‘The Walking Dead’ Recap: Season 6, Episode 3 – ‘Thank You’

Sunday’s new episode of “The Walking Dead” focused back on Rick’s gang, after the horn sent half of the herd off its path. 

The episode, which took place while Carol and Morgan were fighting the wolves (in last week’s episode), was filled with buckets of blood and gore, gruesome deaths, terrifying walker packs, a cliffhanger and one big question.

Here’s what happened on Sunday’s “The Walking Dead” Season 6, Episode 3 – “Thank You”:

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Glenn Rhee is running through the woods. It’s a short while after Carter’s (Ethan Embry) death, and Glenn is with Rick, Michonne, Heath, Nicholas and frightened Alexandrians. At a small clearing, the group takes a minute. “Tobin, it’s not stopping. Light it up,” Rick shouts over the radio. When no flares appear in the sky, Rick radios to Daryl, Sasha and Abraham (who are still leading the bulk of the herd) with an update. The group broke off, he tells them, but their trio needs to keep going to get the bigger part of the herd 20 miles away as planned. Knowing there is trouble back home, and for those on foot in the woods, Daryl expresses his reservations. Rick tells him to stay the course. 

As those on foot continue to make their way through the woods, Nicholas freezes. Glenn shouts his name to snap him out of it. A second later, Annie (from Heath’s group) goes down, twisting her ankle on some roots. This is all Rick’s fault, a scared Alexandrian tells Michonne. She tries to reason with him, but he’s not having any of it. “Shut up and move,” she says to get him moving again.

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After they get a little further along in the woods, Rick tells everyone the new plan – get home, back to Alexandria, to help. Off to the side he tells Glenn and Michonne that not all of their new friends are going to make it back. If others fall behind on the journey back, leave them, Rick says. Heath overhears them from behind a tree trunk. 

Attack! Before they can get going, the angry Alexandrian who was whining to Michonne about Rick is bit by a walker and tackled to the ground. Rick dives in to pull the walker off the man, but it’s too late. Michonne uses her blade to put the man out of his misery, as the other Alexandrians, including Heath, exchange glances. “Get back safe,” Rick tells them, before running off.

It’s up to Glenn and Michonne now to try and get everyone back safely, so they offer a few encouraging words. The whining continues, but Michonne urges them onward. Glenn lends hurt-ankle Annie his shoulder so she can move faster. Around another spot of foliage, though, things get serious – there’s another pack of walkers. “Stay here. Don’t shoot unless you have to,” Glenn says, as he, Michonne and Heath leave the others behind to fight. Alexandria man Sturgess doesn’t heed the warning and eventually, when walkers come his way, he starts firing. A man named David is bit in the chaos. Once the crisis is averted, the group carries on. 

“Is it bad?” David asks Michonne of the bite wound on his back. “It’s about what you’d expect,” she answers. As they walk, he opens up about his wife, Betsy. They’ve been married for three months. He’s one of the good people Aaron found while he was on a run, and Betsy was the first person who saw David as a person after he’d given up on life. “She was my first friend. Then, she was more,” he says. David knows he’s not going to last, but he wants to get back to tell Betsy goodbye.

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As they continue to make their way back via an unfamiliar route, Glenn pulls Michonne aside. He needs to get home, but he won’t be leaving these people behind (like Rick said). It’s a dark situation, but luckily they have help – Nicholas was the last member of the Alexandria group to go through this abandoned town, so he can help lead them back. Only… it won’t be that easy. Around the corner, they find Sturgess. He’s dead and his corpse is surrounded by hungry undead eating machines. 

With so many stray walkers about, they hide in an abandoned pet store. It’s there that Glenn comes up with a new plan. If they light one of the buildings on fire, that will distract the herd headed for Alexandria. Glenn volunteers to lead the mission. “You have a wife, Glenn,” Michonne says, trying to sway him out of doing it, but Glenn says that’s why he has to. “You’re the one who can’t. If I take too long, just go. … If I get stuck out here, I’ll find a way to show you I’m OK,” Glenn tells her. Nicholas volunteers to help. Glenn radios over his plan to Rick, who is fighting walkers one by one, sustaining a nasty hand cut when his knife breaks apart after getting stuck in a walker’s head. 

Back at the pet store Heath bandages Scott’s (one of the guys he goes on runs with) leg. He tells Annie he’ll get her a crutch too, but knowing she is hurt, she insists they leave her behind. “If we go, we go together. We got each other’s backs — always. We don’t leave people behind. Not us,” he says. “No one is leaving anyone behind,” Michonne tells Heath. 

Over in the corner she confronts him. “You have a problem with me?” she asks. Heath tells her he overheard what Rick said. “Rick said what he said because sometimes you don’t have a choice,” Michonne responds, trying to explain what things are really like out in the world beyond his Alexandrian community.  

While Michonne, Heath, Scott and Annie wait inside the pet store, out in the street, Nicholas leads Glenn down a road toward the building they’re hoping to burn. But there’s a walker pawing at them from its spot under the wheel of a car. Glenn heads in to end it, but Nicholas volunteers to do it. The walker used to be a 19-year-old who was on his crew, who they left behind. “Hey, you’re not that guy anymore,” Glenn tells Nicholas, who eventually kills the walker.

A noise in the distance a second later sends the two of them running. Gunshots – coming from home. Everyone is on high alert. Through the pet store window, Heath’s crew and Michonne watch the walkers as the undead notice the gunfire and start to head in the direction the sound came from. As she watches them go by, she says they’ll make their move after the walkers are clear. 

As they wait it out, David hands Michonne a note to give to Betsy if he doesn’t make it. “You’re getting home,” she writes on her arm (since they are trying to stay quiet and not speak). But some walkers in the pet store create noise, and as Michonne is forced to fight and kill them. The noise, though, attracts the walkers outside to the pet shop’s doors. Michonne sees a pack heading toward them, so she ushers the group outside so they don’t get trapped. While they make a break for it, Annie falls, and she tells them they have to leave her behind.

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There’s no feed store for Nicholas and Glenn to set on fire to divert the herd as planned. It’s already been burned to the ground. Time to find somewhere else. Nicholas leads them down one alley, and another, and then, it happens. Walkers trap them on all sides. Pulling out their guns, the two shoot walker after walker, but the undead keep coming.

Although they’re distraught about Annie (who became walker lunch), Michonne, Scott, Heath and David keep moving. They reach a fence and Heath goes over first, then Scott. Michonne and David are last, but one of the stray walker packs catches up to them and tries to pull them down. Heath tries to help, poking at walkers through the fence, but it’s no use. David is taken, eaten alive, while Michonne has another close call and escapes.

For Glenn and Nicholas, though, there is no escape. There’s only higher ground. The two men climb on top of a trash dumpter as what looks like hundreds of walkers surround them. With no way out, Nicholas freezes in a panic. The world spins. Glenn tries to snap him out of it. “Look at me! Nicholas, look at me,” Glenn screams. Nicholas looks back. “Thank you,” he says before shooting himself in the head. As he falls, Nicholas takes Glenn to the ground with him. Glenn screams and cries as a body is pulled apart. (The angle looks like the blood and guts being pulled out by walkers are from a little higher than Glenn’s spot on the ground, which could mean Nicholas fell on top of Glenn. But it might just be wishful thinking. It’s an ambiguous ending that no doubt leaves some wondering if the walker pack got Glenn. This can’t be the end of Glenn, though, can it? But how will he get out of this? Would he even be safe if he was able to somehow crawl under the trash dumpster?).

While there’s a big question mark over Glenn’s fate, we leave that situation behind to catch up with Michonne, Heath and Scott in the woods. She looks up in the sky for a sign from her friend. “There’s no smoke, but it doesn’t mean they didn’t make it,” Heath tells Michonne as they continue the long walk back to Alexandria.

“Glenn, I’m in place by my best guess. Glenn? Glenn?” Rick says over the walkie. He calls for Tobin. No answer there either. “Daryl?” he calls out. “I’m here,” Daryl replies. Rick says he’s in place to get the main broken off herd going in the direction of Daryl, Sasha and Abraham. “How ’bout that Daryl?” Sasha asks sarcastically, since Daryl departed riding alongside them earlier to go back to try and help.

Everyone back at Alexandria can handle it, and if they can’t, that’s their problem, Rick tells them over the radio.. After signing off, Rick wipes his severely cut, bloody hand and takes a moment – a moment cut short by the blond wolf who picked up the gun on the ground at Alexandria in last week’s episode. The man Morgan let go attacks Rick, so he fights for his life. A moment later, the fight is over and Rick has won. A rustle outside, though, forces him to spring into action. He grabs the machine gun and fires it through the RV, killing the wolves outside.

And later, finally, Heath, Scott and Michonne make it back to Alexandria, which is most definitely not how they left it.

Daryl pulls back alongside Sasha (he returned!), and out there in the distance, Rick tries to start the RV. Only, it won’t start.  He’s stuck just as the herd comes out of the woods.

“The Walking Dead” airs Sundays at 9/8c on AMC.

— Jolie Lash