AMC has released the full first chapter of The Walking Dead Red Machete online. The video compiles all three episodes of the five-part series released so far into a single video to watch in full.
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The Walking Dead Red Machete is a series of digital shorts tracking the path of the red-handled machete favored by Rick Grimes in hand-to-hand combat on The Walking Dead. Its the same weapon Rick used to dispatch Gareth, the cannibal leader of Terminus, in The Walking Dead Season Five.
The first episode of the five-part series, titled “Behind Us,” went all the way back to the very beginning, when the red-handled machete was a boxed item on the shelf of a hardware store as the zombie apocalypse began. A young boy pulled the machete off the shelf and used it to defend himself from a walker. Unfortunately for him, the boy didn’t actually know how to kill a walker and ran the blade through his undead assailant’s stomach rather than striking at the monster’s head.
The boy died, but the machete ended up with a man taking care of his two daughters. The man used the machete to defend himself and the children from walkers and to chop wood while holed up in their home.
However, the cabinets eventually ran bare the man was forced to lead the girls out into the walker-infested wilds. While making their escape, a walker grabbed one of the girls by the hair and she was lost, eaten before her sister’s eyes. The final scene of the episode shows the man using the machete to cut the surviving girl’s hair, ensuring that she does not suffer the same fate as her sister.
The second episode of The Walking Dead Red Machete, titled “Sorrowful,” shows the survivors burying the girl, who was named Alyssa. The father then teaches his remaining daughter how to use the red machete as a tool for gutting fish and trains her to defend herself. Eventually, he carves the girl’s name, Mandy, into the handle and gives it to her to keep.
While trying to tie a walker to the fence of their new hideout to use as an early warning system, the father is bitten. Mandy sees the wound and there’s a quick cut to the father’s grave, implying that Mandy did what needed to be done.
The early warning system does come in handy when a man finds the house. Mandy is able to hide, but the man takes the machete.
The third episode of the series, “Made to Suffer,” shows that the scavenger doesn’t hold onto the weapon for long. He is just cleaning and repairing the weapon when a walker comes up behind him. He doesn’t hear its approach because he has headphones on with music playing. By the time he realizes the threat, it’s too late. He impales the walker with the machete, but the walker still kills the scavenger.
The machete remains in that walker as it wanders the region for some time until it is claimed by Joe (Jeff Kober), the leader of the Claimers who were major antagonists in The Walking Dead Season Four.
New episodes of The Walking Dead Red Machete will debut throughout the eighth season of The Walking Dead.
The Walking Dead airs Sundays at 9 p.m. ET on AMC.