In last week’s episode of The Walking Dead, Eugene (Josh McDermitt) made the horrible realization that he was living a lie. Stephanie (Chelle Ramos) was not Stephanie, neither was the other Stephanie (Margot Bingham), who turned out to be called Max.
Are you confused yet?
Now, in Episode 12, viewers get to find out more about Max as the leader of the Commonwealth, Pamela Milton (Laila Robins), takes a tour of the great outdoors.
Meanwhile, Ezekiel (Khary Payton) gets some great news.
So, let’s take a look at how the latest episode of The Walking Dead unfolded.
Eugene’s love triangle continues
Episode 12 (The Lucky Ones) opens with an explainer behind Max turning up at the end of Episode 11.
Here, viewers learn that she found a banged-up radio and fixed it herself, and that’s how she met Eugene on the airways.
However, her brother, Mercer (Michael James Shaw), finds out about it, and so does Lance Hornsby (Josh Hamilton), and things get messy. That’s how Stephanie got involved, and Max is still pretty p**sed that Eugene just jumped right into Stephanie rather than work out she wasn’t the “real” one.
Eugene gets info overload so does a runner. He spends the rest of the episode super sad about it all before finally confronting Max and patching things up.
Ezekiel gets some good news
Ezekiel goes in for a routine check-up but, thanks to Carol’s (Melissa McBride’s) major suck-up to Lance, is now getting ready for surgery to remove his tumor.
Awesome news, right?
It sure is, but Ezekiel is uneasy because he knows the line is long and he has a debt to pay.
As soon as Carol visits him, he clues into what she’s done and is pretty sh**ty to her, stating that there are plenty of other people in the hospital in greater need than him.
Carol knows the truth of it, though, that his life number would be up well before his hospital number was and points out that Ezekiel is pretty damned awesome, and he should never look a gift horse in the mouth.
That’s pretty much all it takes for Ezekiel to agree and take the surgery. How he fares remains to be seen, though, and we’ll all have to wait until next week’s episode of The Walking Dead to find out more.
Pamela goes on tour
While all this is going on inside the Commonwealth, Pamela has taken a tour out into the wilds. She’s even donned a safari suit and hat for it — I s**t you not.
First, she stops in at Alexandria, and he’s not entirely convinced that Lance’s grand plan to expand the Commonwealth is all it’s cracked up to be — especially when a walker strolls into town.
Next, it’s on to Oceanside, where Pamela gets the beach experience. However, Oceanside refuses to join up with the Commonwealth since Hilltop isn’t.
It appears that Maggie (Lauren Cohan) is not very trusting of communities that look too good to be true.
I mean, she has a point. Maggie has been there ever since Season 2 of The Walking Dead, so she has had a hand in every new community that seemed awesome and wasn’t.
Lance does his very best to impress Maggie, so does Pamela, but she’s not buying it. After all, the Commonwealth is free with the information that everything costs in this new world, which makes the Hilltop leader uneasy.
At the end of the day, Maggie refuses to enter an alliance with the Commonwealth, and this causes a few of her members to leave because they are sick of roughing it.
But, considering how the Season 11 premiere ended with a tense stand-off between Maggie and the Commonwealth, it would appear Maggie is right about not trusting this community.
Finally, the episode finishes with Lance shooting walkers because his plan to become the leader of the three communities is pretty much shattered. And, honestly, the man looks seriously unhinged.
The Walking Dead airs Sundays at 9/8c on AMC.