“Knots Untie”

“Your world is about to get a whole lot bigger” announced Jesus in The Walking Dead this week. He convinces Rick, Daryl and a few others to meet his people at the Hilltop Colony after partially gaining Rick’s trust. An enjoyable episode overall, but with only a couple of meaningful scenes, “Knots Untie” gives us an introduction to Gregory (Xander Berkeley), who is instantly unlikable; although it can be argued that he is simply trying to get the best deal for his people. However, his attitude to Maggie was a bit tasteless. We have seen a couple of similar situations of the group interacting with other seemingly similar settlements in the past; The Governor led dictatorship town, and more recently the cannibals at The Terminus.

Carl finds out about his Dad and Michonne, and seems to take it well. I think this is showing how Carl is developing as a character -basically he’s growing up- by how well he takes the news and appreciates Rick’s right to be happy. We join Jesus shortly after he barges in on Rick and Michonne in the previous episode. He then escapes to have a quick survey of Alexandria to assess their strengths and weaknesses. After the previous weeks run in with Negen’s men, Rick soon realises that in order to maximise their chances of survival in an ever more dangerous world with limited resources to go around, trade with like-minded groups will be essential.

Sasha breaks the news to Abraham that she won’t be doing her patrols with him anymore. He is clearly upset by this news making it obvious to the viewers that he is falling for her. At some stage we may see some conflict between Rosita and Sash, particularly as in a subsequent scene, Rosita makes her affection for Abraham obvious by giving him a necklace made from a broken brake light. Watch this space. On the way to The Hilltop we hear an interesting conversation between Glenn and Abraham -who seems to be reeling slightly about his love life- when it’s revealed that Glenn and Maggie are trying to get pregnant. We see opposing philosophies here between the two; Abraham thinks that it’s reckless to bring a child into The Walking Dead world. However, Glenn argues that they are trying to build a life worth living by looking to the future.

When the group arrive at the gates of The Hilltop Colony, Jesus is able to further demonstrate his diplomatic prowess by getting Rick and co. through the gates with their weapons. The Hilltop is poorly armed as we can see men with spears guarding the gates, which leaves the group open to a big range of horrible things, we learn later how the group are being exploited by Negen’s gang and have to give them half of their crop yields in exchange for not being murdered. This probably explains why Gregory goes straight on the offensive by acting like they are the ones who hold all the cards in any sort of trade agreement between the two. He comes across as a particularly ruthless character, maybe not quite as bad as The Governor, but time will tell. Nonetheless, I think the character has been well cast. Jeffrey Dean Morgan has a great presence and makes any scene memorable. Maggie did well taking on the leadership role here by shooting down his demands and turning the situation around to make a fairer deal for her group.

The episode had been pretty quiet in terms of any action or high tempo drama up until this point, since it’s mid-season return really. Part of the Hilltop group returned soon after Rick and Jesus arrive, and Gregory gets a knife through the stomach. I actually thought Rick’s reaction was pretty funny with his “what?” comment after the looks aimed his way, like he’d gone to the toilet without washing his hands, rather than  slicing one of the Hill Toppers’ throats open. Wherever they go they seem to bring bloodshed with them, very little has passed since they settled in Alexandria, and now they’re in a new place a matter of hours before carnage ensues. “Things like that don’t normally happen here” Jesus commented, well… he better get used to it. As a non reader of the comic books I can’t comment on how influential the Jesus character will be but the whole standing between two groups of people who want to kill each other in the shape of a cross speaks for itself I think. Based on my observations of him so far I’d say there’s a fair chance he’ll end up sacrificing himself to save someone.

Verdict

“Knots Untie” was quite an enjoyable episode. It did slightly lack the volume of action that I like to see from an episode of The Walking Dead. The scene where Gregory is stabbed is great, however, we didn’t get much more action than that. I do think this episode helped lay the groundwork for what will be an exciting season. We now have at least 3 settlements of people and the comment made by Jesus at the start of the episode “Your world is about to get a whole lot bigger” is an exciting indicator of things to come.