The Walking Dead Season Finale: Fix Them Up a Plate

SPOILER ALERT! Don’t read on if you haven’t yet seen the final episode of season 4 for Walking Dead.

It seemed odd, even from the ending of the second last episode. A strange woman, cooking up what seemed like endless amounts of meat, eager to offer up a plate to every new soul who walked in. Who is this woman? What is this place? And where is she getting all of that meat?

It seems that the folks running Terminus have an ingenious idea. Coax every living soul left on the earth toward you, promising a safe place to rest your head. Sanctuary. Throw them in the back of a locked van once they get there. Presumably feed them with powdered milk for an indefinite period of time, until they get nice and fattened up. (Did anyone else make that link between the plates of powdered milk Rick saw at the entrance of the van?) Then kill them, skin them, throw their carcuses away in some kind of cage (another subtle hint you might have missed as Rick, Michione, Carl, and Daryl ran through Terminus dodging bullets) and hand them over to Martha Stewart over there, who will BBQ them to a crisp. But not the same kind of crisp Carol BBQ’d Tyrone’s girlfriend into.

Yes, it seems Terminus isn’t a cult, as I had originally thought. My first guess was that it might have been a bunch of weirdos who would use new arrivals for experimentation, to try and figure out a cure for the infection. Never did cannibalism cross my mind.  

So…how does Rick and gang get out of this one? Clearly the bag of guns he buried in the mud just outside of Terminus will come in mighty handy, likely critical, for a getaway once the new season commences. Though I wouldn’t be surprised if at least one from the group ends up sliced between two pieces of bread in a hearty sandwich before they escape. 

The ending left so many questions. Mostly, where the heck is Tyrone and Carol? What happened to Beth? Something tells me that Tyrone and Carol will be integral in getting Rick and gang out of this mess. How, I’m not sure. Oh, how much fun the writers must have coming up with this stuff!

The episode had fabulous moments of the realization of how far we’ve come, however. While Carl struggled with the monster he’s becoming (and it’s not his fault; you adapt to the world in which you live. In their world right now, it’s survival instinct, and that’s it. It’s purely primitive.) Meanwhile, Rick seems to be far more accepting of it. Heck, the guy bit a chunk out of a gang leader’s neck! How much closer can they get to being like the zombies than that? Michione, meanwhile, is returning to her motherly state pre-apocalype as she sees the need to be there for Carl, as a friend, and the only true female figure in his life. He looks up to her. So she needs to. And it’s sweet to see. Daryl, while falling farther back into his old self by joining this gang of thugs, showed just how much he changed by offering up his own life to save Rick, Michione’s, and Carl’s. 

As for Glenn and crew, who knows how things played out after they got to Terminus. Rick was able to quickly see something was up once he noticed Glenn’s pocket watch and the poncho (who’s was that again?) Did Glenn and gang notice anything and try to fight? Or did they sit down for a lovely family dinner of the people who arrived before them before they understood what they had just eaten, and what they were about to become?

The timelines aren’t clear either. How far behind Glenn and gang was Rick and gang? How long had they been in the van before Rick arrived? Will we get to see flashbacks in the new season that show how that played out?

After binge-watching the prior seasons, I’m not quite sure if these episodes are just going by way too quickly, or if I didn’t realize how short they really were because I was watching 3 or 4 of them in a row every time. But this episode seemed to end before it even started. Though we did get a few climactic moments, including the neck biting incident, and the Terminus gun chase. (Poor Daryl. What’s he going to do with a bow and arrow in that scenario?) I feel like we needed another hour, at least to show where the others are. I guess this is the way to keep us excited and anticipating the new season.

I, for one, can’t wait to find out what happens when the Terminus crew finds out that they’re messing with the wrong people.