Season 7, Episode 4
- The Saviors arrive at Alexandria for their first offering.
Michonne gets out of bed and grabs a rifle stashed in the chimney, and goes outside Alexandria to take a sentry post in the middle of a field. Rick gets up, tends to Judith, and Rosita and Spencer prepare to go on a supply run to gather more supplies for the Saviors' tribute. Eugene is putting the finishing touches on a working music player to help appease the Saviors... who suddenly arrive with numerous trucks and even more Saviors in tow. Negan asks to be let in, and though Spencer doesn't realize who he's talking to, Rick does, and is annoyed since the Saviors have arrived earlier than they promised. Negan ignores Rick's protest, and taunts him and Rosita over the death of Abraham before his army moves in for the taking, and forces Rick to carry Lucille for the duration of their visit.
Negan orders that no one is to speak to Daryl, as he's only there for grunt work. Dwight torments Rosita before assigning her and Spencer to go retrieve Daryl's motorcycle for him. The Saviors begin taking the town's supplies under Arat's direction. Negan asks where Maggie is, as he had been hoping to ask her to come back to the Sanctuary with him, but Rick and Gabriel take him to her apparent grave. Negan laments Maggie's death, but then a gunshot goes off. Carl has shot at a Savior who is attempting to take all of Alexandria's medicine, and Negan is able to eventually cow Carl into submission.
Negan declares that he will take all of Alexandria's guns after Carl's outburst. Things go awry after Arat says there are two guns in Olivia's inventory that are not present in the armory. Negan deduces that someone has hid the guns, and says that if Rick does not find the guns, he will kill Olivia for failing to keep track of them. Rick holds an emergency town meeting and asks whoever has the guns to come forward, and says that they have no way to escape Negan's control. Rick looks for the weapons with Gabriel and Aaron, and thanks the former for digging a fake grave for Maggie. Rick is able to find Spencer's stash of food and the guns that the Saviors are looking for, and Negan is pacified.
Meanwhile, after she and Spencer find the motorcycle, Rosita kills a group of walkers in the woods as he rants that there isn't any hope for them. Rosita is able to retrieve a gun from the body of a Savior. Elsewhere, Michonne is unable to kill a walker with her rifle, but inadvertently shoots a deer. She brings it back to Alexandria, where the Saviors are preparing to leave. Rick meets with Michonne in private with Negan's blessing, and is able to get her to turn over the rifle. Arat soon relieves Michonne of the deer carcass. Negan offers Daryl a chance to ask to rejoin Alexandria at Rick's behest, but Daryl is silent. Negan tells Rick that "I just slid my dick down your throat, and you thanked me for it", and to come up with something "interesting" for the next tribute or someone else will meet Lucille.
After the Saviors have left, Rick confronts Spencer about his stash of supplies, and while he won't fault him for the weapons, he lambasts him for the food and liquor, saying he is weak and still lucky his group ever came to town. Spencer snarks that Glenn and Abraham must've been lucky too, and Rick warns him that any further outbursts like that will result in him breaking his jaw. Spencer still opines that they should've made a deal with the Saviors before now, and insists to Rosita that they don't have to live like this. Rosita retrieves the gun she stashed in a car, and later asks Eugene to make her a bullet.
Michonne returns to her and Rick's bedroom, now lacking a mattress, since the Saviors took most of the town's mattresses. Rick pleads with Michonne to accept the way things are now, and tells her about Shane — the entire saga of how he saved Lori and Carl in the early days of the apocalypse, and of his affair with Lori. Rick admits that he knows Judith is likely not his child, and that he had to come to terms with it - and that Michonne must come to terms with it as well.
The next day, Michonne returns to her post in the distant field when she notices a plume of smoke. She later finds, to her rage, that the Saviors burned the mattresses they took from Alexandria.
- Badass Decay:
- Michonne, despite her experience, cannot shoot a Walker with a sniper even as it gets closer due to her still suffering from the trauma that Negan and the Saviors put her and the others through.
- An In-Universe discussed example, Negan is shown the video recording of Rick when he first arrived at Alexandria and mentions how tough and badass he looks, especially with his beard. Negan goes so far as to say "I would not have messed with that guy," before recording Rick as he is now and taunts Ricks, stating that isn't who Rick is anymore.
- Black Comedy: Negan continues to be the master of this, making some chuckle-worthy quips in a completely unfitting scenario. One of which is making a cruel joke about how Rick has an overweight woman in charge of keeping stock of the food supplies.
- Book Ends: The episode begins with Rick and Michonne sleeping in bed, and near the end Michonne discovers a pile of smoldering mattresses that Negan and The Saviors confiscated from Alexandria and burned.
- Chekhov's Gun: Or Bullet, as the case may be. At the end of the episode Rosita retrieves the spent shell casing Negan left on the ground earlier with the intention of having Eugene re-arm it.
- Continuity Nod:
- The raid on the satellite outpost in "Not Tomorrow Yet" is brought up by Negan, as are the weapons the Alexandrians looted from the dead Saviors.
- Daryl left his bike in the woods back in "East" when he attempted to take revenge on Dwight, who also retakes the bike he had previously stole from Daryl in "Always Accountable".
- Negan finds Deanna's old camera and the footage of her first interview with Rick back when he arrived at Alexandria in "Remember".
- Rosita encounters the walker versions of Dwight's band from "Twice as Far."
- Gabriel recalls how he and Rick weren't friends during Season 5 and Season 6A.
- The RPG makes a reappearance and Negan references Daryl blowing up the biker gang in "No Way Out."
- Enid is able to convince a Savior to leave her the spare green balloons, as a memento of Glenn from when he convinced her to return to Alexandria in "Heads Up."
- Spencer was stealing supplies for himself back in "Now."
- Rick retells his history with Shane from the first two seasons of the show to Michonne, which he hasn't told her about until now.
- Rosita asks Eugene to make her a bullet at the end of the episode, as he found a place to manufacture bullets back in "Twice as Far".
- Dark Action Girl: Arat, the female lieutenant Negan puts in charge of the confiscation.
- Dirty Old Man: While Negan isn't exactly old, he is much older than Rosita, and he takes a lot of pleasure in invading her personal space and tells Rick afterwards "there was a lot of tension there. I don't think she knew how much."
- Exact Words: As Negan explains, "half" of Alexandria's stuff is "whatever he says it is". Meaning the Saviors can take whatever they want until Negan says they have enough.
- Faking the Dead: Gabriel made a fake grave for Maggie to trick Negan into thinking she was dead without revealing where she actually was.
- Foreshadowing: After Rick retrieves the stolen guns from Spencer's house, Negan demands to know who had them, to which Rick doesn't reply. If Rick hadn't found the guns, Negan would have killed Olivia, and if he found out Spencer had them, a punishment might have been in store for him. In "Hearts Still Beating", Negan kills Spencer, and minutes later, Arat kills Olivia.
- Jerkass Has a Point: Though he could have worded it better, Spencer's remarks about Rick leading the group to misfortune by surrendering to Negan, aren't exactly unfounded. If it weren't for Rick's own arrogance, they could have avoided majorly pissing him off, and though it's likely the Saviours would have found Alexandria eventually, the fact that Rick hunted and killed a large number of Negan's men, led to their dispute being personal, and resulted in the deaths of Glenn and Abraham. By underestimating the enemy, Rick has earned the ire of Negan, who is being particularly hard on Alexandria as a result.
- Kick the Dog: This episode might as well be called "Kick the Dog: The 90 Minute Special." Dwight torments Rosita like a child when she and Spencer try to go on a supply run, Negan jokes that the overweight Olivia is in charge of Alexandria's rations, David harasses Enid, and the list goes on and on. Perhaps most jarring is when the Saviors take away the majority of Alexandria's mattresses, and Michonne later finds that they simply burned them as opposed to actually using them.
- The Lancer: With Michonne being absent for the majority of the Saviors' occupation, Maggie away at Hilltop, Glenn and Abraham dead, Daryl captured, and Carol missing, Gabriel and Aaron step up as Rick's right-hand men during the episode.
- Motor Mouth: Negan won't shut up.
- Moving the Goalposts: Negan tells Carl during the brief stand-off that taking 'half' of Alexandria's supplies means taking whatever he feels like.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
- Carl shoots at two Saviors to stop them from taking all of their medicine supplies because the deal was only half. Negan breaks it up by explaining that "half" is whatever he says and then decides to take all the guns that Alexandria has to avoid another incident like this.
- Spencer stealing two guns from inventory almost gets Olivia killed when the Saviors notice they are short. Luckily, Rick finds the guns and saves Olivia before Negan can do anything.
- Pragmatic Villainy: The reason Negan doesn't touch Alexandria's food supplies. He knows that Rick has a large amount of people, and that if they starve to death, he won't get any tributes, so he allows them to keep all of their food for the time being.
- The Reveal: Whether Judith's biological dad was Rick or Shane was left a mystery to fans for years. This episode confirms which of them is her real dad, or, at least, which of them Rick believes it is.
- Shell-Shocked Veteran: You would think Michonne should be able to snipe a walker in the head from several yards away by this point in the series, considering Andrea was able to do the same to Daryl from ten times the distance in Season 2, but she misses five or six times probably due to her marksmanship suffering some Badass Decay as a result of some Negan-induced PTSD.
- Sinister Minister: Father Gabriel, making his first appearance of the season, becomes an unintentional example with his silent movements, clerical vestments, and serene demeanor, all of which Negan finds creepy.
- The Starscream: Spencer kept a stash of guns with his stolen food back when Rick first took charge of Alexandria, and implies to Rosita that he's considering overthrowing Rick again.
- Stealth Hi/Bye: Gabriel does this a few times in the episode, showing up suddenly out of nowhere to talk to Negan and Rick. Rick isn't bothered by it while he's searching Spencer's house for the missing guns, but it freaks out Negan.
- Title Drop: Done courtesy of Negan.
- Tranquil Fury: Rick is basically running on it the entire episode. When Rick confronts Spencer about hiding the guns and food in his house Spencer shouts at Rick for putting them in such a bad position with the Saviors and mentions Glenn and Abraham. Rick calmly replies that if he ever says anything like that again he'll punch him in the mouth and break his jaw.
- Wham Line: Rick confirming that he knows he is likely not Judith's biological father.Rick: I know Judith isn't mine.
- Who's Your Daddy?: Rick admits that he is almost definitely not Judith's biological father, but he declares that she is nevertheless his daughter.
- You Have Failed Me: Olivia has had a checkered history as Alexandria's quartermaster, as Carol, Spencer, and Ron have all been able to steal things from under her watch. It comes back to bite her hard when the Saviors notice two guns are missing, and nearly execute her for both the town's apparent defiance and her own negligence.
