'The Walking Dead' Season 6 Premiere Recap: 'They're Gonna Die No Matter What'

Warning: This recap for the Season 6 premiere of The Walking Dead contains storyline and character spoilers.

The super-sized Season 6 premiere of The Walking Dead had lots of everything: zombies, time jumps, new characters, reunions between old characters, redemptions, and still more zombies. So many zombies.

So many, in fact, that while they created a spectacular visual — an all-time high for the show in pure zombie — they also created spectacular problems for the Rick Grimes gang, problems that are going to continue to be super-sized for the foreseeable future (or at least the next episode).

The Man With the Plan

“I know this sounds insane, but it’s an insane world. We have to come for them before they come for us. It’s that simple,” Rick explains to everyone, his group and the Alexandrians, at the beginning of the episode, which foretells all that will unfold during it.

Related: ‘Walking Dead’ EP Greg Nicotero Previews Season 6 For Us

The who, what, when, where, why, and how: Rick and Morgan, who had finally tracked down his friend in the Season 5 finale, are on a road trip to bury the body of Pete, the man Morgan witnessed Rick murder, when they stumble upon a quarry full of thousands of zombies. It’s a situation that requires immediate attention, because the zombies are penned into the quarry by some precariously parked semi trucks, one of which is about to topple off a cliff and leave the zombies free to roam straight towards the safe zone.

Rick’s basic plan: Let the walkers escape their quarry home, then lead them, Pied Piper-style, through a carefully constructed path, and away from Alexandria… 20 miles north of the safe zone, specifically. This will involve reinforcing weak points of the Alexandria walls, creating a path by parking any nearby vehicle bumper to bumper (as one character puts it, so the zombies will be “bouncing off sedans”), shooting off flares along the path so the walkers will follow the noise, and having Daryl on his bike and Sasha and Abraham in a car rolling along so the zombies will follow them.

First Time Again

Before reunited pals Rick and Morgan have a chance to bond, Rick tells Morgan he doesn’t take chances anymore, and that means Morgan is going to be locked in one of the other houses by himself for now. The next day, he walks into Morgan’s room and finds him practicing some serious moves with his bo staff. Morgan reveals nothing more than it was “a friend,” post-apocalypse, who taught him his martial-arts skills — so much backstory waiting to unfold there — and when Rick apologizes for the decision to put him under lock and key, Morgan tells him, “The way I look at it, sometimes you’re safer when there’s no way out. We gotta get to know each other again. For the first time again.”

Rick fills Morgan in on Alexandria: how they constructed the walls around the town, how they’re not prepared to defend themselves. When he and Morgan see Gabriel and Tobin digging graves for Pete and Reg, he objects, saying they don’t bury killers inside the town — and yes, he refers to Pete as a killer without a trace of irony. Deanna hears the commotion and agrees Pete should be taken outside the walls for burial. Rick and Morgan load up his body and drive off (with Ron, unbeknownst to them, following on foot), arriving near the quarry where they’ll discover the herd.

Later, Morgan is sitting on the porch at Rick’s house, when Rick comes outside and tosses him some keys. He tells Morgan to pack up his stuff from the other place and move it into Rick’s. He even has Morgan hold baby Judith — a sight that Michonne, watching from inside, takes note of… shipping alert! — and Morgan tells Rick he knew Rick was the same guy he met back in King County, the one who came back to tell him it wasn’t over yet (in Season 3’s “Clear”).

Carter

Rick first unveils his “insane” plan during a town meeting, and his most vocal opponent is Alexandria resident Carter. All Carter knows is that their town was a safe place, then Rick and his crew came, and now chaos has erupted, and Pete and Reg are dead. Carter’s right, of course, but so is Rick when he later tells Morgan that the townspeople haven’t really been surviving anything; they’ve been living within the safety of the walls, and the only way to keep the community going is to teach them all to protect themselves.

Carter still thinks there’s a better way than The Plan to deal with the quarry herd, but Deanna interrupts his argument with Rick and makes the decision official: They’re following The Plan. Others volunteer — zombie pace car drivers Daryl, Sasha, and Abe; Alexandrians Tobin and just-returned supply runner Heath; Glenn, the cowardly Nicholas, and Father Gabriel, who Rick rejects — and planning for The Plan is put into motion.

Carter’s continued pleas for an alternative plan are pooh-poohed, and when he and some other Alexandrians are under attack by walkers, Rick tries to get them to defend themselves with the shovels they have in their hands. Carter and the others freak out instead, forcing Rick, begrudgingly, and his people to save them.

Instead of seeing that Rick has a point about the Alexandrians’ helplessness, Carter just gets angrier and comes up with a plan of his own: He gathers a small group of his fellow townsfolk (of the non-Rick’s-group variety) in the pantry and tells them they should kill Rick! The others aren’t following his rant, which is interrupted when nearby Eugene overhears and accidentally drops some of the snacks he was swiping. Carter turns his attention to Eugene and begins waving his gun at him, which is when Rick, Daryl, and Morgan burst into the pantry.

Rick berates Carter, holding him at gunpoint and telling him he has no idea who he’s messing with (one of Rick’s favorite threats). He tells Carter he’s not going to allow him to take the community away from Rick and his people — and also points out how lame he is for not even appointing a lookout during his coup meeting. Carter is so sure Rick is going to shoot him at this point that he pipes up to tell him the coup plan was only his, not the other Alexandrians in the pantry, but Rick suddenly calms down and tells Carter he’ll let him go if Carter can agree to work with him, to try to survive.

Carter agrees, and with The Plan in motion, he is with Rick in the woods, watching as the herd is led through the path laid out (which, most hilariously, involves the walkers throwing themselves headfirst into giant metal walls). “It’s working. You were right,” Carter tells Rick, sticking out his hand to shake Rick’s.

Related: Ken Tucker Reviews ‘The Walking Dead’ Season 6 Premiere

Rick tells everyone to continue fanning out like “cops at a parade” as they stay in the woods to make sure the herd stays on course, and as Carter walks onward, a zombie behind a tree grabs him and bites half his face off. Half of his face, off! Carter begins screaming uncontrollably, and Rick runs to try to calm him, but can’t. Carter is terrified, and the sound of his screams is attracting the walkers and drawing them off the path carefully laid out in The Plan. Rick continues to try to soothe Carter, but when he can’t, he locks eyes with him, turns Carter’s head to the left, and stabs him in the back of the head. Morgan witnesses the scene, and wants to say something, but instead continues on with the plan. And memories of the M*A*S*H series finale come flooding back…

The Horn

With Rick and the others hurriedly trying to remedy the distraction Carter’s screams caused with the herd walk, Daryl and Sasha and Abe continue to successfully lead the walkers towards a destination where everyone but those three and their pace car and bike will drop back, and Daryl, Sasha, and Abe will continue to direct the herd 20 miles away from the safe zone.

And it’s going well, until… horns. The sound of loud horns begin blaring, repeatedly, and the noise immediately throws a bigger part of the herd into action, drawing them off the road and into the woods. Soon enough, the entire herd is headed en masse through the woods.

Michonne: “Whatever that is, it’s far. Sounds like it’s coming from…”

Rick: “Home!”

And indeed, the camera pans to a sign the herd walks past, a sign pointing in the direction they’re walking — a sign advertising homes in Alexandria.

Zombie Bites:

* Rick’s admission to Morgan about how he did want to kill Carter when he caught him plotting against him in the pantry: “I wanted to kill him, so it’d be easier,” Rick says. “So I wouldn’t have to worry about how he could screw up, with what stupid thing he’d do next, because that’s who he is: just somebody who shouldn’t be alive now. I wanted to kill him. But all that hit me … I realized I didn’t have to do it. He doesn’t get it, somebody like that. They’re gonna die no matter what.”

* When Rick is asking for volunteers to carry out The Plan, Glenn pipes up, but tells Maggie she should stay behind to keep an eye on the grieving Deanna. “That’s not the only reason,” Maggie says. “Yeah, it isn’t,” Glenn replies. What could that other reason be? Anyone else think there might be another Lil’ Asskicker on the way?

* Rick and Jessie: That’s not happening anytime soon. No matter how she may feel about Rick’s murder of her abusive husband, her teen son Ron is crushed by his dad’s death and very angry at the Grimes men; Rick for shooting Pete, and Carl for spending time with Enid, who he spots holding Carl’s hand. Rick does save Ron’s life — with a flying tackle on the edge of the quarry cliff, when he’s being pursued by walkers — but then lectures Ron on zombie safety, a move that angers Jessie.

* Tara to Eugene, who is emotional when he sees that she’s awake and appears to be fine: “Thank God nothing happened to your hair.”

* Carol is still in Stepford Carol mode, passing out paper cups of water to the people working on Rick’s The Plan and staying behind in Alexandria while The Plan is carried out. And there was this, her response when Morgan asks her if she’s a cop, because she “always seem[s] ready … to handle things”: “Aren’t you sweet?”

* Sasha seems to have found a peaceful place within herself after so much personal loss in Season 5, but Abraham may be spiraling downward. He’s hitting the hooch, and recklessly jumps out of the pace car Sasha is driving to round up a group of walkers. And he makes a joke about being so close to Pete when Rick shot him that he may have some brains in his ear. He also questions whether or not Sasha has a death wish in volunteering to work on The Plan, but methinks he’s playing Hector Projector there.

* Daryl goes along with every aspect of The Plan, but he and Rick disagree on one big matter. Rick wants to tell Deanna they shouldn’t recruit more people into the community until the people who live there now learn to defend themselves. Daryl, the loner, thinks more people is exactly what the community needs to survive. He mulls it over and tells Rick later that he feels strongly about his position. Will this become a major headbutting between the two, or will Rick listen to his friend and show his viewpoint some respect? It may be a moot point anyway, if that herd makes it to Alexandria and wipes out a chunk of the population, making new citizens a must for the community to continue.

* Heath is one of the best new characters ever. Explaining why, after the initial discovery of the camp/quarry that was then filled with just a few walkers, none of the Alexandrians revisited it, he says, “I never really felt like having a picnic next to the camp that ate itself.”

* Eugene, trying to bond with dreadlocked Heath: “I fully respect the hair game.”

* Now that Nicholas has made a sincere attempt to redeem himself with his efforts to help carry out The Plan (including saving Heath’s life), Glenn seems ready to not only trust Nicholas, but help train him in the ways of defending himself and others. Why does everything Glenn does, every season, make you fear for his continued survival?

OK, Dead-heads, let’s hear your reactions to the Season 6 premiere: Did you love or hate Carter? Is Rick being too harsh on the Alexandrians, expecting them to change their mindset right away in terms of learning to defend themselves? Will he and Daryl work out their differences regarding the recruitment of new residents, or will it become a big issue between the friends? What about Morgan and Rick? Is Morgan concerned about how cold Rick seems to be about the Alexandrians? If Glenn a fool to trust Nicholas? Is Abraham in trouble now that he has no goal — i.e. getting Eugene to Washington — and time to think about his life? And what the hell is that horn noise?!

The Walking Dead airs Sundays at 9 p.m. on AMC.