Season 8, Episode 13, ‘Do Not Send Us Astray’

That ‘The Walking Dead’ has chosen to be a largely anticipatory TV show, building to a single climactic conflict at a slow-burn pace, has been agreeable to some and agonizing to others. But regardless of whether a viewer appreciates the buildup or just wants everyone to get to the darn fireworks factory, the climaxes in this model of storytelling must eventually create a catharsis so satisfying that it retroactively validates all the narrative heel dragging. A related proposition is also often true: The more irritated an audience is with the setup, the more satisfying the release. Maybe that’s what’s been happening.

This week’s episode brings several long-percolating situations to a head, making the kind of lasting, substantive changes that a show struggling to create a sense of permanence badly needs. Difficult as Carl’s death might have been, it left a bruise on Rick still present even in this episode, and the protracted nature of his pain makes it feel real. The characters will be sorting through the aftermath of this episode for weeks to come, because once again, it takes the death of a child to wake up the leathery-tough adults to all the collateral damage their war games have wrought.

After tentatively bonding with Carol and Morgan over the past few episodes, a surefire sign that the boy is doomed, Henry joins Carl in the juniors section of the afterlife this week. His death has a somewhat sounder karmic justification than the needless martyring of Grimes the younger — Henry stupidly opened the gate containing the prisoners in a poorly-thought-through effort to take revenge on his parents’ murderers. Of course the situation gets away from him, and of course he becomes a victim to the ensuing melee. But from beyond the veil, Henry looms larger to the surviving characters than ever, an undeniable symbol of the infectious rot of the soul that these inhumane times spread like plague.

Carol and Morgan have spent recent installments quietly concerned that violence has estranged Henry from his own humanity, represented here by Morgan’s disturbing hallucinations of a bleeding Gavin telling him, “You know what it is.” (We may safely presume that the spectral Gavin means this as a nebulous prophecy, and not in the hip-hop sense.) As everyone readies for a cataclysmic reckoning, Ezekiel and Carol both agree that arming Henry would be wrong, and that whatever grains of the boy’s innocence still remain must be preserved.

Morgan senses the futility of this enterprise, however. He knows what it is.

Rick knows what it is, too. He’s still stunned by his son’s sacrifice, unable to speak about Carl when Siddiq approaches him with a patient ear. It’s been so long since the show treated a character’s death with such gravity, that seeing Rick still hurting four episodes later is a welcome reprieve from the usual depravity-of-the-week showcase. The circumstances surrounding Carl and Henry’s respective demises may differ, but speaking generally, the same thing happened to both of them. They are ancillary losses, caught up in the brutal riptide of combat.

This episode couldn’t have ended anywhere but a graveyard, and sure enough, Carol and Rick gaze out over rows and rows of makeshift headstones in this week’s final moments. Alongside them stands Maggie, who can do nothing but lament “the cost,” a universal umbrella term for everything precious they’ve lost. (Shades of Tony Soprano grumbling, “How could this happen?” to an absent God as he sits by his comatose nephew.) Maggie wrestles with self-doubt even as she continues to lust for vengeance against Negan, afraid that staying the course may imperil more innocent lives and wondering how many more they can lose while still considering this war worth fighting.

Because it’s not slowing down any time soon. Having last been seen riding shotgun with a very angry Jadis, Negan is out of sight in this episode, and hardly out of mind. Simon’s ill-advised power grab among the Saviors has been built entirely around the shaky notion that everything he wants also happens to be what Negan would have wanted. Simon is a persuasive enough public speaker that this manipulation works, for the most part — though maybe it’s just that commanding handlebar mustache — but that will fall apart in undoubtedly violent fashion once Negan returns.

Simon cannot be entirely unaware of this, judging by the haste with which he accelerates the Savior counteroffensive. He knows enough to wield the power while he has it, and he won’t let go of it without leaving a few claw marks. The show’s “all out war” arc can’t last forever, and discord among the Saviors could be the resolution Rick’s coalition (and the writing staff) have been looking for.

“I don’t think it ends,” muses Carol in the episode’s most telling moment. Her words can expand to cover the entire show, from the war raging around them to the endless cycle of Pyrrhic victories and crushing defeats that has given the show’s entire run an orderly shape. This episode makes the heartening suggestion that she might not be correct. Whether it’s enemy infighting or a surge of energy on the home front, something has to end all the bloodshed soon. Scanning their private cemetery as if it were a D.I.Y. Arlington, they realize that it has to. They have long since given up too much.

A Few Thoughts While We Survey the Wreckage:

• It’s perversely reassuring that no matter how grave a predicament he’s in, Gregory can always be counted on to do the most annoying thing imaginable. Even when begging for his life from a child, he somehow manages not to shed his innate unpleasantness. If the showrunners really want to boost viewership numbers, all they would have to do is aggressively advertise a coming episode as an uncut, 53-minute Gregory death scene.

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• The large-scale battle scenes wouldn’t be worth a hill of beans if they didn’t competently orchestrate the chaos, and fortunately, these sequences are among the season’s best directed. A combination of frenetic cutting, “Saving Private Ryan”-style hand-held camerawork and driving drum ’n’ bass music amount to a disorienting facsimile of war’s senselessness.

• Darryl and Tara share some heated words this week, their presence together highlighting just how extraneous they’ve become to the grander workings of the show this season. Daryl’s sharpshooting provides a convenient way out when the writers have worked themselves into a tactical corner, but it still feels as if “The Walking Dead” didn’t know what to do with them.