how his priest uniform provides him camouflage in combat.
- Badass in Distress: Maggie and Carol get captured by the Saviors.
- Badass Preacher: Gabriel gives a prayer for one of the Saviors before gunning him down.
- Black-and-Grey Morality: Yes, the Saviors are murderous bullies that will steal your lunch. But does that justify slaughtering an entire compound of them just because they, as a group, have that reputation?
- The Bus Came Back: Daryl's stolen Cool Bike returns.
- Call-Back:
- Carol keeps a list of the people that she has killed from Seasons 4 to 6.
- Jesus tells Glenn and Heath that they're in "the Next World" like he did to Rick and Daryl.
- Continuity Nod:
- Carol visits Sam's grave after his death in "No Way Out", and is at it again with her cookies, which he constantly asked her for during Season 5 - and it was her morbid threat to him that she'd leave him to the walkers, or he could have cookies, that ultimately killed him.
- Rick and Morgan finally have an argument the promotional materials of the season hinted at.
- Aaron vows that he won't let another tragedy like the Wolf invasion in "JSS" happen on his watch, which he indirectly caused by accidentally leaving behind his backpack at a Wolf trap in "Conquer".
- Tara recalls her role in the fall of the prison back in "Too Far Gone".
- Rosita tells Carol that they should've called out Morgan for hiding Owen the Alpha Wolf from the group during the early half of the season.
- Dying Moment of Awesome: A rare villainous example. One of the Saviors mortally wounded by Sasha and Abraham manages to trigger the safe zone's alarm system to warn his buddies that they're in danger before succumbing to his wounds. Evil Is One Big, Happy Family indeed.
- Evil Is One Big, Happy Family: A dying Savior guard uses the last of his strength to trigger an alarm to warn his group that they're in danger.
- Eviler than Thou: After Rick punches the fake Walker Gregory head to break the nose, Andy comments that even though the Saviors are scary "those pricks got nothing on you."
- Faking the Dead: The group fakes Gregory's death in order to fool the Saviors guarding the base's entrance.
- Fan Disservice: The episode opens up with Carol killing a walker in a nightgown.
- Foreshadowing:
- One of the Savior guards whistles "Happy Birthday" to Andy. In the season finale, we learn in a morbid way that whistling seems to be a hobby amongst the Saviors.
- Notice the pictures of gore in one of the Saviors rooms. The person looking at the photos is Glenn, who ends up dying in exactly the same fashion in the Season 7 opener. To drive the point home, a Savior is even shown taking pictures of his headless body.
- The last person who had Daryl's Cool Bike was Dwight. However, it appears that the Saviors managed to claim it as their own, hinting at Dwight's return. He is reintroduced two episodes later, now leading his own group of Saviors.
- Hope Spot: At first it seems like Rick's group has successfully slaughtered all the Saviors...until another Savior contacts them and says they've captured Carol and Maggie.
- I Have Your Wife: Maggie and Carol are being held hostage by The Saviors.
- Kick the Dog: Abe isn't the kindest man on earth when he tells Rosita why he's leaving her.Abraham: When I first met you, I thought you were the last woman on Earth. You're not.
- Meaningful Echo: Rick telling his group to "kill 'em all," considering the fact that the last person to say those words was the Governor.
- Mood Whiplash: Abraham callously breaks up with Rosita and we see her crying her eyes out... And then we see Eugene eating one of Carol's cookies and commenting that they're chewy.
- Mythology Gag:
- Eugene awkwardly tries to make small talk with Rosita after Abraham leaves her, but Rosita shuts the door on him, winking at their relationship in the comics which started not long after her and Abe's break up (it remains to be seen if they will get together in the show).
- As a bit of Foreshadowing, Glenn and Heath find a collection of pictures of people's heads bashed in with something, alluding to the approaching debut of Negan.
- "Arsonist's Lullabye" by Hozier, the song that appeared in the first trailer for Season 6, is used towards the end of the episode.
- Nightmare Fetishist: The Saviors enjoy playing with dead bodies and collecting photos of Lucille's victims.
- Psychopathic Manchild: The two Saviors Andy barters with are downright absurd.
- Precision F-Strike: Rosita calls Morgan a hijo de puta, which in several dialects of Spanish means "motherfucker" - technically making this the first F-bomb dropped in the series. note
- Rewatch Bonus: Tara's farewell to Glenn at the end of the episode is the last time she'll see him alive. Her goodbye to Denise is also the last time she'll see her girlfriend alive.
- Rule of Symbolism: Tara makes a confession to a priest as Jesus listens and then offers her a bit of wisdom.
- Scary Black Man: The African-American Savior guard likes to play with severed heads.
- Ship Sinking: Abraham breaks up with Rosita.
- Ship Tease: Carol and Tobin have apparently gotten well acquainted during the Time Skip and share a kiss midway through the episode.
- Shoot the Dog: The raid against The Saviors is treated as such.
- Sir Swears-a-Lot: The Savior guards curse like there's no tomorrow.
- Slain in Their Sleep: This is the game plan for storming the compound. As can be expected, the Saviors began waking up in the middle of the assault.
- Storming the Castle: What Rick and his team do at the end of the episode.
- Sudden Downer Ending: Rick and his group succeed in helping Andy get Craig back, they infiltrate the Saviors' base and kill a large number of them with no casualties to their side. This seems like a good day for them, but then Daryl catches a surviving Savior with his motorcycle and Rick is contacted by a female Savior to stand down, because they have Carol and Maggie.
- Team Mom: Tobin refers to Carol as this for the Alexandrians.
- There Is No Kill Like Overkill: Glenn and Heath almost entirely annihilate the Saviors that chased them into the armory.
- Took a Level in Badass: Gabriel joins the mission to kill the Saviors and delivers a pretty chilling prayer before shooting a wounded Savior.
- Wham Line:Female Savior: We have a "Carol" and a "Maggie", we think you might wanna talk to us about that.
- Your Princess Is in Another Castle!: At the end of the episode, the gang has wiped out the Saviors in the compound, and they believe they've killed Negan too. However, a surviving Savior briefly makes a run for it, and the group is notified that they're surrounded and that Maggie and Carol have been captured.
