It’s been a long wait to find out what happened to everyone trapped in the cave surrounded by Alpha’s (Samantha Morton) wicked herd of walkers, as seen in the midseason finale.
But, the wait is finally over, and AMC delivered when it came to settling in and freeing the group rather than make viewers wait by turning their attention to other people within the communities.
Daryl has to get his friends out of the cave
Alpha asserts her authority immediately by making her presence known, which p*sses off Carol (Melissa McBride) even more. We know how well she deals with situations when she is all emotionally charged like that.
However, in a truly antagonistic move, Alpha leaves the group up to their own devices and puts her henchmen in charge of making sure they won’t escape.
This means the opposite happens, and the group trapped inside immediately set out, trying to find a way to escape now left to their own devices.
Immediately, they manage to find a way out, but, to be honest, it’s really hard to get nervous about their escape past the undead because AMC decided to take a leaf out of HBO’s book of crappy battles and stage the whole thing in the dark.
What you can see though, is Daryl (Norman Reedus) following the wind direction using a match. You can also hear everyone blaming Carol for getting them stuck down there.
Later, when they are all just chilling by a fire, Carol admits that she wants to cut Alpha up pretty bad rather than flat out murder her. Daryl tries to talk some reason into her and get her to give up on revenge-seeking.
However, considering there is a rumor going around that a later episode in Season 10 of The Walking Dead is titled “Look at the Flowers,” I am guessing Carol might be straight up lying to Daryl.
After their little rest, it’s time to crawl through some dark tunnels. This is mostly to point out the fact that Carol is claustrophobic.
Jerry (Cooper Andrews) then notices that a walker is crawling through the tunnel after him and promptly gets stuck. He tells the others to leave without him, but they won’t do that and manage to pull him free.
They then find some sort of rickety mine shaft that, by the sounds of it, must be the way out. The suspenseful music lets viewers know that it is dangerous, which is a good thing because we still can’t see sh*t.
Finally, they escape, and the battle begins in the light because Whisperers are stationed nearby. They manage to fight them off, but someone blows up the mine shaft and it looks like Connie (Lauren Ridloff) and Magna (Madia Hilker) are done for.
Kelly (Angel Theory) starts losing her sh*t while Carol totally admits fault.
Back at the Whisperers camp
Meanwhile, in the Whisperers camp, Alpha is discussing the fact that the group seemed to know exactly where to go looking for the herd.
Gamma (Thora Birch), who is looking as guilty as sin, is trying to play it cool, but Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) notices it. He then goes to Alpha and tells her to look inside her camp for spies and not at the communities.
He also makes it plainly clear that he believes Gamma is that spy. Alpha doesn’t believe him, and, honestly, I didn’t think she was that stupid.
Gamma promptly goes missing, and Alpha pretends like it was her idea all along that Gamma might be a spy and sends Beta (Ryan Hurst) out to find her.
While Beta is gone, Alpha takes Negan for a little walk in the woods, and when she tells him to take off his clothes, you can tell Negan thinks he is about to get killed. However, it turns out that Alpha is simply rewarding him for giving her the tip about Gamma.
So, wearing nothing but her walker mask, she offers herself up to him.
Negan is sound enough of mind to ask if it’s a praying mantis situation but then figures the hell with it, and I don’t think I have ever been so disturbed as having to watch Negan kissing Alpha while still wearing her mask.
Alpha to Negan: Take off your clothes
Negan: turns around to a naked Alpha with skin mask still on
Me: #thewalkingdead #twd pic.twitter.com/L7lTvlFk90— Beth Hannel (@bethhannel) February 24, 2020
The Walking Dead Season 10 returns with Episode 10 on Sunday, February 1, at 9/8c on AMC.