Unlike last year, Season 8 of The Walking Dead has seen the good guys score big wins against Negan and his sadistic Saviors. But the cost of those victories is getting too big.
In “Some Guy,” the fourth episode of the season, Rick (Andrew Lincoln) and Ezekiel (Khary Payton) score another victory in the form of a colossal Gatling gun and ammo added to their shared arsenal. It’s a hefty piece of artillery, one that will certainly be useful in the ongoing war against Negan. Unfortunately, the awesome might of this machine gun was proven when it wiped out pretty much all of the Kingdom’s forces in one pull of the trigger.
And at the end of the episode, it’s none other than Shiva, Ezekiel’s savage tiger, who makes the ultimate sacrifice.
At the very end of last week’s episode, Ezekiel unwittingly led his troops into an open field outside a Savior compound, of which the Saviors seized, and commenced wabbit season against the Kingdom. When “Some Guy” begins, Ezekiel awakes under a pile of his own men and women, which leaves him spared and at the mercy of a nameless Savior, who has a serious case of crazy eyes and is dressed like a lost extra from Stranger Things.
Jerry gets the MVP Award for this week's episode, in which he savagely splits a Savior clean in half with a battle axe.
From there, “Some Guy” meanders, with the only exciting moments being Carol’s escapades as a bonafide badass. As the only one of the Kingdom who made it inside the compound, Carol goes full-blown [Metal Gear Solid](/topic/metal-gear-solid) as she picks off entire rooms of men and willfully engages in firefights where she is hilariously outnumbered.
Yet Carol survives without so much as a scratch, and it’s her actions that allow the gun to get picked up by Rick and Daryl who acquire it after a show-stopping, all-too-rare vehicular chase sequence. (It’s funny, Rick and Daryl are arguably the main characters of The Walking Dead, but their brief appearance, scant dialogue, and general lack of focus in “Some Guy” relegates them to a cameos.)
Towards the end of the episode, it’s an escort mission as Carol and Jerry (Cooper Andrews) — who saves Ezekiel via the season’s most brutal kill yet — attempt to bring a severely-wounded Ezekiel to safety. Just as things look at their worst, Shiva once again comes to the rescue, only this time it’s final. Though the good girl survived hordes of Saviors just a few weeks ago, it was the overwhelming number of walkers that finally did the big cat in.
With a few more episodes to go until the mid-season finale, Season 8 of The Walking Dead has been pretty good to Rick and his side of the war. They’ve got more guns than they know what to do with, and allyship from the other fiefdoms in this apocalypse. But Rick is also hemorrhaging too many able-bodied soldiers. With Ezekiel shaken after this ordeal — the episode’s title, “Some Guy,” is so coined from Ezekiel’s admittance that he’s a hack — Rick is going to need all the help he can get.
**The Walking Dead airs Sundays at 9 p.m. Eastern on AMC.**
