Let’s bring these plot threads together, shall we? We’re getting lonely. So last week’s Walking Dead was a pretty interesting detour showing what the Governor had been up to since the fall of Woodbury, transforming from a bedraggled washout to someone with a new family to protect. And then we saw his past come back when he ran into Martinez, one of his old cronies. Let’s see how this shakes out.
Martinez pulls the Governor and Megan out of the pit and we meet his new crew, a ragtag bunch of morally ambiguous survivors. The former second-in-command lets the Gov know that he’s in charge now, and if he can’t deal with that he should step off. They’re holed up in a crusty old RV next to an M60 tank. Martinez takes the Governor out on a supply run to a survivalist’s cabin that’s surrounded by mutilated corpses with “Liar” and “Rapist” written on them. We don’t get any explanation for these, so just another mystery.
The owner of the cabin is dead on the porch, so they take the opportunity to loot it. There’s a few walkers inside, who the Governor happily takes out. Martinez’s buddies realize that he’s a guy who knows what he’s doing. Later on, the Governor and Martinez have a little friendly conversation while hitting golf balls off the top of the RV. It ends badly, though – our one-eyed elder statesman whacks his former buddy on the head with his club and feeds him to some walkers. Nice.
Naturally, things progress to give the Governor a little more power, as Mitch and Pete, the two brothers that were second to Martinez, don’t have it all too together. They find another camp on a foraging mission but Pete objects to raiding it, only to come back and find everybody dead. Knowing that these two bozos don’t have what it takes to keep everybody alive, the Governor takes off in the night with Lilly, Megan and Tara, only to run into a horde of walkers.
So he does what he has to: heads back to the camp, kills Pete in cold blood (throwing his body into a lake so he’ll remain an underwater Walker forever) and giving Mitch the rundown: stick with me, let me take over, and you’ll live. Don’t, and you’ll die. And just like that, old one-eyed Brian is the Governor again, with a new (albeit smaller) town and a new lease on life.
We close with the Governor back at the prison, his gun lifted and ready to take down Michonne. Oh boy. Next week is the mid-season finale, which usually means big action, big shocks and big changes. Where do you see this going? And is that tank going to come into play? Of course it is.