Just when you thought we didn't have to endure any more Beth acoustic solos ... along comes The Walking Dead Season 5, episode 9! :)
Farewell to the world's largest babysitter!
Poor Tyreese! We hardly knew ye!
If you were paying attention, you knew Tyreese had to be the next one to go! In December, he was announced as a regular on a new series, The Expanse, that will begin soon on SyFy. Though other actors are able to hold down two roles on concurrent series with ensemble casts, its only on shows that are filmed locally in Los Angeles, which is a fairly long hike from The Walking Dead's Georgia locations.
A second actor has been announced as a regular on Criminal Minds, but that's part of a back door pilot, and the new series hasn't been picked up yet. Plus his character is such that his story arc could be completed without killing him off AND we are between TWD shooting seasons.
I've been trying to ID this locket that Tyreese always wore. Does it have any significance?
After the demise of a major character. the most interesting thing about this episode is what we don't see -- the destruction of the gated community. Shirewilt Estates, which was filmed in Peachtree, Georgia.
Shirewilt is a reversal of the comic book's Wiltshire Estates, where many of the major characters first hooked up.
In season 2 of the TV series, this is in Georgia and is where Shane and Andrea go to look for Carol's daughter Sophia. Andrea learns how to shoot while there and she and Shane later go "parking" [for lack of a better euphemism]. The filming location is the same, but the Season 5 community is supposed to be 100 miles from Washington, DC, hence the name change.
What is implied in the episode, though, has obvious future implications!
There appears to have been a fairly recent battle between some group and the inhabitants of Shirewilt. The majority of the zombies in the streets appear to have simply wandered in through a break in the fences, which were breached from the outside. Since zombies can't open doors, Noah's mother was obviously killed by a human, and his brother -- who bit Tyreese -- was also killed inside the home.
And then there's this surmised sequence!
Just outside the wall breach, Michionne discovers what I think are zombie, rather than human, lower torsos that have been further mutilated
The upper body parts were then marked with a "W" and stashed in a truck, which then headed south through the woods. Its "escape" was then stopped by someone else dedicated enough to kill themselves by crashing into it.
This implies a future storyline, though I have no idea what it could be. Rick & Co. also go south to rejoin their companions and bury Tyreese, so some paths are bound to cross.
And what is the meaning of the "W"? Washington? Woodbury? I doubt it means Walker, since this term appears unique to Rick's group; everyone uses other descriptives, like Roamers, Lurkers, Biters, etc.
There was another character whose forehead was marked, back in the first episode of this season. It was the crazy man that Glenn released from a train car ["You're just like me! We're them!"]. It was numbers, rather than a "W", but their meaning was likewise unexplained.
Or maybe the W stands for Wolves, which could be Shirewilt's designation for zombies; after all, in the comics, the community left similar messages warning visitors that the Undead were ambling about. But I suspect the TV warning might be more literal and foreshadows the attack teased in the preview.
Speaking of foreshadowing, there's that issue of Glenn and baseball bats.
In the comics, Glenn was killed by a headshot with a bat wielded by a character named Negan. In the season opener, this was teased in the blood letting scene at the trough. And, here again, Glenn picks up a bat as his new weapon of choice.
And finally, Noah's brother's bedroom was a cornucopia of awesome images! Not all of which are easily explained.
The most intriguing is a blowup of the cover from the March, 1951 issue of Astounding Science Fiction by artist Paul Orban illustrating James H. Schmidt's "Space Fear". That story features space travel and telepaths, neither of which have a place in TWD universe.
The cover is prominently featured in two scenes with characters who have had limbs amputated.
Noah's brother has plenty of aircraft models, electronics, footballs and basketballs, and at least two guitars! A third guitar appears, but this may be one that ghost-Beth "brought" with her. I can't make out the names of any of the books on his shelves, but he also still has CDs and a low-tech table top football game!
As noted before, every episode features a clock that shows the season number as hours, with the episode number as minutes, so the clock here shows 5:09. As revealed on The Talking Dead, the imaginary voice heard on the clock radio detailing events from the early days of the Apocalypse is actually that of Andrew Lincoln [Rick Grimes] speaking in his natural British accent.
Two other items in that room are worth mentioning: the ironic and obvious "Dead End" sign in a room full of dead characters [it was earlier hanging above the head of the two zombies that attacked Tyreese] and the zombie figure behind Martin's head.