The Walking Dead splits its focus between Alexandria and Daryl’s mission in “Stalker”. Here’s our recap!
“Stalker” opens with Beta searching for Gamma. He arrives at a travel trailer in a pasture. He goes inside and finds two Whisperers who open up a secret passageway into the caves? Or maybe it’s a way to get across the border without being seen?
Cut to Coco being fussy at night and Rosita getting up to change her diaper. She turns around to see a Whisperer over her crib, but it’s all a nightmare. Gabriel’s voice comes over the radio, and the next thing we see is the gates opening.
Gamma is there to tell them that their group is in the cave.
Gabriel has a hard time dealing with this because it’s a lot of walkers to move so quickly, but when Gamma explains about wanting to see her nephew and that her sister is dead, he asks if she can identify this place on a map.
When she walks in, Rosita punches her and tells them to put her in the cell.
Rosita and Gabriel confront Gamma. Gabriel tells her that he can tell when people are holding this back, and if she doesn’t start telling the truth, they’re going to kill her like they did the other two Whisperers that have been in that cell.
“Why don’t you ask God what you should do with me?”
“I’ve spoken to God. He told me to hang you.”
Then Gamma comes clean about being the one to kill her sister for Alpha. She then tells him to bring her map.
With the committee gathered, Gabriel launches into an argument for why he brought Gamma inside the gates and what its purpose was.
“That’s why I brought her in her, so you could see?”
“See what?”
“That they’re cowards!”
Gabriel’s got Rick Grimes Terminus energy in this speech. He tells them to capture Whisperers and torture them to get information because they can break them. Meanwhile, Rosita looks on like she doesn’t know who he is, and this will probably push her into Eugene’s arms which is batshit crazy, but I’m going in expecting it.
Before they leave, Gabriel says that Rosita may need to stay back. She tells him that she’s fine, but he’s erratic. She wants to go out there because she feels Coco’s loss and wants to avenge it.
“Stalker” then finds us back in the cell with Gamma. She’s being questioned by Judith from the same perch where she had once questioned Negan. We get Gamma’s history and where she grew up. She also tells Judith that Alpha has a way to make you forget your past.
“There are echos left. Feelings. I was ordinary. That much I know. When it all went down, my sister and I kept making bad decisions. We needed someone to make them for us. Then we met Alpha.”
“You met the wrong person first. If you had met my mom and dad, you wouldn’t be in that cell. You don’t look like a monster to me.”
Rosita tells Judith it’s time to get inside and the conversation stops.
At the ASZ, they lose signal with the radios from the group that was sent out earlier, and all they hear is a herd is on the way.
Someone asks why they would send a herd now, and Gabriel says it’s because Alpha knows they have a defector giving them secrets.
Rosita freezes, and Gabriel puts her on fence duty. She says it was the right thing to do because she’s worried about them both dying and leaving Coco alone.
Once he’s outside the gates and finds the other crew, Gabriel realizes that they’ve been tricked. Everyone is dead and there aren’t any walkers at all.
Finally, we see where Beta’s tunnel led. It’s a hole that leads into the ASZ.
Beta makes his way through the ASZ, killing community members and letting them turn while he searches for Gamma. There’s no herd coming because Beta is inside the walls, making the herd from the ASZ’s own people.
Beta makes his way into the cell, and Gamma tells him that Alpha was wrong. This community isn’t like what she said. He’s pretty peeved about that because you don’t say negative things about the Alpha.
Beta tells her to step toward him, and he will take her to Alpha. Gamma’s hiding in the corner, refusing to move.
“All she wants is me in pain. You’re lying for her.”
“Step towards me.”
“I am not afraid of you.
“Yes, you are.”
At that moment, Laura (a former Savior) shows up and corners Beta. She tells Gamma to run for help. When she’s on the street, Judith calls for her inside the house.
Beta kills Laura, leaving her to turn, and goes inside to find Gamma.
As he’s making his way through the hall, Judith shoots him with Rick’s gun through the door. Gamma gets Judith and RJ out, but Beta grabs her leg and trips her. He’s been wearing a bullet proof vest. Duh.
Rosita turns up then. She and Beta get into a fight, and right before Beta kills Rosita, Gamma calls his name. She reminds Beta that Alpha wants her alive, and if he doesn’t let Rosita go, she’ll kill herself. She holds a knife to her own throat, waiting for him to move toward her.
Then it seems like all of the ASZ just lets them walk out because we pick back up Gamma and Beta as they’re walking down a dirt road together.
Gabriel and group come out of nowhere, and Beta runs off like a little bitch. Gamma’s on her knees and begs Gabriel to believe that she had nothing to do with this. He puts his gun up and they go back to the ASZ.
The next morning, Aaron comes back to the community. They ask him where everyone else is, but he never gives a direct answer about Daryl, Carol, Connie, Magna, Kelly, or Jerry’s whereabouts in “Stalker”.
“Stalker” ends with Rosita going to Hilltop, leaving Coco with Gabriel. Gamma gets into the back of the wagon with Rosita. Rosita introduces herself and sticks a hand out for her to shake, and Gamma introduces herself as Mary.
While all this has been happening, Daryl has been on the hunt for another opening to the caves in “Stalker”.
Daryl follows a Whisperer to another entrance to the cave and he sees Alpha. She’s walking out the horde, and Daryl gets into a creek bed and hides while they pass.
He starts to pick off the Whisperers one-by-one. He hurts Alpha badly, but she also hurts him, too.
Cut to Alpha walking along a road and finding an old gas station. She sees a bloody handprint and follows the trail to where Daryl is inside. He’s making a tourniquet and trying to pull the knife that Alpha stabbed in his leg out.
Alpha sits down by the door and bangs on the door to call in the walkers. She’s going to have them there to kill Daryl for her because she’s in no shape to even move after he stabbed her.
He kills two walkers, but the third one pins him. He pulls the knife from his leg to kill it, but that causes blood to pour from the wound. Daryl begins to lose consciousness.
In the middle of the night, Alpha speaks to Daryl in her own weird but truthful way.
“Pain made me. Pain made you. Pain made my Lydia.”
“You lost her. You drove her away because you didn’t love her.”
“What did you say? What did you say, boy? I can’t hear you. I’m all ears.”
Daryl doesn’t say anything else. He’s struggling for breath and to stay conscious. Alpha tries to walk toward him, but she collapses in the middle of the floor.
Suddenly, Lydia appears and holds her mother’s hand.
“Are you really here?”
“Yes, momma.”
“Don’t call me that. You know better.”
She goes on to say, “I am you, and you are me.” Lydia keeps holding her hand while her mom sings that awful song she did when Lydia was a kid. Then she put a knife in her daughter’s hand and tries to make Lydia stab her in the heart, but Lydia refuses.
“I’m not here for you.”
Lydia tells her mom she just wants to be human. What her mother never gave her. Alpha wakes up the following morning, and Lydia’s not there anymore and neither is Daryl.
On a shelf with Daryl’s knife is a message carved in the wood:
“Your way isn’t the only way.”
Later in the day, Daryl wakes up and he sees he’s with Lydia. He asks if she killed Alpha.
“If it was your father, could you have?”
—–
Back at the abandoned gas station, Alpha says she’s stronger than ever. Their horde will butcher them and their screams will be music to hear ears.
She does the Whisperer chant as the camera pans above her as “Stalker” ends.
“We bathe in blood. We are free. We love no one. We are free. We fear nothing. We are free. This is the end of the world. Now is the end of the world. We are the end of the world.”
Let us know what you thought of “Stalker”!
The Walking Dead airs Sundays at 9/8c on AMC.