“The Lost and the Plunderers” follows six different points-of-view as we deal the loss of Carl and the destabilization of Negan’s Saviors. Take a look at our review!
This episode has a much different format than previous episodes which does throw it off a bit in terms of style, but before each new section, we get a black screen with a certain character’s name. This post is broken up to follow that timeline.
MICHONNE
“The Lost and the Plunderers” begins with Michonne as she starts taking down walkers before they can reach her or Rick. It’s very much how she behaved after the prison fell. This was a little off for me because we follow Rick a bit more than we do Michonne at first.
He leaves Carl’s gun on the cross he’s made for his grave then takes it off before walking to find Michonne. He stops at the body of a dead Savior and retrieves the walkie talkie.
Michonne prevents more walkers from entering the ASZ and then finds Rick before they go to their home. This is when Michonne sees the blue handprints left by Carl and Judith, and she begins crying as she places her hand on Carl’s print.
Both prints side-by-side, remind us that Michonne has lost two children in the apocalypse. Her son, André, who was a baby, and now Carl. The handprints go so far as to illustrate the ages of the children she’s lost.
She goes in the house and tells Rick that they need to leave. Outside, they see that the gazebo that Carl used to sit on top of is on fire. They rush over to put it out since it was something Carl loved, and almost get ambushed by walkers. She fights them off for a bit with a fire extinguisher before finally taking out her katana and running for the van with Rick.
On their way out of the ASZ, they pass the burning gazebo and all the walkers that now inhabit their once home.
“What do you think he meant? Did he want us to stop fighting the Saviors? Just surrender to Negan?”
“We could pull over. Read what he wrote.”
Rick tells her he’s not ready, and that’s when Michonne tells him that Carl wrote a letter to Negan.
Rick ignores her and decides they need to talk to Jadis. Since they were seen at the Sanctuary, they’ll be targets, and Rick needs to get there before Negan does.
We flash to the trash heap, and there are no people around at all. Rick and Michonne enter and set off a trap that leads walkers to them. It becomes very apparent that Negan has already reached Jadis because the walkers are her people.
NEGAN
We open with Negan on the walkie talkie, saying that the people in the ASZ have escaped and his people need to comb over every piece of land between there and the Hilltop because that’s definitely where they’re headed.
Simon walks in, and Negan tells him:
“It appears our friends at Alexandria had themselves an escape plan. Rick’s little one-eyed pride and joy played me. Damn. That kid is built for this shit.”
Simon wants to take a group out to go and kill them, but Negan tells him someone else has it and asks how Hilltop went.
Simon tells him that he did exactly as requested, meaning he only killed on person, and asks about Gavin (Henry’s stabbing victim) and the Kingdom. Negan seems pretty confident that Gavin will take care of business but Simon is antsy to get back out there.
That’s when Negan tells him to sit down and gives him a new job.
The garbage people. Simon says that he’ll kill them all and Negan lays down the law by saying that he’ll deliver the standard message.
He sees that something is brewing inside Simon, so he tells him to say what’s on his mind.
“If you’ve got something to say say it.”
“Maybe we should cut our losses here. These people can’t learn the lesson, no matter how many times we teach it. Alexandria, Hilltop, Kingdom, these garbage rats they’re not seeming to understand the situation. Not one little bit. So maybe we learn our lesson, scrape the plates into the trash. Move further out. Find other communities to “save”.”
“Oh, I am doing my best to hold it together right now. You wanna cut your losses, take your own advice. Killing everybody to solve the problem that is the easy way, not our way. What we do saving people, it is hard. But it damn well works.”
“Not lately.”
Simon is still pissed. When they bring in the box from Hilltop and see that Maggie has the Satellite Outpost, everything about Negan’s speech dealing with “clipping Rick” then stuff will be aces seems pretty stupid. Maggie won’t let this go either.
Simon says he’s going to kill all those farmers and Negan tells him that he’s going to Jadis and he won’t touch the people at Hilltop. This puts a fire in Simon that will rage when he finally gets to Jadis and the trash people.
ENID
We pick up where we left off basically. Aaron explains that they came to ask for help, but that seems like a bad opener since Enid just killed Grandma.
This part of the episode is fairly basic. Everyone wants to kill Enid and Aaron, but in the end, it’s decided by Cyndie that they’ll just let them go. They aren’t going to be like everyone else and kill all willy nilly.
It should be noted that the most outspoken person that said they needed to kill them was the Oceanside child. So, we saw Carl take lives at an early age, Enid just experienced her first human kill and is rationalizing it, and Henry killed Gavin at the Kingdom. This whole “next generation” trigger happy thing seems really prevalent in the back half of this season.
Enid does make a point that pushes Cyndie to release them:
“Why would you kill us? To punish us? I mean, don’t you get it? Killing is the punishment. You execute us, then maybe some of ours will come looking for us. And maybe you’ll take them out, but eventually, enough of them will come back and they will wipe you out.”
Cyndie tells them not to come back. Before they even go off screen, Aaron asks if she remembers where the car is because he’s going back, and he’ll be okay.
The make flimsy promises that they’ll be okay and that they’ll see each other again, but we know how empty those words can be in this world.
SIMON
He has his marching orders from Negan, gathers his men, and goes to the trash people.
Jadis is painting when Simon shows up, and all her people are gathered around her with guns. It seems like craft time is only for Jadis which is such a shame because it’s probably really boring in a trash yard in the apocalypse.
Just a few quick questions here: Why doesn’t anyone have hats on? Why is everyone wearing black? This is Virginia and there’s no shade where they live. This makes no sense to me.
Oh, and you don’t forget 30+ years of language acquisition in a couple of years just because you’re in a small group of people. The way they talk is insane.
I’ll channel Simon here:
Anyway, Simon brings up their partnership with Rick, and Jadis says it wasn’t a partnership. In fact, she just brought Rick to them. Simon calls her on her nonsense then says if she apologizes, everything will be okay.
They’ll also take all their guns and ammunitions. The trash people are very against this idea, but Jadis agrees. All the guns are taken from the trash people, and then Simon approaches Jadis’ painting. It’s blue paint and of a cat-like human. (This definitely ties Carl and Michonne together again.)
In a very poor writing move, Simon asks why they chose the dump and what it used to be because there is a helipad in the back and solar panels instead of casually showing these things during all of our visits there. When Jadis tells him it was always a dump, he regresses back to the apology.
“It occurs to me that I’ve not yet received the full definition of an apology. I feel like I’ve gotten some transgressional acknowledgment, the guns certainly cover restitution. But what I’m not yet feeling is the remorse.”
“There is remorse. {Simon shoots one of her people} There is remorse. No! {He kills another person}”
“Say it again!”
“There is remorse, you son of a bitch!”
When he sees how badly he has affected Jadis by her fighting back and punching him, he tells the Saviors with him to kill everyone. After some initial resistance, they follow orders and kill everyone except Jadis.
Negan is going to be irate when he finds out.
—
Back at the sanctuary, Simon tells him that things went well. Negan says they haven’t heard anything from Gavin, but he’s already sent a group out to recon on Gavin.
When Negan asks him how it went, Simon lies and says it was the standard message and delivery.
“There was remorse.”
Negan gets sidetracked because someone holds up the walkie talkie and tells him that Rick is asking for him.
JADIS
It seems like we’ve finally caught up with our original timeline in “The Lost and the Plunderers” because we go back to Rick and Michonne as they fight off the trash people.
When Rick finds out that the Saviors have already been there and Jadis is of no use to them, he makes a run for it with Michonne. Jadis tries to follow and asks for help after we got some backstory on her. Instead of showing mercy, Rick shoots his gun in the air and all the walkers go after her instead of following him and Michonne.
“Let me come with you. Just until they’re gone.”
“Nah. I’m done with her games. She can’t help us, anyway. Come on.”
Which is really freaking rich considering that Rick has been ignoring his dead son’s letters and wasting gas just to drive all the way out there to Jadis as if she was some huge asset.
Jadis ends up escaping and at the top of the trash heap with all her people in walker from across from her. Jadis turns on the trash compactor, unclips the chain in front of the walkers and watches as they all fall in.
After they turn into walker sludge, she goes back down the trash pile and opens a secret container that holds applesauce.
She begins to eat it, and it makes the audience wonder where she got it, and if this is some kind of clue as to where Aaron may be going? He had applesauce when he first met Rick and company, and the blue paint is certainly a tie to Carl. Maybe this is an illustration of an opportunity for Rick to show mercy and he didn’t?
We’ll have to see.
RICK
As they’re driving away, Rick justifies his actions to Michonne. He says that Jadis lived, and he didn’t want her dead anyway.
“Feels like what Carl was talking about. We have a choice.”
Rick finally pulls over, says he needs a minute, and takes the letters. Of course, he reads Negan’s first instead of his own which prompts his walkie talkie call to Negan.
Apparently, Carl wanted peace, but Rick says that doesn’t matter anymore because he’s going to kill Negan anyway.
The real acting here isn’t Rick’s self-righteous anger or Negan’s biting wit, it’s JDM’s face as he registers the fact that Carl is dead and he ignores Rick saying he’s going to kill him and asks about Carl’s death.
Negan is processing Carl’s death better than Rick, and he’s really broken up about it.
“That kid was the future.”
Rick says he’s going to kill Negan again, and that’s when Negan sets him straight and lays into his ass.
It’s a very interesting parallel here between Rick losing himself when Lori died and hearing the voices on the phone to Negan talking him through Carl’s death by telling him exactly what he feels but hasn’t been able vocalize.
Carl’s death is his fault.
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