The Walking Dead has sent off Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln).
A bloodied Rick looks down at himself in a hospital bed. Back at a time when he woke up in a world gone bye, newly overrun by the walking dead.
He snaps awake, impaled on a protruding piece of rebar as a herd of the dead close in for the kill.
Rick quickly undoes his belt and hoists himself free, escaping to a white horse and riding off as he's trailed by the dead.
Visions from his past flood his memory: the overturned car of some fleeing criminals, the hospital bed that for a time acted as his grave.
Fleeing into a cabin, Rick patches himself up before blacking out. When he awakes, he's on horseback, riding into an Atlanta now belonging to the dead.
"I'm looking for my family," Rick says, haunted by the memory of his late wife and son.
Shane (Jon Bernthal), Rick's old partner and former best friend, tells the weary cowboy to hop in their police cruiser.
"You took a page out of my book," Shane tells the hardened Rick Grimes. "You stepped up."
Rick is stirred from his vision of the past when walkers force him back on the run, while Michonne (Danai Gurira) attempts to prevent Maggie (Lauren Cohan) from seeking her vengeance on the jailed Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), who brutally murdered husband Glenn (Steven Yeun).
After a tense confrontation, Maggie ultimately spares Negan, ignoring his pleading cries for death — deeming his pathetic and solitary existence in his cage a worthy punishment.
Rick, fading in and out of consciousness, is back on the Greene farm. He watches a colorful sunset with Maggie's father, Hershel (Scott Wilson).
"I'm so sorry for what happened to you... for everything Maggie's lost," Rick says.
Hershel tells Rick Maggie is strong and his grandson, Hershel Rhee, will "only make her stronger."
Rick says he's searching for his family. He's tried. "Maybe I could find them here?"
"No, Rick," Hershel tells him. "You have to wake up."
He's back on the horse before wandering the halls of an Atlanta hospital. "DON'T OPEN, DEAD OUTSIDE," reads a warning message scrawled across a door.
Stepping outside, Rick walks into a bright, white light before realizing he's stood in a mass grave, littered with an endless sea of bodies.
Daryl (Norman Reedus). Carol (Melissa McBride). Maggie. Shane. Friends and foes alike, some long dead, others still breathing.
Sasha (Sonequa Martin-Green) rises.
"We don't die. It's not about you or me or any one of us. It's about all of us," she tells him.
"I don't think it just evens out. I think it always crosses over. Toward the good. Toward the brave. Toward love. Family... you're not gonna find them because they're not lost. And you are not lost. What you need to do is wake up."
Rick is again awake, fending off walkers as he makes his way to the bridge that he sees as the single link meant to unite Alexandria, Hilltop, the Kingdom, Oceanside, and the Sanctuary.
Michonne draws him in. "We don't die. You know why I fell in love with you? You never give up. You're a fighter. So fight, Rick. Fight for me. Fight for all of us."
Suddenly, the dream is over. His closest friends rush in from the forest as the horde of walkers, now a hulking mass, shamble over the bridge.
Barely on his feet, Rick eyes a toppled over box of dynamite. He readies his Colt Python and takes him.
Michonne yells for Rick. He smiles.
"I found them."
He fires. Boom.
The bridge goes up in flame, sending the fiery dead into the raging river below.
Michonne screams as Maggie and Carol hold her back. Daryl, shattered, can only stand and watch in disbelief before turning and walking off into the woods.
Elsewhere, Anne (Pollyanna McIntosh) watches the smoke. A helicopter arrives and hovers as a weak but still alive Rick washes ashore.
Anne makes a desperate plea for the helicopter to claim her and her newfound "B."
Then, Wang Chung's "Space Junk" plays as a barely-with-it Rick looks out the helicopter window, watching as it lifts higher and higher, disappearing out of view over the horizon...
Years pass.
A small pack of survivors fight through the dead, but become quickly overwhelmed when a young girl comes to their rescue.
"Judith," she says, introducing herself. "Judith Grimes."