The Walking Dead: Carol and Daryl Reunite in Character-Driven Episode

The Walking Dead Season 9, Episode 7 was a plot-light hour, especially for the episode before the midseason finale, but this hasn't been a normal season of The Walking Dead. After the enormous shakeups of Episodes 5 and 6, we needed a bit of a comedown, and the Michael Cudlitz-directed "Stradivarius" caught us up with Jesus (Tom Payne) and Tara (Alanna Masterson), who we've seen little of this season, and gave us character moments between Carol (Melissa McBride) and Daryl (Norman Reedus) as well as Michonne (Danai Gurira) and the newcomers.

The episode started with a dehydrated and delirious Rosita (Christian Serratos) passing out in the woods after escaping the Whisperers. She managed to send up a flare, which led to her being rescued by Jesus (Tom Payne) and Aaron (Ross Marquand), who had been having a secret meeting to play-fight and discuss ways to bring the communities back together. (Kind of a cool move on The Walking Dead's part to have its two gay male characters be friends with no apparent romantic connection. I hope it stays that way.) Eugene (Josh McDermitt) is missing, having holed up in a barn to escape the herd, and since Rosita can't say where he is, Daryl and Jesus went out to look for him. That was it on the Whisperer front this week.

Jesus has been elected leader of Hilltop in Maggie's (Lauren Cohan) absence (she's off with Georgie [Jayne Atkinson] building a new community somewhere far away), and he doesn't want to do the job. Jesus is a loner, and so he's spending a lot of time away from Hilltop and leaving Tara to deal with the day-to-day administration. But things are going well at the Hilltop, and the people who live there have very cool blacksmith-made body armor that makes them look even more like knights than the football-padded folks from the Kingdom do.

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The rest of the episode was split between Carol, Daryl and Henry (Matt Lintz) camping and Michonne and the newcomers traveling from Alexandria to Hilltop. Nothing much happened in the the Carol-Daryl scenes, which were mostly just an excuse to let Melissa McBride and Norman Reedus get extended screen time together. Carol gave Daryl a haircut; Daryl pointed out that no one ever found Rick's (Andrew Lincoln) body; Daryl and Henry bonded over their shared love of Carol; Daryl revealed that he has big scars on his body like Michonne's from the battle that happened during the time jump (which is a story still untold). But most importantly Daryl took care of his very good dog and finally they made it to Hilltop, where they reunited with some people they hadn't seen in years.

On the road from Alexandria to Hilltop, Michonne learned about the travelers' friend who died right before they arrived at Alexandria, who wore an ugly paisley shirt and was like a brother to Magna (Nadia Hilker) and Yumiko (Eleanor Matsuura). Michonne, who was once so optimistic about the future of civilization that she wanted to write a shared charter for the communities before there was a schism, had her faith in the future stirred back up by music teacher Luke's (Dan Fogler) assertion that culture is what separates humans from animals and can still save them. And when they saw the paisley-shirted friend as a walker with his guts ripped out, the writers made the death of a character we didn't know feel meaningful for the second time this season, after the death of the blacksmith's son in the season premiere. Showrunner Angela Kang has a gift for showing how death affects the people left behind.

In the midseason finale, Michonne will finally arrive at Hilltop, which means most of the gang will be back together and the Grimes boys' abandoned dream of community will come back into play. Coming together will probably be the only thing that can fight the Whisperers.

The Walking Dead airs Sundays at 9/8c on AMC.

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