Well, the waters have been tested now! At long last we have the highly anticipated showdown of Rick and the Governor.
***SPOILER ALERT***
The two alpha dogs of season three are finally coming into contact in a winner takes all shoot out. As Rick and his gang creep up upon the town, Glenn and Maggie are slowly plotting their way on how they can escape on their own.
On a surprising note, an entire new group of people are introduced into the show and make their way into the back of the prison. This is an entire episode of what are sure to be plenty of great friendships made.
The final episode of the first half of season three is arguably the best episode of all time. The action and twists are constant throughout the entire episode. Glenn and Maggie break out of the cell they’re being held in and kill one of the guards, only to be taken back under the watch of Merle and the rest of the goons. Rick, Daryl, Michonne, and Oscar slowly make their way into the town only to be met with a bit of surprise. The break out of Glenn and Maggie led to a bit of an uproar in the town. Soon all hell breaks loose. Rick and Darryl throw smoke bombs that disorient the goons and they take back Maggie and Glenn. In the process of getting to safety, they realize that Michonne has mysteriously disappeared. In a not so shocking twist, she goes to hide in the Governor’s room, waiting to kill him the second he walks through the door.
The gun fight has a little bit of a twist; nobody knows who is who. The smoke bombs again disorient the Woodbury guards, but they also prevent people like Daryl from being able to know that he is taking fire at his own brother. The shots go off for awhile and the first casualty is Oscar, who takes a shotgun to the back. For a moment it appears that Shane is somehow alive and shooting, but after Rick takes him down with a well placed shot, it turns out that he was just hallucinating for a split second. Still, the damage has been done and Newbury has been rocked to its core.
The most captivating moment of possibly the entire season comes from the meeting of Michonne and the Governor. Michonne calmly sits in his chair waiting for the Governor to come home, only to hear a sound coming from a room. She kicks open the door and discovers the floating heads that have been eerily waiting for someone to stumble upon. Then she notices that there’s noise coming from the cage built into the wall. After seeing that it’s a little girl she lets down her guard and frees the child from her cage. After taking the sack off of her head, she panics and goes to kill the zombie daughter of the Governor. Before she does, the Governor pleads her to stop and puts his gun down. Michonne, in her experienced ways of having no emotions, puts her sword straight through the girls’ mouth. The Governor promptly loses his mind and a full on brawl ensues. The two trade blows and smash into the tanks spilling the heads all across the ground. The Governor seems to have Michonne dead while she frantically tries to grab her sword. At the last moment, she grabs a shard of glass and stabs it right through the Governor’s eye. As she goes in for the kill, she wheels around to see Andrea pointing a gun right at her face. The two stare at each other until Michonne simply just gets up and walks out, leaving Andrea to sort through all of these smashed secrets.
Meanwhile, Carl has decided that he’s ready to take on his own portion of leadership. After hearing screams coming from the prison, he walks down the corridor alone and discovers the new group that has wandered in in the midst of fighting off walkers. He brings them to the safety of the cell block but locks them outside of the rooms that they sleep in. Despite the desperation from one of the ladies in the new group, Carl remains firm and simply lets them sit there until a later time.
The final few minutes of the episode set the pace for what should be a thrilling second half of the season. Rick, Glenn, and Maggie finally find Michonne who is bloody and beaten. After talking about how Darryl was left behind, Michonne convinces Rick that he won’t get anywhere without her help. Rick seems uneasy about taking her back after her no show in town, but he realizes that he doesn’t have many options. Newbury is a mysterious place and only Michonne has any real information on what goes on with the Governor, who has now apparently lost his cool for good. After showing off some of his rage in the make shift hospital, he gathers the citizens of the town to announce his displeasure with the attacks and what has gone down. Then he starts getting into an accusation game, saying that one of the terrorists lives inside the walls. He points to Merle and says that only he could have let his brother and the attackers in. Darryl is brought in and put face to face with his long lost, one handed brother. The two stand side by side, waiting to see if there is any hope of them leaving Woodbury alive. It seems they’ll have to wait until February to find out their fate.
