The Red Machete
At the onset of the Zombie Apocalypse, a young man is running through a hardware store as a walker chases him. Stopping to grab a red-handled machete on the wall, he struggles to rip it out of its packaging while fending off the walker. After freeing it from the packaging, he triumphantly stabs it into the walker's chest... which has no effect. The young man is quickly set upon and eaten, while a family scavenging the store at the same time sees what's happened and retrieves the weapon before leaving.
The father, David, and his two daughters, Alyssa and Mandy, spend time scavenging to survive, and David demonstrates how the machete can be used to effectively kill walkers. Seeing that Mandy is interested in what's happening, David gives her the machete for protection.
In a Training Montage, Mandy learns to use the weapon effectively on a stump, while the family's supplies dwindle and Alyssa listens to her CD player. Upon realizing that their food stocks have run out, David leads a foraging mission to a nearby store, but as they run to escape, walkers pursue them before grabbing Alyssa By the Hair and devouring her, prompting Mandy to scream in response. Soon after, her father cuts her hair short in order to ensure that the same thing doesn't happen to her.
The despairing Mandy and David build a grave for Alyssa, and continue to train and catch fish from nearby rivers and creeks. At some point, David also carves Mandy's name into the handle after she saw him carve Alyssa's gravestone. Some time later, while building an alert system to warn them of approaching walkers, David is bitten by a walker he tied up when it is able to loosen its bonds. Mandy runs back to find her father and is horrified to discover his wound when he reveals it. David later succumbs to his wounds, and Mandy stabs him to prevent him from reanimating. She later builds a second grave alongside Alyssa's.
Going back home afterwards, Mandy passes the walker, still tied up in front of their house, and goes inside while setting the machete down in her room. She is startled when a group of three men approach the house, setting off the alert system she and David had installed. Mandy hides, while one of the survivors enters the house, roots around her room and takes the machete and backpack before leaving.
The survivor that took the machete, Derek, eventually separates from his two companions. He opens the backpack and discovers Alyssa's former CD player, which he uses while cleaning the dinged-up and bloodstained machete with baking soda and water. He later wraps red tape around the machete's handle, covering Mandy's name, before a female walker ambushes and kills him after he stabs it through the chest.
The walker, now with the machete embedded in her chest, wanders the Georgia countryside for many months, joining and leaving packs of walkers and losing an arm in the process. Some time afterwards, while wandering alone, the walker gets punched in the face and knocked down by... Joe, the leader of the Claimers. Joe pulls the weapon out of the walker's chest and yells, "Claimed!", before dispatching it.
Joe and the Claimers pillage the countryside, roaming through camps and picking up supplies, and watching fellow survivors get devoured while they stand back and watch dispassionately. A while later, Joe, Tony and the rest of the Claimers interrupt a pair of thieves attempting to steal from their camp, and chop off the male thief's hand before executing them both.
Joe packs the machete into his bag just before he goes to intercept a group travelling along nearby train tracks - revealed to be Rick Grimes and other members of his group. In an animated Montage, Rick discovers the weapon in Joe's bag, along with other supplies, and carries it with him for several weeks, using it to kill Gareth and the Hunters in the church used by Father Gabriel, holding it while performing a Mercy Kill on Officer Lamson in Atlanta and having it with him in the abandoned barn when walkers attempt to break in during a heavy rainstorm. The weapon is eventually brought to Alexandria, where it is placed in the town's armory.
The machete is later among the weapons seized by The Saviors during their first visit to collect supplies in Alexandria. After being glimpsed by Negan and other members of the Saviors, the weapon and others are brought to Jerel, a worker in the Sanctuary's arsenal. Recognizing the potential usefulness of the weapon and being disillusioned with his surroundings, Jerel decides to flee from the Saviors. After spending time trying to survive on his own, he is shot and killed by an unknown party while fleeing from them. Jerod later reanimates and wanders off, leaving the machete (which he was using as a last-ditch weapon) behind.
More time passes, and the machete stays embedded in the grass as various groups of survivors and walkers pass by it in the distance. Eventually, the weapon is found... by Mandy, now older and wiser. She picks up the weapon and stares at it intently before walking off with it.
Upon removing the tape from the handle, she discovers that it's her old weapon, and uses it to dispatch a pair of walkers passing by. Soon after, she walks back to her old family home, which has fallen into disrepair and damage after so much time. Inside, she looks through the old house before going back to her room and seeing her and her sister's sleeping bags on the floor. Suddenly, Mandy is surprised by a walker, which leaps at her and causes her to drop the machete. After fighting it off, Mandy recovers the machete and finally kills it.
Having achieved a measure of peace after her father and sister's deaths, Mandy walks back to their graves and embeds the machete in front of their tombstones, before walking off to parts unknown...
Some time later, an unseen figure walks up to the machete and recovers it before walking off...
Tropes:
- Action Girl: Mandy, who (after the death of her father and sister) survives on her own for several years. She shows no lack of proficiency when she recovers her original machete, easily using it to dispatch a pair of zombies encroaching on her position.
- All There in the Manual: Like the other webisodes, this series explains the origins of the "red machete" used by Rick throughout the fifth season. Presuming that several hints in The Stinger are true, it is also the weapon used by Alpha throughout Season Nine, which she can be seen holding in several episodes.
- An Arm and a Leg: A thief attempting to steal from the Claimers has left hand lopped off by Joe.
- Art Shift: The machete's whereabouts, from the point in which Rick recovers the machete after confronting the Claimers to the point where it's taken by the Saviors, is shown in an animated Montage.
- Behind the Black: A walker jumps onto Mandy's back in the final part, having seemingly snuck up unseen and unheard in the family house.
- The Cameo: Both Joe and Tony (members of the Claimers) appear in the second and third webisodes.
- Chekhov's Gunman: The same walker who bit David (set up as part of trap to warn the family of approaching danger) later saves Mandy's life when it alerts her to the trio of survivors who are raiding the house in the following webisode.
- Children Are Innocent: Alyssa appears to have little experience or understanding of the apocalypse (given that she's a kid who is likely 10-12 years old) and spends most of her time listening to her CD player while her sister and father forage and train. As a result, she's the first casualty of the trio, being caught By the Hair and devoured while fleeing during a scavenging run.
- Continuity Porn: To events and scenes from throughout the show's run, including several throughout Seasons Four, Five and Seven, along with places like Terminus and the Sanctuary.
- Contrived Coincidence: The Episode. The red machete passes through the hands of multiple survivors after Mandy loses it, including Joe, Rick and The Saviors before she eventually discovers it randomly in a field, and the webisode ends with her embedding the machete at the gravesite of her fallen father and sister. Given The Stinger, the fact that the series was produced prior to Season 9 of the main series (which introduced the Whisperers) and given clues in both the webisodes and series proper, it implied that Alpha took the machete (which would also likely mean it was the same weapon used to kill multiple members of Rick's former party in the second-to-last episode of the ninth season.
- Death of a Child: Right from the get-go. Alyssa is grabbed by the hair and killed within the first webisode to demonstrate to Mandy how dangerous the walkers are.
- Heroic Mute: Implied, as Mandy is never seen speaking with anyone else on-screen, and never speaks with anyone or expresses interest in talking any time afterwards.
- Hero of Another Story: Mandy is shown to have survived from the onset of the apocalypse (prior to Season One of the series) to at least somewhere around Season Seven, having recovered her original machete at some point after it was left behind by a member of the Saviors who was shot and killed. What she was doing during that time isn't known, but given how she expresses little interest in keeping the weapon beyond a pair of encounters, it is implied that she has developed other combat and survival skills in that time.
- Idiot Ball:
- David ties a walker up, then crouches right next to it trying to rig up a warning system while the walker snarls and snaps at him. Three guesses as to what happens next.
- Stabbing a walker in the chest at the onset of the Zombie Apocalypse and expecting it to die, instead of a No-Sell? Understandable. Sitting in a forest, wearing headphones while listening to music and cleaning a weapon (and making noise), thus drawing a walker to your position before trying the exact same thing? Much less understandable.
- Important Haircut: Much like the Telltale video game, a female character gets her hair cut short by a parental figure after seeing firsthand what the walkers can do to people with long hair.
- Leave Him to Me!: Utilized when Joe personally grabs the machete to lop off the hand of a thief before executing him.
- Machete Mayhem: The entire episode deals with the origins and exploits of a single inanimate item — a red machete, which is used to great effect by different survivors throughout the apocalypse. Mandy utilizes the machete to great effect during her training. When she recovers the weapon two years later, she effortlessly takes out a pair of walkers without breaking a sweat.
- Named Weapons: Mandy carves her own name into the weapon, which (after being taped over and used by various individuals) she later discovers at the end of the webisodes.
- Plot Hole: The webisodes set up one regarding the geography of the action taking place. As the series moved away from Georgia completely in "What's Happened and What's Going On", it turns into a Contrived Coincidence that Jerel (who was originally stationed at the Sanctuary in Virginia) fled far enough back into Georgia that when he died, his weapon was found by Mandy.
- Rewarded as a Traitor Deserves: Jerel is shot and killed soon after abandoning the Sanctuary, though it's not clear if the Saviors tracked him down or someone else.
- Scarred Equipment: Played with. The bloodstained machete is later cleaned up and has the handle wrapped with red tape by a survivor... and then is embedded in the chest of a walker for several months.
- Small Role, Big Impact: The titular red machete achieves a level of prominence unmatched by any other weapon besides Rick's Colt Python, Daryl's crossbow and Michonne's katana, being used in several key events throughout the series' history. Initially recovered by a family from a hardware store, it is given an etched name for its owner, Mandy, and later ends up in the hands of Joe, the leader of the Claimers, before being recovered by Rick Grimes. Rick subsequently uses it throughout the entirety of the fifth season before its eventually taken by the Saviors during their first visit to Alexandria, in Season Seven's "Service". It is later abandoned after the Savior carrying it is killed, and recovered by Mandy, who uses it briefly before embedding it at the gravesite of her fallen family. If the hints given by The Stinger are true, it is recovered by Alpha, who uses it at the onset of the Whisperer War, and is more than likely the weapon she used to behead several members of the AHK territories.
- Sole Survivor: Mandy, after the death of her family. Two years on from the outbreak, she's still surviving on her own.
- Tempting Fate: The two thieves who attempt to rob the Claimers in the middle of the night. They are caught and one has his hand lopped off before they're executed.
- Trash the Set: When Mandy returns to her family home in the final webisode, after an in-universe period of at least two years, the interior is completely dilapidated and rundown, while the roof is beginning to cave in. Mandy abandons the home for good after dispatching a walker inside the house.
- Trauma Conga Line: Mandy. She witnesses a hapless teen get ripped apart by a walker in a hardware store, watches her sister get grabbed By the Hair and Devoured by the Horde in front of her, lapses into a Despair Event Horizon, sees her father get bit by a walker (and seemingly puts him down), nearly gets caught when Disaster Scavengers raid her family home and take her weapon, spends a good two years surviving on her own, and when she miraculously finds her original weapon and goes back to visit her family home, she's attacked by a walker in the bedroom where she slept.
- The Voiceless: Mandy is the only known protagonist in the television franchise that doesn't speak a word — while she does scream after Alyssa dies, the sound is cut out so that the audience can't hear her.
- We Hardly Knew Ye: Alyssa and Jerel are killed off in their first appearance, with virtually no characterization beyond "pre-teen girl who listens to music" and "member of the Saviors who gets fed up and flees".
- What Happened to the Mouse?: We never find out where Mandy went after she left the machete at her family's gravesite.
- You Can't Go Home Again: Played with. It's made clear that, up until she visits her old family home in the final webisode, Mandy had abandoned the house after the trio of Disaster Scavengers raided the place and stole her machete and Alyssa's old backpack. She later goes back to the home, which is in disrepair, and looks on at her old bedroom and kitchen before she dispatches a walker. She later leaves it behind completely and plants the machete at her family's gravesite before departing for parts unknown...
