If you saw last week you know that the majority of the strongest fighters are off herding zombies. The remaining residents of Alexandria are less than prepared should there be any sort of emergency. However, at the end of the first episode, a horn went off, moving many of the zombies toward the noise and Alexandria. They haven’t made it there yet as of JSS, but they are coming, and the folks of Alexandria had far more things to worry about with the living, this week.
If you haven’t seen JSS yet, stop reading now. Spoilers are ahead!
So, JSS definitely offered some positives and some negatives. Things got moving with Enid’s back story. Her parents died and were eaten in front of her and she eventually made her way to Alexandria. On the way, she continually wrote the letters JSS on windows and on the ground as she passed. It was revealed that JSS meant Just Survive Somehow when Enid left the note to Carl before disappearing, presumably from the community, and possibly from the show.
While she did not outright admit it, it seems very likely that Enid is a part of the Wolves. She attempted to tell Carl, but he silenced her while they were protecting the house and Judith, together.
The rest of the episode really dealt with the invasion of Alexandria by the Wolves. Unfortunately, the only people that are able to handle the onslaught of this violent troop are Carol, Maggie, and Carl. Carol goes out to try and save whoever she can, after putting a casserole in the oven, and Carl is told to stay in the house and protect Judith. Maggie, who was with Deanna at the time of the outbreak, is there, but under utilized.
Jessie and her kids made it out unscathed, though she did have a run-in that prompted a surprising scene with her stabbing a woman multiple times with some scissors. This was one of the best scenes of the episode, which is in stark contrast to the worst scene, which also involved Jessie. The brief scene included Jessie trying to talk to her teenage son, Ron. The awkward silences that occur between the two are just too much and the scene quickly becomes clunky and unnecessary.
Morgan returned from the herding to the community and made it clear that he did not plan on killing anyone. He actually ended up encouraging some of the Wolves to leave and not come back. Even when someone was going to kill him, he still tried to avoid hurting another living person. This could become a problem at some point, but for now he’s been lucky.
It is Carol who remains the hero of this episode though. In the beginning of the episode, she’s chatting with the women of the community about casseroles and by the middle, she is saving as many lives as she can. She kills and dresses up as one of the wolves, before invading the armory to once again secure Alexandria. She even managed to have the Wolves cleaned out before her casserole came out of the oven.
The Wolves were about as savage an enemy as we have seen on The Walking Dead. Yielding only knives and machetes, the wolves came into Alexandria to take no prisoners. They were hacking on Alexandrians left and right. People had their faces beaten in, they were stabbed multiple times, and the carnage was some of the worst human on human carnage we’ve ever seen in six seasons. With enemies like Terminus, the threat was almost non-existent when it came down to the climax. The Wolves provided a formidable fight. In the end, the difference seemed to be in that the purpose here was to prune down the Alexandria group. None of Rick’s group got so much as a scratch. This is definitely nothing to complain about though and it certainly makes the group more manageable. It also did a nice job of showing who was going to be willing to fight to survive (Jessie) and who might not be (Deanna).
While many of the Wolves were killed, there are still plenty out there, partly in thanks to Morgan. That said, it’s quite possible that we haven’t seen the last of them. From the looks of next week’s episode, things will be back on Rick and the fighters that are attempting to survive through a zombie hoard that is turning on them. Hopefully the group will be back together soon, because last week we missed Carol and this week we had her in spades, but Daryl’s presence was sorely missing. It will be nice to have them together again, soon.
