The Walking Dead Recap With Spoilers: After

The "After" episode of The Walking Dead opens with walkers swarming the ruins of the prison. There is a close-up of The Governor's dead body on the ground. Michonne is standing outside the prison, katana in hand, watching smoke billow from the ruins. Michonne heads toward the prison. She's surrounded by walkers, and she hacks their heads off as she goes. She jumps over a spiked fence and watches as a pair of walkers impale themselves. She cuts down a rope and cuts the arms off the two walkers. She's made herself two new pets. Leading her two new pets behind her, Michonne walks up to Hershel's zombie head. She stabs it through the brain, then she kneels down to say goodbye. She runs her hand across Hershel's head. Carl is walking down a dirt road, and Rick is hobbling along behind him. Rick yells at Carl to slow down, telling him they need to stay together and find a place with food and supplies. Carl turns and looks at Rick, but he keeps on walking. Rick and Carl come across a diner with several abandoned motorcycles. Rick tells Carl to stand watch outside. But Carl points out that Rick can barely stand and says he's going to help him clear it. They come across one walker, and Carl starts to shoot it. But Rick says it's weak and that he can draw it out. Rick hits the walker in the head with an axe, but he's struggling. Carl shoots the walker. Rick is mad, but Carl tells him that he couldn't do it with the axe. Rick tells Carl that every bullet counts, and they might have needed that one later. Rick and Carl gather food from the kitchen. Rick shows Carl his haul and asks him what he found. Carl shows his bigger haul and says, "I win." Michonne is walking a dirt road with her two new pets. She spies the tracks left by Rick and Carl, and she leaves the road and goes into the woods. Rick and Carl are back on the road, and Carl is still walking ahead. They come across a house, and Rick tells Carl that one is as good as any. Carl wanders away from Rick inside the house, and Rick yells at him to stop. Carl starts yelling curse words, and Rick tells him to watch his mouth. Carl tells Rick if there was one of them down there they would have come out. Carl goes up the stairs to check the second story rooms, while Rick checks the kitchen. Carl comes across a kid's room. He looks at some DVDs, before pulling a cord out from the TV. Carl uses it to tie the downstairs door shut. Rick is pushing a couch up against the door, when Carl yells at him that he tied it shut. Carl tells Rick that he knows how to tie a good knot because Shane taught him. Carl says, "Remember him?" Rick says, "Yeah, I remember him every day. Is there something else you want to say to me?" Rick tells Carl that they should eat, but Carl says they should save their food. Rick tells Carl to eat it now. Rick goes upstairs and looks at his injuries in the mirror. In a flashback to the past, Michonne is in a kitchen, chopping food with a knife. Two men are sitting at the table. Michonne is arguing with one of the men about art. The man that Michonne is arguing with turns to the other man and says, "Mike, would you please talk some sense into your lover?" Mike says, "I agree with my lover." As Michonne is wiping her knife clean, it turns into a katana as she pulls it out from the cloth. A little kid comes running up, Michonne picks up the kid, calling him 'Peanut.' She walks over to the two men to lay down the plate of food that she has been fixing on the table. Suddenly, there is flashfoward in time, and the two men look dirty and tired. The two men are arguing about staying at the camp. Michonne says, "Ok, I see what this is." One of the men says that Michonne has gotten good with a sword, which makes her valuable. Mike asks, "For what? What are we going for? Where's the happy ending here? This isn't life. This isn't anything close. Not for me. Not for us. For our son, what's the answer here?"  The other man yells, "What's the damn question, Mike?" Michonne says she has a question, "Who's going to open the wine?" Then, she looks up and both arms have been cut off the two men. Michonne

starts screaming, "No." She wakes up inside a car with her two new pet walkers leashed up outside. Carl wakes up in the house, and he looks at Rick, who is sleeping on the couch. Carl goes to the kitchen and makes a couple bowls of cereal. Carl is sitting on a couch, reading a book. He goes back in to see his dad and tries to get him to wake up. He starts shaking Rick and screaming at him to wake up. Then, he hears walkers rattling and pushing at the door.  Carl slips out another door and walks up behind two walkers rattling the door. Carl yells, "Hey you! Fresh meat, come and get it." He leads the two walkers down the road away from the house. As he's leading them away, another walker comes up behind him. The other walk grabs Carl, and they struggle. Carl shoots two of the walkers, and they fall on top of him, trapping him. The third walker is heading toward him, but he manages to shoot it as well. Carl struggles free from underneath the three walkers, then he throws up. He looks at the three dead walkers and says, "I win." Michonne is walking through the woods with her two new pets. There are several walkers to either side of her, but they aren't attacking. Michonne keeps looking to the side at one walker, who bears a striking resemblance to Michonne herself. Carl returns to the house. Carl tells a sleeping Rick that he killed three walkers that were at the door. Carl tells Rick that he saved him. Carl says that he didn't forget while he had them playing farmer, that he still knows how to survive. Carl tells Rick that he doesn't need him to protect him anymore. Carl yells at Rick that he couldn't protect Judith or anyone else. Carl yells at Rick that he just wanted to plant vegetables and didn't care that The Governor knew where they were. He yells that they are all gone now because of Rick. Carl yells that they had counted on Rick because he was their leader. Carl says, "But now you're nothing. I'd be fine if you died." Carl is back walking the streets outside the house. He pulls up a yard light that has a sharp end. He sees another house and tries to break down the door, but running into the door just knocks him backwards. He uses the yard light to break in. He starts raiding the kitchen for food, when he spies something up high. It's a large can of chocolate pudding. Carl goes to the upstairs rooms, where he spots a dead bird on the floor. Carl opens a closed door. And suddenly, there is walker trying to push through. He shoots the walker but doesn't kill it. Then, he's out of bullets. The walker is still coming at him. He makes his way into another room. He's trying to get out the window, but it won't open all the way.

He hits the walker with a lamp and tries to push him back. He falls on the ground, and the walker grabs his shoe. He struggles free by pulling his foot out of his shoe. He makes it outside the room and locks the walker inside. He writes on the door in chalk, "Walker inside, got my shoe, but didn't get me."  Carl is sitting on a rooftop outside a window, eating the can of chocolate pudding. The walker's arm can be seen behind him, trying to reach out the partially closed window. Michonne is still walking through the woods. She stops and looks at the walker that looks similar to her.  She slashes the walker in the head with her katana. Then, all the walkers around her start to attack, and she slices and dices them all. Then, she kills her two new pets. Michonne spies some more tracks from Rick and Carl on a dirt road. Carl is sleeping on the floor, next to Rick on the couch. Carl wakes up in the middle of the night, and he sees Rick start to stir, like he's become a walker. Carl pulls out his gun and points it at Rick. Rick is reaching out like he's a walker, and Carl is sobbing. Rick grabs Carl's foot, and Carl puts down his gun and says he can't. Carl sobs, "I was wrong, just do it." Rick says Carl's name and tells him to stay safe. Rick falls unconscious again. Carl cradles his father's head and sobs that he's scared. Michonne walks into the open door of the diner that Rick and Carl visited before. She finds the body of the walker that they killed. She slumps down against the wall. Michonne sobs, "Mike, I miss you. I missed you even when I was with you back at the camp. It wasn't you who did it. You were wrong, because I'm still here. And you could be to. And he could be. I know the answer. I know why." Michonne leaves the diner, and she slashes the head off a walker ambling up. Rick is awake now. He tells Carl that he shouldn't have risked it going out there like that. Rick says that it's good that he

found more food. Carl says he found even more food, but he ate it. When Rick asks what it was, Carl says it was a 112 ounces of pudding. Rick says, "I know we'll never get things back to the way they used to be. I only clung to that for you and Judith. Now, she's gone. And you, you're a man, Carl. You're a man. I'm sorry." Carl says, "You don't need to be." Michonne finds the open can of pudding out in the roadway. She walks up to a house with her hand on her katana. Then, she looks inside and sees Rick and Carl sitting on the floor. She starts sobbing and then laughing. Rick and Carl hear a knock outside the door Rick looks through the peephole in the door. He falls down laughing. Carl asks, "What?" Rick smiles and says, "It's for you."