'The Walking Dead' Recap: 'Now'
— -- BIG SPOILERS AHEAD
After last week's episode focused mostly on "then" -- that is, the flashback to Morgan's Zen conversion -- Sunday night's episode, “Now,” took fans back to Alexandria, and Rick's desperate run to the enclave in the wake of the bloody Wolf invasion.
With Alexandria's formerly strong leader Deanna wandering in shock, she is jolted awake to the sound of Rick screaming and running to her for his life, half the walker horde on his tail.
He makes it through the fence just in time -- and in time to find the residents of the formerly safe town justly shaken up by the bloodshed at the hands of the living, not the undead.
He informs Deanna and the other residents that a wave of walkers "20 deep" has surrounded them, but the biggest threat the Alexandrians now face isn't them -- it's how the still-living residents will hold up inside the walls. The townsfolk are restless and don't want to trust him, until Aaron defends Rick, and admits it was his backpack that led the Wolves to their homes.
Despite Rick's bucking them up, some residents fear -- finally -- that the end is near, and try to make a run on the pantry, refusing to ration. It's Deanna's son Spencer who holds them off. As she watches proudly from the sidelines, he calms the crowd, convincing them that the second they start thinking of only themselves, then Alexandria is truly lost. With that victory under his belt, he makes off with some booze, and, while drunk, slams his mother, blaming her "pie in the sky" plans for making the residents unprepared for the new normal.
Meanwhile, with Glenn still gone, a heartbroken Maggie sets off to try to find him. Aaron tries to talk her out of it, but ultimately shows her a secret tunnel to bypass the walker-stuffed fence in an attempt to find her love. Midway through, Aaron gets injured, and they run into a pair of slimy sewer walkers, with Maggie saved only by her companion and his knife.
Ultimately, they make it to a fence leading to outside, but by then even Maggie hesitates, and decides to abandon her quest. She tells Aaron that as much as she wants to know Glenn's fate, she's willing to return because she's pregnant.
Back inside the walls, some residents are adapting to the new reality better than others. While Jessie's eldest son Ron finally asks Rick to teach him to shoot, her youngest, Sam, can't leave his room, not even for his beloved cookies. Jessie, meanwhile, is all-in: she calmly dispatches a resident-turned walker as their neighbors watch: the formerly abused wife steps up, telling the rest of the residents that they need to do the same, or die.
Rick later compliments her on her resolve, though she admits to having put on a brave face for the others -- and that's when the pair finally kiss.
Later on, despite a lack of proof of life -- for her and for fans -- an encouraged Maggie wipes Glenn's name off of a growing roster painted onto a memorial wall inside Alexandria.
"The Walking Dead" returns next Sunday, Nov. 15 at 9 p.m. Eastern time.
