BWW Recap: Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolves on THE WALKING DEAD?

Finding out the meaning of "JSS" turned out to be Robert Kirkman's advice to the viewing audience after watching that episode. We'll take a brief pause here as I do my best to get my pulse down to a normal level.

In the beginning of the episode we see a silent story of Enid's journey to Alexandria. Her parents were killed and she scribbles "JSS" at every turn until she arrives at Alexandria.

At Alexandria while all the soldiers were off handling the walkers, it is a (subjectively) normal day. Carol is bantering with the ladies at the pantry before telling Sam to get over his father's death. Jessie is dealing with petulant Ron who refuses to get a haircut and we meet Denise (Emmy Winner, Merritt Wever), our new resident psychiatrist turned surgeon after Pete's death. Tara and Eugene encourage her to keep studying to be a surgeon as now she is all the town has. Carol places another delicious dish in the oven and gazes out the window at Shelley who she had just taunted for smoking. Out of nowhere, Shelley is viciously attacked by a man with a machete. Oh, hello WOLVES! Yeah... I may have jumped out of my seat at that point and screamed. I did NOT see that coming.

Yes, the Wolves have arrived. As suspected, they attacked Alexandria. We quickly have our answer to last week's cliffhanger, the horn was a tractor trailer crashing into the fence at Alexandria. Spencer (Deanna's son) shoots the driver and he dies on the steering wheel laying on the horn. Carol leaves Carl to protect Judith and takes a disguise as a wolf and begins defending her crew. Everyone snaps into action and are able to keep the deaths, albeit brutal, to a minimum. Denise is thrown into action as she has to quickly set up a trauma center and is goaded into performing surgery on Holly, but is unable to save her. Jessie has some anger issues to work out as she attacks an intruder and stabs her with scissors about 150 times as son, Ron watches in horror. Ron himself comes dangerously close to an execution only to be saved by Carl. Unwilling to accept his help, Ron takes off running. Enid decides she doesn't want to stay any longer and leaves Carl a note, "Just Survive Somehow" which turns out is her motto and the theme of the entire show.

While Carol is shooting and executing the attackers, Morgan arrives to assist and tries to fend them off peacefully even negotiating with a pack of them to run since they don't have guns. In his final confrontation, Morgan comes face to face with the same d-bag from the episode "Conquer," (I think?). D-Bag quickly assesses that Morgan cannot kill him or he would have already. But our fearless Morgan has changed and kills him instantly. He even apologizes before doing so... and he did kill him... right? As the episode comes to a close, Carol and Morgan pass each other without a word.

As a pacifist, I completely understand where Morgan is coming from here, but in a world like this, I understand Carol's point of view. Neither one of them are wrong. My question is, was this a planned attack while there was no one there to defend Alexandria? Were they responsible for that quarry and were they able to stake out and know that all the soldier type residents would be gone at this time? It would be too much of a coincidence wouldn't it? The wolves are some scary people. They are just old-fashioned psychopaths. And we are back to the entire theme of the series that the people are way scarier than the monsters and that was illustrated in our faces in this episode.

A Couple Things:

• If Jessie has some anger issues to work out and scissors are her weapon of choice, I'd like to suggest Carl's hair.

• Father Gabriel apologized to Carl and now wants the kid to teach him to survive. Not gonna lie, I think Carl is his best shot at this. Even Carol wanted to leave him for dead.

• I'm thinking Carol's cover is blown now that Lydia has seen her in full action.

• Did y'all know the Mets won again? Just curious. #lgm

• Does this mean Carol is still not going to get his first kiss? She couldn't throw him a goodbye kiss before she took off? Come on, Enid!

• But then, she was also very "meh" about the Wolves attack. Like, you DO know there are psychos here to kill you, yes?

• I seriously don't remember Spencer being that hot...

Here's a preview for next week's all new episode:

Photo Credit: AMC

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