The Walking Dead Season Finale: 7 Cool Things You Might Not Have Noticed

Last night's episode of AMC's The Walking Dead was packed to the gills with content. Even though there wasn't a lot of closure to many of the dangling questions fans really wanted them to answer, there was so much going on, and so much action, that you could have come to the end of the episode without either noticing everything they were doing, or realizing that they hadn't addressed one of your big concerns. There's some big picture stuff here and some smaller beats -- there's also some stuff that's obviously an Easter egg and some stuff that seems likely, but could just be us overthinking. In any case, read on...

The railroad car was revealed moments before it happened During the survivors' own personal version of The Walking Dead Escape obstacle course, the group passed two rail cars, at least one of which was filled with people crying out to Rick's group for help. Rick told Daryl to keep going, presumably because he thought they could get out and get to their weapons, and make some kind of plan to return for their friends and/or revenge. This one seems obvious, because a piece of dialogue by Rick and Daryl covered it, but it's worth mentioning because a handful of readers pointed it out to us as trivia and a handful of others didn't see/hear/believe it. There was a lot of commotion.

Throughout the week, when fans watched the scene with Carl and Rick talking about animal traps, a common response was that of course the "trap" in question was Terminus, the sticks and other obstacles surrounding the path were the woods and the walkers, etc. That may well be true (this is a show that's been known to double- and triple-dip in metaphors and foreshadowing this year), but they also had a very specific meaning in-episode: the "A" trail, doors and train car that gave the episode its title were all part of a large, elaborate snare.

Don't name them or you'll get attached As noted by a user on Reddit, there's a parallel between the season premiere and the season finale (actually, a few, which stands to reason since the flashback scenes peppered throughout "A" took place between Season Three and Season Four): You don't name something you plan to kill later. The example used on Reddit is that Rick doesn't want Carl to name the pigs, lest they get too attached and unable to cook them later (which is of course particularly glaring since most fans suspect Gareth and company are cannibals) but that episode also saw Carl lecturing Lizzie about naming the walkers at the gate. It might seem like a coincidence, until you consider that the entire second half of season four was littered with explicit and implied callbacks and references to both "30 Days Without An Accident" (the season premiere) and "After" (the midseason premiere).

Rick seems suspicious of Tara We speculated last week that it may come back to be a problem for Glenn that he lied to Maggie in "Us" and told her that Tara was just a person he met on the road to Terminus. Whether it does or not, it seems as though sooner or later the truth about Tara might come out. Rick certainly hesitated when she came out from around the rest of the group in that boxcar -- and while it could easily just have been "here are a bunch of new people," my first instinct (and that of many other fans) was that he may have recognized her. If you remember, back in the midseason finale "Too Far Gone," Rick actually singled out Tara as someone who seemed uneasy, asking her if she really wanted a war with the prisoners. Of course, we could be making a lot of assumptions. You do terrible things to survive in this world, and Rick knows that, so if she didn't personally kill Hershel and she's now a friend of his friends, it's not impossible her past actions will simply never come up.

Gareth is a real Second Amendment stickler. Did it strike anybody else as a little odd that when Rick and his group were at Terminus, Gareth had them surrender their weapons, then frisked them for weapons, then gave their weapons back before the tour began? This one's not technically an Easter egg, but we've got a theory as to why, and it seems worth mentioning: I think it's that, at that point, they're still trying to earn Rick's trust and do it the easy and non-bullet-wasting way. It plays into the "We're not evil, but we're not stupid either" that they would want to KNOW what weapons you have on you so that they know what they're up against, even if they don't actually take them away.Also, if things go sideways and they have to run you through the obstacle course and into the train car at gunpoint, this means that in the midst of the big action scene, Gareth and his people don't have to remember who had what hiding on their person. If Rick had been trying to pull something with hidden weapons the Terminians could have made their move inside.

Yeah, they're definitely cannibals A reader (username loltron, one of our regular commenters) noted that there are powdered milk containers inside the train car before Rick and company get in, suggesting that the Terminians are feeding (fattening up?) the survivors they kidnap. There's also the matter of the big pile of bloody, skeletal remains above, and a bunch of other stuff we already talked about.

He's Mine.Is it only me who heard Rick say, "He's mine" about the rapist Claimer and thought it was an echo of the "claimed" calls that this group of miscreants did since their introduction? He said the same thing in the comics, so it seems likely the writers were building the "claiming" concept in just to up the ante in that already-insanely-heightened scene.