So we didn’t exactly get anything seriously crazy out of tonight’s episode ofThe Walking Dead but that doesn’t mean it was any less exciting than the rest. We only have a couple of more episodes left if the season, this “All Out War” is definitely leading up to something massive. And in tonight’s glimpse of the upcoming episode we are clearly inching loser to that explosive finale that all fans of this show are expecting. Tonight’s Season 8 Episode 13 promo of The Walking Dead left me wanting more: because this war is anyone’s to win, or worse, to lose.
The Saviors are clearly on a mission here. With Negan as their fierce and ferocious leader, that team is dead set on doing some damage to Hilltop an the rest of the Alexandrians. In the promo for the upcoming episode of The Walking Dead, we saw the Hilltop clan bracing themselves for an attack by the Saviors. We kind of expected that to happen during tonight’s episode, but we have been teased yet again and will have to wait another week for that battle to happen. But when it happens, it looks like it’s going to be serious: that caravan of vans pulling up to the Hilltop aren’t coming for a picnic party.
We left off The Walking Dead ‘s Episode 12 with some major cliffhangers. In the episode prior to this one, Negan and his Saviors army planned an attack on the Hilltop with the intent of using zombie flesh to infect the rest of the Hilltop inhabitants and take over their territory. It was pretty clear to fans that there would be a major episode coming up this week. But tonight was not the extremely bloody episode that I personally expected, and I think most Walking Dead fans feel the same way.
Negan and Rick did end up meeting, but they didn’t exactly have the showdown that I was thinking would happen. Negan went on a rant about how he’s saved everyone from the threat of the apocalypse that he’s wanted to — the Sanctuary, the Hilltop, and Carl as well. Negan was on a mission to kill Rick and the rest of the Hilltop civilians to get them to be on his side of this post-apocalyptic fight, whether they were dead or alive.
And when when Negan left his Saviors team, his trusty weapon Lucille was in tow, drenched in zombie blood and guts. We learned last week that infecting a person with zombie innards is just as effective as getting a bite from a walker — you’re going to get turned into a zombie either way. So Negan used this knowledge to his advantage and told his team that this would be the way the Saviors can takeover the Hilltop and Rick’s crew.
But in tonight’s episode, Simon (the second in command of the Saviors) and his crew barely left their compound. Negan and Rick wound up going head to head in a car chase. I’m assuming that none of the Saviors knew that Negan was going to face Rick in an abandoned building without any backup — they probably assumed that he could handle whatever battle he would face on his own.
But after the face-off with Rick we saw the two leaders ambushed by an army of zombies and were basically defenseless. While Rick wound up escaping, I assume that viewers thought that Negan did not make it out of there alive — I sure didn’t.
But in the final moments of tonight’s episode, we saw that Negan is in fact alive and well — but not in the hands of the Alexandrians. We found him with Jadis, the former leader of the Scavengers, whose allies are pretty much all dead walkers at this point. So what could she want from Negan? This is looking like a classic case of revenge that might be coming back to bite Negan in the butt. His crew did basically killed all of Jadis’ clan — even if Negan didn’t know it was happening at the time — so naturally she wants to do as much damage to Negan as he did to her.
So it looks like the Saviors will be orchestrating their attack without their leader. But as they were seen chanting “For Negan!” at the end of tonight’s episode, it’s clear that he’s definitely still leading the Saviors even if he isn’t actually there. Will Negan escape Jadis and reunite with his crew? Is the Hilltop basically as good as dead? Sadly, we’ll all have to wait another week to find out.
