Episode 404: TWD - The Ones Who Live - E5 - Become

Music.

Welcome reanimated fans to this week's episode. I am H.A. Conrad coming to you from Brooklyn and joining me is my intrepid co-host from the West Coast, Stuart Tiffin. Hello, Stuart. Hello. Hi. How are you doing? We're going to be talking today about a couple of news items and then we're getting into our recap review of Become, the fifth episode of The Ones Who Live. Some interesting names attached to this particular episode. episode, Michael Satra-Zamas and Gabriel Lanas and Matthew Negrete.

Negrete? I don't know why. I assume that he has an extra A at the end of his name, but he might not. Let's talk a little bit about some of our news items.

I mean, I don't know that this should have been a shock to anybody, but the Marvel zombie animated series, they have confirmed that it's going to be you know the the tvma rating which i don't know how it could be anything other than sleep but were you surprised by this not no no not entirely but it was yeah i guess what i'm kind of thinking now is i need to re-watch the what if episode did that have a tvma rating for instance no

but it probably should have and if it didn't if it didn't then does this mean they're They're going to be like amping up the show, making it even more gross. And one of the things we now can understand is that they're basically picking up from where that episode ended. And I think there were a couple of survivors and there was a zombie Thanos. You know, they've got this huge catalog of superheroes and and just normal dudes like Eric Wu.

Jim, sorry, Jimmy Wu, who can fill in and get, you know, be a hero for as long or as short a time as they want them to be on the show. And then kill him off. So it's kind of, I think it's, what a cool exercise it must have been for the writer's room to be like, wait, we've already killed off the Hulk.

Everybody else, you know, like Scarlet Witch, Captain America, Iron Man, off the board. Who else do we got? And so they're going into their, and I know, I don't know enough about Marvel or comics to speak intelligently about this. I know they have a lot of other people that they can bring in. And so that's what they're going to be doing. And kill. And kill. So we'll see what happens with that.

I am curious to see, I mean, it's interesting just how much play this particular... Bit of news has gotten so i'm guessing they're just trying to tease this up a little bit and be like it's going to be even more like intense and whatever and it's it is supposed to have a 2024 release which is interesting considering it's already like the end of the second the first quarter and we don't have a trailer a real trailer and we don't have a release date so.

That for disney that feels a little slow but yeah well and then so we'll see so maybe they're just trying to tease this out a little bit but we will we will keep tabs on this and certainly we'll be reviewing it once it actually gets released another sort.

Of anticipated not sort of but well for us a very much anticipated sequel or second season is all of us are dead and this was we found a an article just about some ideas about what might happen in the second season and i i mean i think they tease this pretty i thought it was pretty obvious that they were teasing this in at the end of the first season which is that the humans are going to go after probably like the the half bees and there's going to be a lot of like interplay

between the humans and you know the the survivors of this particular zombie apocalypse i think there's so much room left open in the end of that show that they can really take it just about anywhere with with the context that the main zombie threat has seems to have been welled you do have these half half zombie behalf humans and namra is talking is it namra i think it is she's at the end talking about how the others are out there and so

there is gonna yeah there's gonna be some plot about that but this is we have to grain of salt this this is screen rant and they only seem to write in massive speculation so true this is not based off of any official information oh no not at all i think they're just speculating a bit but it still got me really excited just in general about the idea of this show coming back and hopefully sooner rather than later. That's probably not this year. I'm just hoping that we get to see it.

In a good i don't know i hope they take their time with it so it is what we want it to be and they did they did talk a little bit how they were going to deal with the time jump and the the fact that obviously so much time has passed and this cast is not getting any younger so they're gonna have to deal with the time lapse in some way you know and you know we also know that some members of that cast were older than they are portraying the characters that they're portraying but even so So this is

a pretty significant amount of time to be passing between season one and season two. So I guess it remains to be seen what they do with that.

But speaking of time lapses and time warps, there was this, I found it odd, but there was this whole push about Screenbox now streaming Exit Humanity, which seemed a little weird to me since we reviewed this some time ago.

But this is why we ended up this is why we watched it is because of it had good reviews right but we all know that that's not what happened right obviously some people think it's good like this is bloody disgusting a source that we trust for for writing about horror and having good opinions and they're talking about it have how on fangoria it had a positive review as being a piece of cinema in quotes yeah but this is also anyway it was just odd.

I'm not quite sure where this is coming from, but I did not find this to be a piece of cinema myself. It was a piece of something, alright. I wasn't going to say it. It was too easy, too easy. But in any case, I guess maybe this is just teasing that it's there again. Maybe this is a little bit of advertising, but it did surprise me that Bloody Disgusting had these, honestly, somewhat glowing reviews.

Again, we were sort of shocked at what we saw when we watched this, but But anyway, I still recommend avoiding. But that's all I have to say about that. Do not recommend.

You cannot recommend that. But with that aside, let's talk about our episode five of The Ones Who Live Become, which is the penultimate episode in this spin-off series. So pretty crazy. Like the fact that it's already the second last episode, I feel like. Yowza. Yeah. And I mean, where we left the last episode was very hopeful. And I would say the start of this episode was actually fairly hopeful.

And very much the fun time, relaxed time in the candy store of 28 Days Later that we always point to as like these moments of joy that you sometimes see before the sort of horrific endings or whatever else you might like a break in the drama scene. And I would say the beginning of this episode is most certainly allowing the audience, but also allowing these characters, Rick and Michonne, to enjoy their time together, that they're reunited, they're on the same page.

It's, you know, really a couple of really like funny little moments where they find this tasteful nudes truck, which is like noodles, which actually I looked up and is actually a real noodle shop, apparently. You think it was product placement? Possibly. Because there was also the Johnny Walker.

Yeah so it might be product placement but you know i don't know have you ever heard of this comedian dave hill he's also a musician and he's got this whole thing about tasteful nudes and things like that and so anyway it just made me think of him i don't think he helps with the product placement but you never know he's everywhere but they there were moments with them and also these moments show where they are so they're in wyoming and supposedly

i think near their Yellowstone National Park is what they're trying to show. Like they have the geysers and things like that. Yeah. I did look this up because I was like, I didn't realize they were filming in Yellowstone and they are not.

In fact, it was filmed in New Jersey, but as Yellowstone. I guess the Pine Barrens can look like a sulfuric volcano area. Yeah. But, but still, I think that that was kind of an interesting thing where it places them in the country. Yeah. Cause I, it took me a while. I'm dumb, but like, so they went from Cascadia based. They're trying to go there. And Jada springs us up later in the episode. They're driving the most direct route to Virginia.

But I was like, wait, this, why, what are they doing? Driving from Philadelphia to Wyoming? Like I had forgotten where they were. So they were out on the West coast. It is a long way, but they're, you know, they mentioned when they picked up the yellow truck that they had enough fuel between with this hybrid truck to get home in one piece.

So that's also some pretty quick math by Michonne. And she's like, yeah, we can drive the eight days or however long it's going to take on these messed up roads. But yeah, so they're driving in the American West, which is a part of the country we haven't really seen or in the Rockies kind of area. It's kind of cool. It is cool. And it also gives them, you know, new kinds of walkers, which I thought was kind of an interesting idea.

Yeah, they're really trying to keep things mixed up. But these are not like these are not evolved. They are in a way but they've been introducing different kinds of walkers a lot like the ones that were on fire early on and now this one or these like geyser affected walkers that they talked about but we still have a big hole in this show shaped like climbers or the the black blood ones.

So, ongoing. I don't know. I don't know. There's nothing else to say about it other than, why does this feel like it's being developed by a bunch of people with different ideas? Well, because it is. Yeah, but that's why they have showrunners, right? I know, I know. But I think we have to set that aside for now.

We have no choice. we have no choice but to do so so we have them you know michonne and rick not just enjoying their time together but just they're a fully reunited team which we even have these moments we have a lot of moments with them in this show where they're showing that they are this united team but they're also having like the best run of luck that anybody's ever had on the walking dead right like finding ramen finding a machete just you

know they're having a great time like this this is like keys to a cabin finding toothpaste or whatever it is toothpaste which was a real deep cut i don't even remember that dialogue for that i do remember that so that was like a very deep cut which i was like oh nice nice accompanied by the line i was in love with my son's best friend which really tickled my heartstrings holy shit rick yeah yeah so but yeah they they're just having this extreme run of good luck and i feel

like they were sort of having a run of good luck in their previous honeymoon episode as gimple refers to it in the after show right the one where they went to the carnival then they land on a big pile of mres yeah so it's there's similarities but you know that when the walking dead does this it's about to pull the rug out from under you so you know we're we're versed enough.

In this show to be expecting it when i mean i didn't necessarily certainly know is going to be jadis in their cabin when they woke up because that seemed kind of improbable that she would be able to to do that but you're not that surprised when that ends up being the the twist the only thing i'm surprised by is the fact that she's able to get in there without them knowing anything that's kind of what i mean she's just why is she that sneaky.

But she apparently is that sneaky but before she even shows up though we have the interaction with the three survivors this is a very small cast on this episode it's basically six actors plus background and zombies and the background are just zombies so it's it's really tight from from that kind of storytelling perspective which i generally enjoy and i do think that this was well done the interaction with rick and michonne as

they're kind of riding on cloud nine with these survivors where where they run in deal with a difficult to kill zombie and then give the guys some noodles and. It's kind of an interesting scene, the way it plays out. What did you think? I did like it. I also liked that, basically, there's Rick and Michonne, and they're up against three people with guns, and it doesn't even faze them. They're not even worried.

They're not even scared, yeah. And it's so great, and it's just like, oh, really, are you guys really going to do this? And their matter-of-fact way of just dispatching them and then also taking the noodles back was pretty great. We knew that they were going to reappear at some point in this episode. Of course we did.

But wouldn't you kind of want to see this scenario play out opposite where rick and michonne are holding two people at gunpoint and the other people are completely non-phased by being at gunpoint and try to like take them out but end up just getting shot because it should be that easy like it's kind of it's kind of again improbable it's but then these are our heroes and so we you know this is fan service to some extent right but it also again

it sets up the episode a little bit it too neatly but it was fine and so that that was the interaction and them being like just tell us what we want to hear and we'll let you go pretty much yeah like talk about earmuffs rick rick is just like please or michonne or whoever it was just like please tell me you've learned a lesson and now we and then we will leave and the guy doesn't even do it at first he's like no helping people is how you get yourself killed and he's not he's like very stubbornly

not doing what they they want him to do like basically just telling you that they were going to show up later and do something dickish so but they were also just marked for death like you know they didn't look that they didn't look that great the woman was a little too desperate and ungrateful, yeah the guy was a little bit too much of a jerk so yep.

Too too much of a jerk to to be allowed to live and so they we do have like moments with them in their little cabin and there is again a moment of reprieve from the big bad world yeah i liked how they were debriefing the scene that had just happened in the woods too they were like oh and you know and michonne is having that moment that i've i've had watching the show being like these people survived all this time and they were gonna die unless we we had stepped in and done something.

That was it for them. It was just going to be all over. I thought that that was a maybe self-conscious writing, but it was cool to hear a character kind of just reflect on that while they opened their very branded bottle of whiskey. Right. And then the other thing I really noticed in this is that. You know, Rick said something like, I didn't expect you to take the noodles back.

But there's like this moment, and this is very telling just to me, just because he didn't necessarily agree or whatever but he's just always on team michonne and he has shown now he's just like there is no wavering on that front yeah so even if he was like oh i i would have left it with them he's still going to be united with her and then talk to her about it later versus in front of these people so i thought that that was an interesting moment as well and

that confirms something that he says to her which is look i didn't even know that i hadn't fully given up but i haven't i'm fully teamy shown and he says that and so this is just a couple of more little interesting things and again for the fans i suspect but confirming their full reunion.

And that they are totally and completely on the same team at this point so whatever else has gone on that is definitely apparent here and we see this play out in the rest of the episode and especially in the last confrontation with Jadis so so Jadis shows up in their cozy little nest and we also get some flashbacks with her in this episode yeah of but flashbacks flashbacks of previously seen footage here and there for and then this is a lot of new scenes that apparently have

been unfolding over the last three years between her and seth gilliam father gabriel which i was super happy to see him yes i will say i do have one teeny tiny little not even a gripe but i always have thought like the way that they show his romantic relationships are always incredibly strange but his relationship with jadis was always weird or ann or whatever you want to call her.

Because she had so many secrets so she was never actually very open with him and then yeah he was in a love triangle.

With rosita right right and yeah he's never had like just a normal normal relationship like it's always i mean i guess maybe he he's he loves the drama and maybe that's what it is but it's i did enjoy seeing him and i was glad that they actually played out some of this because i actually thought it gave a little bit more context and information about the fact that there was a bond between them Because, you know, when she kind of disappears and, you know, goes off into the CRM world,

there's just stuff with him that is unresolved. And so I was glad that they actually brought him into this and they made this a piece of this episode and the story. And I actually thought it made the story a lot richer as well. I agree. You needed to know that she was multidimensional because her dimensions on this show, they started to introduce them when she was in Alexandria, but then obviously she leaves the show at the same time as Andrew Lincoln.

So you kind of lose all of that. And then we see her in World Beyond and we see her in this show and she just seems like a big bad. So it was good to bring back some nuance to her character. So those were good scenes. Even though they did just feel like a confessional out in the woods that they apparently just did once a year. Yeah. But. But we also have a lot of. A lot of back and forth. And again, at least some, I think some reveal in terms of what's motivating her as a character.

And we get some of the information that I feel fills in some blanks that were bothering me. I'm not completely satisfied with them, but I thought that they at least tried to have some kind of a reasoning for all of her behavior during all this time. And so, you know, it is there are moments between her and Rick and Michonne where it's like, oh, my gosh, can't you just leave the people alone?

Right. Like that was my first thing when she shows up in their little apartment because it's sort of like why?

Like you you track them down here and and they actually give us that explanation which is that she's she truly believes the crm is going to be whatever it is that saves the world and she goes into ad nauseum a little bit about that particular explanation and the fact that she's super pissed that she thought rick had finally gotten the big picture from her point of view and then to have have him run off with Michonne was such a betrayal to her and to the CRM in her mind.

But then, you know, yes, that's what she's saying, but also she's been keeping a wedding ring around her neck. That's not hers at all. Like there's obviously like the show is letting us know that she might be saying that. And clearly by the end of the episode, we know like she's got other. Not motivations necessarily, but it's not that simple. It's not a straight line.

And, and I think you, you've said this, that she has some sort of obsession with rick and it's pretty clear like why would she be carrying a wedding ring that he'd never even seen before but that gabriel had picked up and been like this could be a good wedding ring for rick and michonne that that he then gives to her through through the course of their flashbacks together and then she's like oh yeah i should put this around

my neck on a shape what like how does how does that make any sense for you know clearly it's it's like it's It's very touching, but it's also super bizarre the way that that ring ends up with her and then with Rick by the end of this episode. Yeah, but I also thought there was a little bit of an implication that it was almost like Gabriel giving it to her from him.

So it's a little complicated. I definitely think she's holding a torch for Rick, but she is also holding a bit of a torch for Gabriel. Yeah, but Gabriel spends not a short amount of their time together talking up Rick's praises. Not Michonne's, even though she's also gone by the time I think they're having any of these conversations. Maybe, maybe, maybe not all of them. But the other thing we, you know, he is, he does not know Rick's alive.

Yeah. Yeah. He talks about him in the, in the past tense. Right. And so she manages to keep that piece of information to herself. So that is sort of, that is an interesting thing. And they're showing these, like they have this every year they meet up, have a little bit of tea. And I guess she confesses to Gabriel, all the horrible things that she has done.

That is sort of the implication. and gabriel keeps this secret from everybody else and he still is caring about her and holds a torch for her and believes that she can be better than even she thinks gets a little smooch for his for his troubles right before she threatens to kill him yeah i know how she rolls though so yeah so we have we have all that this going on the episode in her confrontation with rick and michonne own and it's also this idea i think that gabriel is

saying that he didn't fully believe that rick's dream of having this civilization and this plan and that you know marriage or whatever relationships or these things actually do matter and that he had doubted rick's vision and then watched rick sacrifice and believed it could happen and the thing is is that jadis i think is is conflicted because she was like, oh, but I'm going to go for the CRM because this is the vision that I think might actually work because they seem powerful, successful.

Have all the things in place to make that happen. But then hearing that from Gabriel makes her, I think, realize that there is that opportunity elsewhere. And that's partially why she's conflicted. We also remember that she lost all of her people. She's done a lot of pretty dark and horrible things. Mostly that she just talks about vaguely, Like we haven't seen her do other than be like a Gestapo for the CRM. Like, you know, secret police stuff. We don't see her do that much stuff on

this show. So it's mostly just not on this one. But we had we did see her in other things. The world beyond. Like I said, she was a Gestapo. She was like a Stasi. She was attacking her own people, not necessarily randos in the woods. But I mean, I think that's kind of what she's saying is that like she is not. She is doing these these things against her own people for the greater good.

And that's always like her backup reasoning in all of these things so i don't know we see her in this particular instance just monologuing endlessly which i did find tedious after a while but finally it's like but the things that are good about this is that ricky michonne are never like they're just kind of looking at each other and they are fully united and she sees it too yeah they they the amount of times that they leap into action without any dialogue and apparently

know what each other are doing it's only like two or three times in this episode it's still a lot it's kind of cool it's kind of wild but yeah she basically does the very annoying thing of she has the jump jump on them she could shoot them with the two guns she has one in each hand but instead she's like good morning i just wanted to wake you up to say thank you because you've you know by by letting me kill you you're gonna

save alexandria clearly she she didn't think that i don't know like you know the show wants us to think that she was conflicted and so that's why she woke them up so that they could have a long drawn out fight over the course of the episode. But honestly she should have just killed them and that would you know well wow what a way to end.

This show would have been just killing rick and michelle and going back and and maybe then feeling conflicted and taking over their mission to to take down the crm that could be interesting yeah, But and then, you know, she goes into all this reasoning, gives Rick these like tantalizing hints that he was going to get the Echelon briefing or debriefing. What do you think the odds are that he's still going to get briefed into the big secrets when he gets back?

Because they've been gone for days. Yeah, I think that, you know, this is going to be I don't know.

I think there i would be very doubtful about this particular thing happening just because there's got to be a lot of questions at this point like why didn't you do your i guess they can fake that the thing didn't work and that they found their way here i'm sure they'll come up with some fancy footwork too i mean he did lose his prb in the jump right and then their helicopter was blown up right um so there's but like yeah they're gonna but they're gonna show up on jadis is

helicopter without jadis right a couple of days after the crash and they did not like find a way to wave down the apache and they did then they were not there when jadis came back didn't she also say that she was here with a reclamation team she did so where were they i don't know. That is going to be interesting, to say the least, about what sort of lies they can come up with to make this worth it.

I think there's going to be a fair amount of suspicion from Beale and other people in Thorne about what's happening here. And so that's certainly going to play out.

Yeah i did like how you know they're they're the final confrontation between rick and michonne and and jadis is kind of drawn out and also weirdly a little comical they're they're like you know chasing her in this car chase and then and jimmy she's pretty injured she's got she got a hatchet stuck in her yeah like i honestly when when the shootout go happens She gets cut in the abdomen by Michonne and then Michonne is shooting at her and he's like hitting her hand.

Oh, I know why he's doing that. He doesn't want her. He doesn't want to kill her because of the dossier. But it does seem like they could have just walked out of the cabin and shot her in the leg and then interrogated her. So, yeah, but the car chase does happen. That's to get us back in touch with the three survivors because that's where Jadis ends up.

Also rick has been calling her ann and so is gabriel in the flashbacks and rick has been calling her and during this cabin scene and they they refer back to this later about how upset that made her and so rick is like doing some battlefield psych psychology and being like see how upset that made her i think she's still in there i think we gotta keep reasoning with her and so that turns It turns into one of those. Yeah, I mean, I was never a huge fan of the name Jadis.

So they're just like, yeah, this whole episode is a lot of just trying to figure out who is in there. And she is just trying to survive. Go ahead. The whole thing about Jadis and the name and the sort of origin thing of that is, you know, I don't know. This is... I mean, Chronicles of Narnia Jadis is like the first wife of Adam and all sorts of things going on there. So, like, there's a lot that they are putting into that name and sort of implying from that origin.

But so there's, you know, probably some kind of a redemption story that they're probably trying to lead into here and with the use of Jadis versus Anne.

But anyway i i do like how i i feel like pollyanna macintosh definitely like has great chemistry with rick and michonne and there is a lot of like weird understanding between these characters even though they are they are totally like on opposite paths i mean they are and they're not and i think I think that's one of the problems with this episode is that Jadis is somehow in the middle of the road and not, I mean, it's okay for a character not to be that convinced of their convictions.

But it just, it's like a weird, it's kind of a weird place for her to be. I feel like with a fairly short, like the flashbacks do a lot of the lifting to make us think that she's been having second thoughts because nothing else we've seen this show. Joe and the previous show did anything to tell us that. Right. Yeah. They have to make, they have to kind of get us to believe that she is teeter tottering in the, in the course of this one episode.

It's just a lot of lift. So I think that the context that I'm talking about that they give here is that she is a little bit in the middle of the road because she wants it both ways. And even though it may be ill advised and it may be, it feel like. And and Rick and Michonne call

her out on this. She thinks that by getting Rick to to be part of the CRM, by by blackmailing him essentially and honestly stealing his life away and in turn stealing part of Michonne's life and their children's life away, that she is ensuring a greater good, not just for CRM, but for Alexandria. Zandria. So she does think in some ways she can have it both ways. And we kind of get that from her conversations with Gabriel.

Like she doesn't want to lose any more people. She thinks that this is kind of a way to protect both, but that isn't how it works. And there's also things about the CRM that I think she is deliberately ignoring or almost like rationalizing in terms of the things that they do and rick and michonne call her out on that part so i i think that this is a character that is wildly unhappy and looking for a place to be and she thinks she's kind of found that and.

Exactly that that is the whole point with the whole scene between her and gabriel so i just might have i might have benefited from some like sad drinking whiskey alone scenes of jadis in the world beyond and earlier in this season right just some just a little breadcrumb i'm here and there to to show that she's unhappy it doesn't have to be drinking whiskey she could be skipping rocks on a lake i don't know right but i don't know so in any case i do think that the gabriel

scenes were meant to do that and i think they pretty successfully did it but like.

It's still kind of annoying and it's still like oh gosh if you had just edged a little bit over here with rick and michonne you three could have been unstoppable and i think that's a little bit of the point and maybe maybe the showrunners were trying to give some of the fans a little bit of hope that jadis actually is in some ways a mole or or acting in the greater good for alexandria but no she's just too complicated a character to kind of play that game so,

that would be her how many times had she been a double agent or you know like she's been a double but she has been so i don't think that that's an unreasonable expectation yeah but in any case we We do have her manipulating people until the very end. And so she, in her hatchet injured state, runs into the three survivors that Rikimichon had dealt with before.

Quickly recruits them with promises of bringing them into the CRM and gives them, I don't know where she got that rifle from, but apparently she just had a rifle the whole time. Gives one of them her rifle.

And then they set a trap in the visitor's center, which ends quite quickly with those three survivors getting munched on and Jadis kind of, like there's a couple of standoffs here where in one of them, you know, because Michonne still has a gun, Michonne shoots some walkers who are about to eat Jadis at one point and then. She's out of bullets, but then goes and gets the rifle.

And that's another standoff. And then doesn't shoot the walkers in time that time when the three survivors, ex-survivors, reanimate and give Jadis a big old munch. Big old munch on the neck. Did you have a moment where you thought the dossier might not exist, that she was just bluffing? Because I did have a moment. Sure. Sure. But then that was totally quickly put to rest in her final speech.

She does get the opportunity to make a final speech.

Yeah which you know i guess that was just as that was lucky that even though she was bit on the neck she was still able to she wasn't like bleeding arterially or anything they were able to kill the zombies before they really and she lays some pretty big truth bombs on them and also probably a lot more questions than answers because rick's she's suddenly like producing i will say that she's producing this ring that he's never seen that she tells gabriel she says gabriel thought

you believed you would do this and all this other stuff and And that was weird and strange. And I, and it's like too late to ask her any more questions. So she's like bleeding out. But I was actually expecting them to turn her into like a Walker very last second and then take her out. But that's not what happened. So. Yep. Pollyanna McIntosh just gets to get shot in the head and fall back on a pile of, of zombie pillows, which is probably not too bad of a place to die as a, as an actor.

Rick, do you notice he like turns his head away as he's shooting her? He can't even look. Which I thought was interesting. It's also been cool watching Andrew Lincoln navigate having one hand. Like there was something he was doing one handed. Oh, it was like getting the bullets out of the revolver when they were with the survivors. I just I love seeing that. Like, that's that's pretty cool. He's doing it left handed. And he's like, kind of having a hard time, not a hard time with it.

But he's you can see him having to work a little harder to do stuff because he actually only has one hand.

So i don't know that's a really small detail but it's the kind of thing that makes me happy, yeah yeah so then the episode kind of ends with there there's a couple of scenes in this episode where rick and michonne are walking through the woods and talking way too loud to each other i don't know if you notice those yeah like way too loud so walking in the woods toward the helicopter, she rick and michonne get on their knees and i don't know who's gonna wear the

ring i guess Mishonis, but basically promise each other to each other. And then there's a scene with Gabriel sitting by the stream waiting for Jadis to show up and looking sad because she's definitely not showing up this year. And oh, I got a daughter. Hey, Marigold. Sweet Pete, I'm doing the podcast. Love you. Just nods and closes the door.

Okay. But yeah. And then the helicopter is flying away from the geysers is the last scene we have. And we do know that Rick is now a helicopter pilot. That's basically the one thing, really valuable thing, potentially valuable thing that you got from the CRM is he's now a helicopter pilot. That's cool. That's true. That's true. So now he can, you know, do what he needs to do to get them back.

Yeah. So unanswered questions I have are, will Beale really trust them if they show up and he's going to show up with Michonne? Or maybe she'll be in disguise because the looking ahead doesn't actually have her out of costume.

Tomb she's in like a crm soldier uniform will be beal really trust him enough to give him the red end speech did did jadis have other crm soldiers with her and are they are we going to see how that interaction went like maybe not since the helicopter's already in the air, when the episode ends and otherwise did jadis just take a helicopter out to the forest by herself self yeah that's what's unclear seems a little unclear and it might not be huge or big enough to warrant a lot of discussion but

you know actually i'm thinking back to the cold open with father gabriel walking through the woods when a couple of helicopters he hears a helicopter fly over that was almost certainly jadis's helicopter yep i just put that together because i'm a very slow low person interesting so i guess she has been just flying helicopters around in her culottes, her outfit was all of her outfits to go visit father gabriel were a little bit weird.

Yeah do you remember what she was wearing yeah like these weird like kind of like long.

Flowy things like she was always out of the crm stuff her hair was just a little bit messed up a little more a little more textured a little layered yeah her hair was was a little little different she was wearing the massive dress pants culottes right isn't that what those are called and then in one in one of the visits and then another one she's wearing just like a super long shirt with only like three buttons at the top done up like what

well it's all back to her weird artsy i guess where i suppose yeah she and in her goodbye speech she also gets to give that like kind of there's a lot of flashbacks of the trash yard people and how she was happiest when she was an artist and I think that that was kind of cool for her to get to say. Hmm. Otherwise, do you have any other thoughts about this episode or what? What do you think we're going to do? Any predictions about the next one? Is it all going to end?

Are they going to take down the CRM in one episode? I don't think so. But I think it's going to just I think it's going to play into something, whatever other spinoff or maybe something with Carol and Daryl.

I don't know. But I'm clearly they show in the trailers for this episode or the sort of like, there's going to be a showdown with Beale and Thorne. And we're gonna probably have a like, there's going to be some kind of like, reckoning, but I don't know what kind of a reckoning. Who's going to get reckoned with? I don't know. But I mean, I could see Rick and Michonne sacrificing themselves into the sunset. Totally. And maybe. Thelma and Louise style? Yeah, maybe. That's kind of what I'm guessing.

I just don't think they get to have a happy ending and go back to their kids. That doesn't feel like in line with Walking Dead. It kind of doesn't. So. That sucks for the kids. It does. But we'll have to see. I could be wrong, but it doesn't feel like I am.

So what do you think yeah i you know i'm terrible at trying to guess this stuff but, yeah i think that i think they just are getting set up for another season i don't know for sure that it's been picked up but i think that there's going to be they're not going to get home they're going to accomplish something but i don't think you can show of military being taken down in one episode. Do you think it's going to be like Quantum Leap style where Sam never gets home?

That's just so sad. Yeah, I don't know. Honestly, I think there is a version of this where they do get home. Maybe. Yeah, but... Because anything else would be just the cruelty at the end of this kind of franchise would never not rule. They're never cruel. So I don't know. We'll have to see what happens. But I hope they're setting it up for another season. I just feel like Andrew Lincoln and Danai Gurira, their involvement in this.

And it feels like it feels like a Christopher Eccleston one season of Doctor Who and kind of done like that they were promised this and then they will move on. But maybe maybe it's not that. And I could be wrong, but I it has been so enjoyable to watch those characters that obviously my hope is that it will get picked up for a second season and that they are on board.

But they keep being and maybe this is just subterfuge on their their part that it makes it feel like there's only one season i just it could go either way i guess but let's hope for a second season i hope i'm wrong yeah unless unless they actually do manage to wrap everything up in one episode i just think that's that would be a real tall tall order and there's nothing i don't see anything online that suggests that there is another one in the works at least nothing publicly announced and

maybe they're doing that because to announce it would sort of spoil their final episode so they're not going to do that until later but they have a habit of renewing things early on this in this franchise so yeah i guess we'll have to wait and see and you know what let us know yeah are you good anything else you want to say aj on this episode no i think i think so far and and i don't think that the last episode will let us down let's hope not but this This has been such a fun ride.

I've really enjoyed it. I think that it's been...

Really well put together, even with some of the little nits that you and I have, but we'll always have nits because we're us. But I've just really enjoyed seeing these characters back together. And the storytelling in this episode has been great. So hopefully the last episode will basically solidify this as one of the best, I think, one of the best seasons of a Walking Dead franchise that we've seen, you know, as a spinoff. Yeah.

What do you think about that? I just realizing the symmetry of the season one of The Walking Dead being six episodes and now this being six episodes. I think that that's actually kind of poetic. I agree. I think so far we're it's firing on all cylinders.

This is kind of like a super group version of this show. It's like all the you look at the executive producer scroll on this and it's all the show runners. I think I don't remember if Angela Kang was on that list, but I think she is. It's just no, she's not. It's just like they have all the people who made this show great in the beginning or in the earlier seasons are there and they know the material so well and they can do such a good production that it's hard for them to miss.

So I think they're telling thoughtful stories and it's showing. It's good. It's good stuff. But if you've been watching out there in listener land, let us know what you're thinking about the show so far and let us know if you have predictions for next week. And you can email us those at reanimatedpodcast at gmail.com. And you can listen to other episodes of Reanimated the Podcast online at reanimated.podbean.com. That was good. You did such a good job.

H.A. Conrad, I've been doing this for a couple years. I still can't do it. Anyway, but yes, thanks everybody for listening. We'd love to hear your thoughts. And until next time, ciao. Alrighty, bye-bye. Music.