‘The Walking Dead’ Recap: The Tiger King

SPOILER ALERT: The recap for “The Well” episode of The Walking Dead contains storyline and character spoilers.

You’re probably still trying to shake the trauma of last week’s Season 7 premiere, and the gang at The Walking Dead understands your pain. Hence “The Well,” an episode that is more akin to Season 6’s Butch and Sundance-y adventure for Rick and Daryl in “The Next World” (a.k.a. the one where Jesus was introduced). To help heal the emotional wounds of those crushing Abraham and Glenn deaths, we are introduced to The Kingdom, a community of survivors who are led by a man who sits on a throne, demands he be addressed as royalty, and who is in possession of an ever-present tiger. But as crazy as he initially appears to be, turns out King Ezekiel may really be crazy like a fox.

In the Presence of Royalty
When we catch up with Carol and Morgan — who are unaware of what has happened to their friends at Negan’s hand – the men they met at the end of last season are leading them to their home. Carol, who had been shot by the Savior Morgan killed, is being pulled in a wagon, but when a pack of walkers attacks the group, a hallucinating Carol scurries off while Morgan and their new friends fight off the threat. More people on horses arrive to fight the zombies — yep, we’re meeting The Kingdom-ites — including one who cuts a walker’s face off. Not its head … its face, vertically. Just slices it off as if carving a piece of ham, in a scene of violence that, again, after last week’s all too realistic and brutal deaths, is almost comical.

Threat dispatched, Morgan and company take Carol to The Kingdom, where she sleeps for two days while she begins to recover from being shot. When she awakens, with Morgan at her bedside, he tells her she’s going to be okay, and helps her into a wheelchair for her trip through town, to meet its leader. He tells her The Kingdom-ites will keep their weapons on lockdown while they’re there, and that all Morgan told them about Carol is that she got separated from Morgan and found trouble at the hands of that nasty, gun-toting Savior.

Carol wants to know who’s in charge of the town. Does he have a name, she asks.

“Yeah, um… he’s called King Ezekiel,” Morgan says. “And um… he does his own thing,” he adds, and speeds up how quickly he’s pushing her wheelchair into the theater where she’s introduced to the king. And Shiva. “I forgot to say that Ezekiel has a tiger,” Morgan adds.

A shocked Carol is left speechless, prompting Ezekiel to ask her what she thinks of The Kingdom and the king. “I think you’re amazing, it’s amazing!” says Stepford Carol, making a return to the beet cookie-baking, non-threatening Carol of Alexandria’s less chaotic days. “I would be speechless if I wasn’t already speaking. I don’t know what the hell’s going on in the most wonderful way!” she adds, with a fake laugh and a look towards Morgan that says he’s got some ‘splaining to do later.

Ezekiel continues his welcome speech to Carol, hoping that she’ll “enjoy the fruits of our grandeur,” as long as she contributes to the community when she’s healthier. “Drink from the well, replenish the well,” he says. “Well said,” pipes up his assistant, an eager fellow named Jerry.

Related: ‘The Walking Dead’ Star Michael Cudlitz Plays ‘It’s My Line (Or Is It?)’

The fruits of grandeur offered to Carol include an actual bowl of fresh fruits like apples and pomegranates, which Carol refuses, as she finds pomegranates to be too much trouble.

“Sweet fruit surrounded by bitter… they’re something of a contradiction, but heaven for the effort,” says Ezekiel, who possesses the ability to make such statements sound both charming and sincere.

After thanking “your majesty” and bidding him adieu, Carol gets Morgan outside and tells him she’s not buying Ezekiel’s leadership. “You’re sh*tting me, right? This place is a damn circus… make believe, playtime.” She’s going to leave, she tells Morgan, who tells her he won’t let her. “I’ll …”

“You’ll what?” she asks. “Tie me up like a Wolf?” Low blow, Carol.

The Hunt
Ezekiel includes Morgan in a group outing, during which he and several of The Kingdom-ites are hunting “what was once captive to the farm, but now runs free in the city.” He means pigs, but it sounds so much grander the way he describes the outing, which turns out to be his people luring wild pigs into a holding area where they nosh on a tied up walker. Morgan asks why the walker snack, and Kingdom-ite Richard says because he wants their bellies to be full of “rot.” He tells Morgan not to mention anything about this outing to anyone back home.

Also during the trip, a young man named Ben is tasked with killing a walker, but just gets his machete stuck in its shoulder. His friends, and later Morgan, have to save him, and some of the group heads off with the pigs in a truck as Ezekiel says goodbye to the walkers still roaming the area. “May we one day cease you all from this curse! ‘Til then, know that we live on in your place, full, festive, faithful, and free!”

“Only halfway free,” Kingdom-ite Richard adds.

The Saviors
So, about that… the pigs with bellies full of rot are skinned and ready to pass off to, yup, the Saviors, who are blackmailing Ezekiel and company just like they’re blackmailing all the other local communities into giving them half their supplies. In yet another trip taken on the down low, Ezekiel and his lieutenants meet up with a group of Saviors — this one led by a dude named Gavin — who take the pigs (unaware of just how they’ve been fattened up) and say they’ll be back next week for produce. Before the meeting is over, a particularly cocky Savior picks a fight with Richard from The Kingdom, who fights back. Ezekiel breaks it up, and asks Gavin to help. Surprisingly, Gavin does, telling his fellow Savior that Ezekiel has been good to them. What’s this, a reasonable Savior? Sure, he’s still part of a murderous gang led by a sociopath, but this is a hint that the Saviors are not going to be portrayed as one-dimensional villains.

Also during this meetup, when the Kingdom-ites draw their weapons, ready to defend Richard, Morgan does the same, surprising himself with the reflexive action. Later, after an aikido training session with Ben, who Ezekiel asked him to train, Morgan tells Ben he thought he had the answers to everything, but now realizes he was just “fumbling through.” While Carol is dealing with the internal blowback from the things she’s done to survive, Morgan isn’t so sure his more pacifist philosophy is the way to go, either. “Sometimes we change our minds,” he tells Ben.

Secrets
Morgan’s talk with Ben also sheds light on Ezekiel’s hush hush dealings with the Saviors. Ben, whose father was a great fighter killed while trying to clear a building of walkers, is being groomed to become a member of Ezekiel’s inner circle. As such, he tells Morgan Ezekiel doesn’t want the whole community to know about the Saviors and their threats, because he fears they’d want to fight them. He also fears they couldn’t win a battle against the Saviors, at least not without a lot of deaths. Morgan asks if Ben agrees The Kingdom citizenry shouldn’t now what’s going on, and shouldn’t fight the Saviors.

“I don’t know if I know enough to know,” says Ben in such an earnest way that we a) immediately like him and hope for his continuing survival (especially since, with the death of his father, he’s left to raise his little brother), and b) immediately worry such maturity and earnestness means his death sentence has already been written.

Oh, Carol
While playing Stepford Carol to distract the townsfolk — including one hilariously inane and overly enthusiastic conversation with a Kingdom-ite about “breakfast cobbler” and “lunch cobbler” — Carol swipes some clothing and a knife in preparation for her exit from the community. She’s adding to her booty by picking some apples at night, but Ezekiel and Jerry catch her in the act. The price for her thievery: a wonderfully over the top, yet honest monologue by Ezekiel, who lets her know she’s been bullsh**ting a bullsh**ter… “That sweet and innocent act you’ve been doing… worked on me,” he says. “Blend in, get people to trust you, acquire that you need from then and then you’ll go.”

She rudely tells him he’s a joke, that he’s selling his followers a fairy tale, and that his reward is getting his tuchus smooched by those he rules. “People want someone to follow. It’s human nature,” Ezekiel counters. “Someone to make them feel safe. People who feel safe are less dangerous, more productive.”

He tells her they saw the tiger, Shiva, and started telling stories about how he’d found her in the wild, wrestled and tamed her into being his pet. In actuality, he was a zookeeper (and community theater actor) before the apocalypse, and had won Shiva’s loyalty when she was injured and he risked his life to save hers. But the people choose to believe the “larger than life hero” story, and “Who am I to burst their bubble? Next thing I know, they treat me like royalty,” he says.

He tells Carol is name really is Ezekiel, though, and asks that, now that he’s put his cards on the table, Carol keep his true backstory between the two of them.

“I don’t care,” she responds. “You do what you want. I just wanna go.”

He asks to where, and she tells him simply, “Away.”

“I’m sorry,” Ezekiel says. “For whatever bad you’ve been through. Out there feels like it’s all bad, especially when you’re alone. The thing is though, it’s not all bad… I found a way to deal with all the bad by going a little overboard with all the good. I just embraced the contradiction. Maybe you could, too, in your own way. Maybe you could go… and not go.”

He tells her he wants to help her. “Why do you care?” Carol demands.

“’Cuz it makes me feel good,” Ezekiel says, and tells her he’s going to have someone he trusts meet her at the gates with supplies.

Howdy, Neighbor
Ezekiel’s plan for Carol: to have Morgan, with a bag of supplies, escort Carol to a nearby house just outside The Kingdom. When they arrive, she assures him this privacy is what she wants, and tells him it’s good they’ve gotten there. “Ten more minutes and I might regret all the times I tried to shoot and stab you,” she tells him.

“I think you’re my favorite person I ever knocked out,” he teases her.

They say goodbye, he heads back towards The Kingdom, and Carol clears the house of the walker inside and starts herself a cozy fire. Then she hears a knock — and a growl — at the door.

It’s Ezekiel, and Shiva, and Carol looks annoyed, at first.

“You really gotta try one of these,” Ezekiel says, holding out a pomegranate, and eliciting a smile from Carol.

Zombie Bites:

*FYI: In the comics, Ezekiel starts a little somethin’ somethin’ with Michonne, who, of course, is already romantically involved. Could Ezekiel’s visit to Carol’s new home mean “Carekiel” is the next couple in the making?

*How cool is the garden that includes filing cabinets used to grow various plants in each drawer? Agriculture via Staples!

*Love the moment where Ben assumes Morgan is a vegetarian because he isn’t eating meat at dinner. Naw, wethinks he was just skeeved about what the Kingdom-ites were feeding the pigs they’re passing along to the Saviors. In this instance, soylent green really is people, or rather turned ones.

*Vocabulary lesson: “Pitch-kettled.” As in, Ezekiel tells his assistant, Jerry, “You are a faithful steward, but your words leave me pitch-kettled.” Oxford dictionary definition: “Utterly puzzled; confounded, nonplussed.”

*The Kingdom has a choir, and they sing a Glee-ified version of Nobel Prize winner Bob Dylan’s classic “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right,” which has also been used in series like Mad Men and Friday Night Lights. And if you’re looking for other alternatives to the original, check out covers by John Mayer and a duet by Merle Haggard and Willie Nelson.

O.K., Dead-heads, what did you think? Did the long-awaited introduction of Ezekiel and The Kingdom meet your expectations for those of you who also read the comics? Did the episode help bring you back into the series after the harshness of the season premiere? Are you charmed by Ezekiel and his love of language? Do you trust that he’s a well-intentioned just employing some theatrics to lead and inspire a community? What about Morgan — where will this crisis of conscience lead him? Where will Carol’s lead her? And do you think, after that pomegranate delivery, “Carekiel” is on?

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