SPOILERS FOR SEASON 2, EPISODE 6 FOLLOW!
By: Tyler Miller
First off, I want to apologize for not getting this recap out yesterday. Yesterday was a very busy day so I did not have the time to get this out, and for that you have my deepest apologies. Now with that out of the way let’s get into the recap!
It’s been a long road coming, but we’ve finally reached our intended destination of Mexico. Things kicked off with a church service taking place in Mexico, our gang’s intended destination. The people in the church take communion and then all go outside to gather weapons and head off somewhere when Strand’s lover Thomas comes and tries to get them to stop. It’s then when the church goers begin to start dying as Thomas watches, with the cause of their death being unknown.
Jumping over to our main crew, Travis and Chris are talking about how he killed Reed when Madison comes down and tells them that everyone has to go to the engine room because they have company coming and it’s not going to be good. Everyone is down there except for Strand and Louis who are making a deal with the border patrol. That deal goes south though, resulting in the border patrol members being killed and Louis getting shot as well. The other border patrol boats nearby begin shooting at the yacht while Strand tries to get them out of there. As they’re making their escape, Daniel goes to the bodies to stab them in the head so that they don’t turn. When he gets to Louis he begs him to not kill him along with Nick and Ofelia, and gives Daniel a coin with an owl on it to give to his mother when they make it to Mexico. Daniel instead tosses it overboard as he has some issue with the coin.
Some time later the group is on land and they come across the church from the beginning of the episode. A large group of walkers approaches them from all sides, and a big fight ensues. During the fight, a couple of notable things happen: Nick kills a child walker and feels really bad about it, Daniel grabs a child walker and has a flashback to a similar event in his past, and Chris stands and watches Madison get attacked by a walker and doesn’t help her at all. In fact, he watches and seems to be thinking that she deserves it.. Creepy much?
After taking out all the walkers, the group piles into a truck and Strand drives them to Thomas’ house. Finally our group has made it to their destination, and it looks like the paradise they always imagined it to be. They’re met by Celia, Louis’ mother, and she gives them a tour of the house with the condition that they leave their weapons with one of the house assistants. At this point each member of the group goes off and does their own thing. Strand goes to Thomas and discovers that he’s been bit in the arm, meaning that his death is inevitable. Meanwhile, Alicia is watching a movie when Chris comes in and demands that she doesn’t tell anyone about what happened at the church because he doesn’t want to hurt anyone. As for Nick, he comes across Celia and has a bit of food with her before his mother comes in and has him go somewhere else because she doesn’t really trust Celia.
Later that night, Alicia is half asleep on the couch when Madison comes in and reminisces on how Alicia used to do the same thing when she was younger. Alicia then decides to tell her mom about what Chris said/did, causing Madison to go to Travis and tell him about it. The two of them get into an argument about how to deal with it, but the two of them agree to help each other with Chris’ situation. Travis decides to sleep with Chris that night while Madison while sleep with Alicia so that everyone will be safe and apart from each other.
Meanwhile, Ofelia and Nick are at a shrine where she prays to her mother while Nick looks at a wooden owl that’s been carved into a nearby tree. The owl is the same one that was on Louis’ coin, and this causes Nick to remember back to when he woke up in the church in the first episode of the series. At the same time that they’re doing this, Daniel is snooping around and spots a kid put a dog into a chute. He follows the kid and sees that he’s talking to someone. The kid says that he’s talking to his mother and allows Daniel into the room where he sees the kid’s mother who’s actually a walker. And there are lots of other people that are all walkers as well.
Daniel immediately goes to Celia about this, and she reveals that those people were family and she sees them as people that are being hunted like monsters. To prevent that from happening, she wanted to shelter them which is why she has them. While she tells Daniel this, she finishes making the bread that is given during communion, causing Daniel to realize that she poisoned the churchgoers. She then leaves to take it to Thomas and Strand. As for Strand and Thomas, the two of them are trying to enjoy their last moments together with each other. We can even see how in love Strand is with Thomas with his willingness to commit suicide so that he can die and be with Thomas.
Celia comes in and nurses Thomas some before leaving again and coming across Nick. The two of them talk and she begins to impress some of her views and beliefs on him when it comes to the walkers, saying that she believes they aren’t dead and that they’re what comes after life (come on Nick, you really believe this?).
As the episode begins to close, Thomas finally dies and Strand is getting ready to kill himself as well. At the same time, Chris leaves his room while his dad is asleep and goes to Alicia/Madison’s room. He walks in and grabs a knife while they’re sleeping and prepares to do something when a gunshot goes off, waking Alicia and her mother. They catch Chris with the knife and he runs off somewhere. It’s then revealed that the gunshot was Strand shooting Thomas in the head and not committing suicide as well. What a depressing end to the episode.
Other thoughts:
- What’s up with that owl? It has to have some significance because (in addition to being creepy) it was spotlighted a couple times throughout the episode by Daniel and Nick.
- Celia and the reveal that there are walkers being kept on the land seems like a retread of the reveal with Hershel and his walker barn in season two of The Walking Dead. And I don’t necessarily mean that in a good way. Granted, Celia is taking things to the next level and is just a bad person that kills people, but this is a plot line that we already saw play out before. It’s only a matter of time before the walkers get out somehow, and when Daniel reveals it to the others it’ll cause nothing but fighting amongst members of the group. That is the last thing the show needs with the current issues going on now. Perhaps they’ll spice it up though and take things in a different direction with this plot line.
- Chris is going in a dark direction and it’s really interesting to see the way his arc goes. He totally wanted Madison to die at the start of the episode and I’m sure he was going to kill her and Alicia at the end if that gunshot didn’t go off. I wonder how everyone is going to deal with him now. What’ll really be interesting is if Travis ends up having to kill Chris because he’s doing something incredibly dark. Will it happen? Probably not, but it’d be interesting if that happened.
- What’s up with Daniel and his past? It seems to be coming back a lot now, so I hope we get a big reveal in terms of all of that stuff.
- Seeing Nick being messed up after killing that walker child was rough, since it shows how this world is really affecting him. What I don’t like though is how easily he’s buying into the crap that Celia is feeding him given what we know about his character. He’s never seemed like the type of person that would buy into what someone tells him, especially concerning the walkers since he’s been face to face with them and seen what they can do. I sincerely hope he comes to his senses ASAP. Madison! Tend to your son!
This was a slow episode and that totally seems appropriate given everything that’s happened in the past few weeks. After dealing with pirates that took their people and almost took their ship (and getting almost halfway through the season in the process) the group finally made it to Mexico, so it’s a good time to take a step back and slow things down some for an episode. Things seem like they’ll pick up a bit next week though with some dark secrets of this paradise being revealed.
TheComfySpot 