In episode 13 of The Walking Dead season 7, titled “Bury Me Here,” we take another visit to the Kingdom just as things really start to fall apart for Ezekiel’s people. Richard is still determined to do anything necessary to force Ezekiel into joining the war against Negan, but his latest plan results in tragedy. Meanwhile, Carol goes to Morgan for confirmation of Daryl’s story about their friends’ fate, and a shocking loss sends Morgan over the edge.
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Carol Goes Looking for Answers
The episode begins with a brief but intriguing cold open. We see several members of the Kingdom loading up a truck with a single melon. We also see that there is a pool of dried blood inside the truck. The episode then goes back in time to show how they got to this sad melon situation.
Earlier that day, Morgan is trying to get Benjamin’s little brother to focus on their lesson. Apparently, Ben’s little brother wants to learn the stick, and Morgan has agreed to train him. Ben watches them practice, and something terrible is probably going to happen to one of the brothers.
While Morgan is busy with his lesson, Carol has decided to head to the Kingdom to get some answers. She takes out a few walkers on her way there and then tells Benjamin that she’s looking for Morgan. When she finds him, Carol asks Morgan if Daryl was telling her the truth when he said that everyone back home is okay. Morgan tells her that if she wants to know what happened, she will have to go to Alexandria and find out for herself. He offers to go with her, but she just shakes her head and walks away.
As she is leaving, Ben stops Carol to ask if he can follow her home. He saw the way she took out those walkers and he’s been trying to improve his own skills. He wants to learn from her and he claims he can miss the upcoming drop with the Saviors. Carol says no and tells him to go to the drop as planned. As she heads back to the creepy house, Richard is spying on her from behind a building. Once Carol is out of view, Richard heads around the back of the building and starts digging what will turn out to be a grave.
Before they head out for the drop with the Saviors, Benjamin stops by Morgan’s room to give him a gift. It’s a painting. Ben says that a girl he knows fixed it up for him. Morgan asks Ben about this girl, but he gets embarrassed and leaves.
(It is obvious by this point that poor Benjamin will be meeting a tragic end before the episode is done. Ben was pretty much doomed, given how close he is to Ezekiel. From the start, it seemed likely that Ben’s death at the hands of the Saviors was going to be the thing that finally got Ezekiel involved in the upcoming war, so his fate in the episode isn’t exactly a surprise. That being said, I liked Ben, so I was hoping he’d last a bit longer.)
Benjamin Dies
After the melons are loaded into the truck, Richard tries to talk to Morgan about the tension between them. Richard knows that Morgan is a good guy, but he says that Morgan can’t be the good guy forever. He also tells Morgan not to be too hard on himself when that day comes.
On their way to the meet-up with the Saviors, the group comes across a roadblock. There are a bunch of shopping carts lined up blocking off their path. (We later realize that while the others are distracted with watching out for whoever set the trap, Richard takes one of the melons out of the truck and hides it.) The group checks the nearby building and finds an empty grave with a sign that says, “Bury me here.” The group then clears the roadblock so they can be on their way.
Thanks to the trap, the group is late to their scheduled drop with the Saviors, and Gavin is not pleased. Gavin’s anger increases when he realizes the group is short one melon. After realizing that Gavin is right, Ezekiel says they can go get twice the amount of melons in an hour’s time, but Gavin says no. He tells Ezekiel that they keep having problems and they need to deal with them here and now. Jared, the Savior that Richard has had a few tussles with already, gets the task of teaching the Kingdom group a lesson. Richard steps up, ready to die for the Kingdom, but Jared ends up shooting Benjamin instead. As Ben bleeds out from his leg wound, Gavin tells Ezekiel to come back the next day with the missing melon.
They need to get Benjamin help as quickly as possible, so Morgan suggests heading to Carol’s creepy house since it’s close and they know she has medical supplies. Carol is clearly shocked to see them, but she joins the others in trying to save Ben’s life. Alas, he has lost too much blood and he then dies off-screen.
Morgan is so overwhelmed by the weight of Benjamin’s death that he storms out of the creepy house and starts having flashbacks. Not only does he relive Ben’s death, but he also has flashes of his deceased wife and son. At one point during his frenzied state, Morgan takes a knife to his wrist, but he stops short of killing himself. He then kicks over a bin and sees the missing melon. This is when he realizes that Richard was responsible for Ben’s death.
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Morgan Takes a Life
Morgan goes to Richard’s room, and from the look on his face, Richard realizes that Morgan knows what he did. Richard confesses to setting everything up in the hopes that his death at the Saviors’ hands would prompt Ezekiel into fighting back. Richard then explains that he had to do something to stop the Saviors since, back in the day, he lost his wife and daughter because he failed to take action.
While Morgan listens in angry silence, Richard goes on to say that they can use what happened. They can convince the Saviors that they understand how things work now and, once they regain the Saviors’ trust, they can start taking them out. They can join Alexandria and the Hilltop in the war against the Saviors. Richard says he’ll be the one to lead the Kingdom’s army against the Saviors. He also claims that he will tell Ezekiel and the others what he did and he’ll spend his life making up for it.
The next day, Morgan, Richard and several other Kingdom members go to the drop with the Saviors. Gavin doesn’t seem too broken up when he learns that Benjamin died, though he does send Jared away in anger since Benjamin wasn’t the one who was supposed to be killed.
Once Jared leaves, Richard hands over the single melon they brought as instructed. Before Richard can launch into his ruse about understanding the Saviors’ rules, Morgan knocks Richard to the ground and begins choking him. While Ezekiel and the others watch on in horror, Morgan strangles Richard to death.
When Richard is dead, Morgan explains that Richard set everything up, from the roadblock to hiding the melon. Morgan then does what Richard planned to do and tells Gavin that they understand how things work now. Gavin and the Saviors leave, seemingly convinced of Morgan’s sincerity.
Ezekiel is horrified and confused by Richard’s betrayal. When Morgan tries to explain Richard’s reasoning for his actions, he accidentally calls Benjamin by his dead son’s name. He corrects the error, but it’s enough to convince Ezekiel that Morgan is not in a good mental place. Ezekiel tries to get Morgan to leave with them, but Morgan insists on staying. He tells the others to go, and they do.
Morgan and Carol Swap Places
After the others leave, Morgan buries Richard in the grave that Richard dug for himself. He then goes on a spree of killing every walker that happens to cross his path before heading to Carol’s creepy house.
Morgan tells Carol that he killed Richard and then asks her if she wants to know the truth about what happened to their friends. Carol says she does, and Morgan tells her that Negan beat Abraham and Glenn to death with a baseball bat. Carol is devastated. Morgan goes on to say that Negan also killed Spencer and Olivia. He explains that Jesus brought the group to the Kingdom because Rick is planning to fight the Saviors.
As Carol tries to take that information in, Morgan starts to leave. She stops him and asks what he’s doing. Morgan intends to go out there and kill them all, one by one. (Yes, Morgan is back to his “clearing” ways.) Instead, Carol makes him the same offer that Ezekiel made her earlier this season: “You can go and not go.”
Carol apparently packs a bag and then heads to the Kingdom. When she arrives, Ezekiel is working in the garden because they had a bug problem and lost a bunch of crops. Carol tells him that she’s here now and they need to get ready to fight the Saviors. Ezekiel agrees but tells her “not today.” Carol then joins Ezekiel and Ben’s little brother in fixing up the garden.
The final scene of the episode finds Morgan staying in Carol’s creepy house and sharpening his stick in preparation for more killing. As with previous Morgan-heavy episodes, Lennie James does a beautiful job of taking us through Morgan’s shifting mental state.
What did you think of this episode of The Walking Dead? Were you shocked by Benjamin’s death or was it an inevitability? Are you surprised that Morgan’s mental break caused him to murder Richard? Are you glad that Carol finally knows the truth about what happened to her people? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below.
The Walking Dead season 7 airs Sunday nights at 9/8c on AMC. Want more news? Like our Facebook page.
(Image courtesy of AMC)
Contributing Writer, BuddyTV
