Recap / The Walking Dead S11E13 "Warlords"

Season 11, Episode 13

Aaron and Gabriel take point on a Commonwealth outreach mission.

At Hilltop, Lydia tells Elijah and Marco, who are manning the gates, that she's going to live at the Commonwealth. Elijah, harboring a crush on her, asks if she'd like an escort. The budding courtship is interrupted when a wounded man rides up to Hilltop, asking to speak with Maggie having been sent by an unknown party. The young man dies of his wounds, and Maggie decides to lead Elijah and Lydia out to investigate the location he came from.

En route, Lydia confronts Maggie on why she is refusing to take aid from the Commonwealth given the poor state of Hilltop. Maggie insists that they can rebuild on their own, telling the story of when a severe drought sent the Greene family farm into debt. A corporation left care packages and supplies in an effort to cozy up to the family and pave the way for a buyout of the property, but Hershel refused any and all aid, unwilling to take any handouts that would put him in debt to the corporation. When the drought passed and the farm financially recovered, the corporation never bothered Hershel again. Maggie swears that they will do the same with Hilltop, unwilling to endure the inevitable calamity that will strike when the sheltered Commonwealth goes through a trial, but Lydia says that Hilltop's current way of life isn't acceptable, weary of having to scrape by thanks to Alpha's survivalist ways. The group comes upon some walkers in the road, and after dispatching them, they are met by Aaron.

Earlier that day, Aaron pays a visit to Gabriel's new church in the Commonwealth. Gabriel proves to be in fine form, pulling from his experiences since the Fall to preach how they all can accept each other as family as they did in the wastes before arriving in the Commonwealth. Afterwards, Gabriel admits to Aaron that he thinks he can hear God again. Aaron comes to the point of his visit; his boss, Toby Carlson, has asked him to take point on an outreach mission with a community residing in the Riverbend apartment complex. Aaron asks Gabriel to join him due to them making a good team, as Carlson intends to offer the Riverbend group membership with the Commonwealth.

This quickly seems to be a bad idea since Carlson comes across as an overly peppy idiot, sure that the reclusive, seemingly violent group in the complex will respond well to his cheerful demeanor, let alone treat a small group of people going in alone well. Gabriel tells Carlson as much, but he and Aaron are forced to comply as they, Carlson, and Jesse go in. Gabriel warns the complex group that they have troopers standing by should they not report in as scheduled. The four men are taken to the complex's leader, Ian. Aaron does his refined pitch, showing him pictures of people in the Commonwealth and offering them membership after undergoing the screening process. Ian, however, is paranoid and assumes that the group is simply plotting to conquer the complex for their own personal gain, or are going to eat them at worst, having survived a brush with cannibals in the past. Gabriel chastises Ian, saying the Commonwealth has nothing to gain from conquering a shithole like the complex, and Aaron says that they have no reason to bother them again if Ian simply says no. Ultimately, Ian agrees to stand down, and begins ordering the group to never return - but suddenly, Carlson attacks him and kills his men in the room. Aaron and Gabriel are shocked, but Carlson declares that now they're here to begin their true mission.

Nearly a day earlier, Carlson visits Lance in his office, and when asked tells him that Aaron is his best man in his outreach program. Lance asks him to have Aaron join him in a mission to Riverbend, but orders the ex-CIA agent to exterminate Riverbend if they don't turn over a stolen cache of guns - a supply that Lance needed for an unknown purpose.

In the present, Carlson interrogates Ian over the location of the guns, but when Ian swears the complex was not responsible for the raid, he kills him and begins exterminating his people. Gabriel attempts to retaliate but is forced to flee, only to be rescued by none other than Negan, who has joined Riverbend since leaving the Coalition. Negan and a woman named Annie find the wounded Jessie and send him a message and the location of Hilltop, seeking Maggie's aid. After being caught up by Aaron on what's happened, Maggie reluctantly decides to intervene to help the complex.

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• Ambiguous Situation:
  • Given he’s a somewhat unstable, hostile survivor who seems a bit too triggerhappy, it’s unknown how many of Ian’s slain victims were genuinely evil and deserved to be wiped out. The one story that almost assuredly really took place was the encounter with the cannibals, as Ian goes as far to accuse Aaron’s group of being them, with a clear twinge of fear.
  • It’s also unknown if one of the representatives of another large, supposedly peaceful community were part of the Civic Republic Military.
• The Atoner: Lydia wants to help the unknown group due to having helped Alpha attack similar small groups in the past.
• Big Damn Heroes: Negan and Annie manage to save Gabriel and send a message to Maggie to ask for her help.
• Both Sides Have a Point: Lydia and Maggie disagree over accepting the Commonwealth’s aid. Maggie viewpoint is understandable given the Commonwealth hasn’t endured the last ten years of the apocalypse like they have, and Hershel had set an example of persevering through hardship despite an easy way out. However, Lydia points out she isn’t taking anyone else’s opinion into account, and their aid could improve Hilltop to the point that they wouldn’t have to just get by.
• The Bus Came Back:
  • Hilltop resident Marco returns for the first time since the Season 10 finale “A Certain Doom”.
  • Negan returns after having left the group in “No Other Way”, now having joined the complex group.
• Cliffhanger: The episode ends with Maggie and Negan’s groups preparing to fight back against Carlson’s forces.
• Continuity Nod:
  • Gabriel has returned to preaching as Aaron implored him in Season 10’s “One More”. As in that episode, the pair of men end up negotiating with a hostile survivor played by a veteran of the Terminator franchise.
  • Aaron references his pre-Fall job with an NGO initiative, as he mentioned in Season 5’s “The Distance”. Additionally, he has come up with a better term for the onboarding process after lamenting he couldn’t call it anything but an audition like a dance troupe - which Ian actually says. Finally, his color pictures of the Commonwealth have people in them, after his black and white pictures of Alexandria drew Rick’s suspicions.
  • Ian makes heavy reference to the wolves in sheep’s clothing trope, and Aaron and Gabriel both have experience being suspected of being this from when they first met the group back in Season 5.
    • In the Season 5 finale “Conquer”, the Wolves learned of Alexandria’s existence due to finding Aaron’s discarded photos and information on the place. Here, Aaron willingly shows Ian his photos even as he’s being accused of being a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
  • Ian says his group has come under attack by cannibals, no doubt reminding Gabriel of the group’s conflict with the Hunters in early Season 5.
• Cult: The group in the apartment complex appears to be one, or at least have elements of one. The building is covered in crosses, according to Lance's intel have mass twice a week, and are led by a single brutal leader who dismisses the comforts of pre-Fall society by bringing up whores and drugs.
• Deadpan Snarker: After Carlson lays out a pretty terrible plan for Aaron and Gabriel to make contact with the group, Gabriel quickly mutters “yeah I’m not doing this”.
• Dead Guy on Display: Ian has a collection of skulls of his past victims.
• The Determinator: Maggie tells of a time when Hershel refused a company seeking to buy out the Greene family farm. Despite the cattle needing food, the family going into debt during a drought, and the company tripling their offer, Hershel refused insisting everyone stay together and work through the drought, and they succeeded. Maggie insists this is what Hilltop must do.
• Drowning My Sorrows: Lance is drinking heavily in the face of his caravan being raided and fearing the wrath of Pamela.
• Expy: Ian is the latest bald, violent and religious cult leader after Alpha and Pope. Unlike his predecessors, he is able to see reason and was willing to let Aaron’s group leave unharmed, and turns out to be far less evil than the true antagonist of the situation.
• Failed a Spot Check: Maggie turns her attention away from the road long enough for her to not notice the reanimated Commonwealth troopers in the road, when they should’ve been plainly obvious from quite a distance away.
• Final Solution: This is the true purpose of Carlson’s outreach mission - not to have the complex’s people join them, but to find the missing guns and wipe out the complex once done.
• Mythology Gag: The new group’s lieutenant, with her butch, heavily pieced appearance, owes quite a bit of her looks to Laura’s comic counterpart.
• Not Me This Time: The complex genuinely didn’t raid the Commonwealth caravan that came for them, and who actually did isn’t revealed by the end of the episode.
• Not-So-Harmless Villain: Carlson seems to be a complete dumbass, but when the group leader lets his guard down a little, he shoots him and kills his enforcers in the room, and is revealed to be a master assassin.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: Carlson is a former CIA agent who specialized in assassinations of insurgents.
• Oblivious to Their Own Description: After mockingly playing with Ian’s corpse and kicking it around in a rage, Carlson has the nerve to call him an animal.
• Present-Day Past: Marco tells Elijah to “shoot [his] shot” with Lydia. While the phrase has been around since the 80’s, it didn’t really come into use as a term for trying to flirt with someone until around 2015, about five years after the Fall took place in the show’s 2010.
• Properly Paranoid: Ian has already dealt with raiders and hostile survivors, some of whom were even cannibals. He’s not too different from how Maggie herself is refusing Commonwealth aid due to his suspicions and past experiences. And as Carlson’s actions prove, he was ultimately right.
• The Reveal: Negan circles Hilltop’s location on a map revealing it to be in West Virginia. This places it about four driving hours from Alexandria, or a three day hike on foot without rest, and certainly helps explain why the distance between the communities has been such a problem over the years.
• Sequel Episode: To two episodes:
  • Season 5’s “The Distance”, as it revolves heavily around Aaron on another outreach mission, shows how he’s changed his approach since then, and leans heavily into the wolf in sheep’s clothing trope (albeit this time with one of the recruiters actually being a bad guy).
  • Season 10’s “One More”, as Gabriel is also partnered up with Aaron, they run afoul of a violent survivor who eventually becomes willing to make peace with them, only for them to be unexpectedly killed with one of them asking “what did you do?!” Both violent survivors, Mays and Ian, are played by veterans of the Terminator franchise. It also follows up on Gabriel’s crisis of faith he had confided in Aaron he was suffering from.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Lydia decides to leave for the Commonwealth as well and mentions some others have already gone too since the last episode.
• Shipper on Deck: Marco encourages Elijah to try hitting on Lydia, noticing a spark between them.
• Ship Tease: Elijah is interested in Lydia and tries to escort her to the Commonwealth checkpoint.
• Shout-Out: Ian says “what a goddamn day”, referencing the Mad Max franchise. Michael Biehn was slated to play Mad Max at one point.
• Too Dumb to Live:
  • Carlson apparently thinks it’s a good idea for four guys to go alone to a highly defensible building populated by forty armed survivors, after only having had experience with a group of four survivors at maximum. As the episode later clarifies, this was completely intentional.
  • As Ian explains, it’s a stupid idea to let someone who knows where you live go without learning where they live.
• Wasteland Warlord: Ian is a small-scale example, ruling the group in the complex with an iron fist and keeping the skulls of slain enemies on display in his office.
• What the Hell, Hero?:
  • Implied when Lydia tells Elijah and Marco she’s joining the Commonwealth, as she says Maggie was very quiet and simply gave her directions to the Commonwealth checkpoint.
  • Elijah and Lydia become upset with Maggie for not being willing to try to go help the unknown group.
  • Gabriel and Aaron at first have this reaction to Carlson shooting Ian until they realize they are not dealing with a hero.
• We ARE Struggling Together: As Gabriel points out to his congregation who were hesitant to sit by a stranger, everyone who was outside the Commonwealth made friends and family of complete strangers, and they are united by the fact they have all sinned and survived together.