The long awaited return of The Walking Dead is among us. The cast is back together, ready to fight the hostile groups and walkers roaming around searching for flesh. Season 7-B episode 9 begins with Father Gabriel on the post reading his trusted bible, whispering to it, “It’s time!” Father Gabriel leaves his post, and heads for the kitchen to steal goods, stuff it into a bag, forcefully stuff it in a car, then drives off to somewhere unknown.

During a meeting with Rick and company, Gregory is furious with the group because they didn’t keep their promise to kill Negan. From that, Gregory already wants to terminate the partnership between the Hilltop and the survivors. Rick asks Gregory if The Hilltop wants to join them in the fight against the Saviors, but Gregory denies the offer almost immediately because he doesn’t believe that his people can fight, and he needs to protect them. Gregory wants to forget the deal they have, forget they were here, and forget they were ever friends.

As the group made their way out of Gregory’s office, they were stopped by Enid who tells the group to go outside. There, the entire Hilltop community stood before Maggie and asked if the group were going to fight the Saviors. Maggie said yes, and the people of The Hilltop automatically asked if they could join in on the fight. Maggie asked if they could fight and they all said yes, proving Gregory wrong and making Rick very pleased.

Rick believes that they need more hands in the fight, so he thought a trip back to Alexandria was necessary before the Saviors could find Daryl, but Jesus said they didn’t have to because he stole a radio from them so he can listen in to Negan’s plans. To solve Rick’s issue of needing more hands, Jesus introduces Rick to King Ezekiel!

Jesus stops the car at a meeting point as they await for the Kingdom’s knights to show up. Richard and another unknown knight show up to see who’s arrived at the Kingdom. A confused Rick meets Richard, and Jesus requests a meeting with the king to discuss plans against the Saviors.

Tara spots Morgan in a nano second. Richard asks Rick how they know each other, and he says that they go way back—since the beginning. Rick asks Morgan if he has seen Carol, and Morgan responds yes, she is here at the Kingdom.

King Ezekiel makes his appearance at the theater, Jesus introduces King Ezekiel to his friends/business partners Rick and company. Rick and company are shocked to see a live tiger that Jesus forgets to mention! Rick proposes for the Kingdom, The Hilltop, and the survivors to join forces and take down the Saviors! Rick tells Morgan what happened while he was gone, and the people they lost including Abraham, Glenn, Spencer, and Olivia plus the kidnapping of Daryl (though he escaped) and Eugene! Rick then tells a story of when a girl works hard in finding gold to deliver to a king which gave Ezekiel something to think about as he’s trying to come up with a answer.

Young Benjamin then runs into Carol in the woods where he’s trying to help Carol on the king’s behalf, but Carol doesn’t need help from anyone anymore! Back at the Kingdom, Benjamin sees Ezekiel telling a story to a sleeping child and Ben tells Ezekiel that he saw Carol and she’s doing fine. Ben is also influencing Ezekiel to join Rick and company in the fight against the Saviors.

The king turned the Kingdom into a training camp in preparation for his soldiers, but the king wants to expand his creation, so when it came to joining Rick in his battle against the Saviors, he said no because he wants to keep his home safe, by not jeopardizing their trust.  The King offers Daryl some sanctuary until his bounty hunt dies down, but Daryl walks out.

Sasha then talks to Rosita about how she knew this guy was about to say no, but she is still surprised about it. Rosita responds with, “Why are you telling me? Just because we had sex with the same dead guy doesn’t make us friends!”

Richard then speaks with Rick in saying that they are only making the Saviors stronger by giving them supplies. As Rick and company were leaving, Rick demands that for his safety that Daryl stay since he just escaped the Saviors, and they’ll be looking for him! At first a reluctant Daryl denied the offer, but then agreed with Rick!

 As the survivors were on the road back to Alexandria, they overhear the speech Negan gave for the lost of “Fat Joe.” Rick and company stopped the car at a crucial moment of the episode where they find a wire link to explosives! Luckily for the group, Rosita knows how to disarm the explosives, so she disarmed the first part of the explosives and took the ones that weren’t bent. She asked for the group to cut the wires and take the explosives that look good so they could eventually use them in the future!

Over on the radio, the group listens to Negan as he demands a hunt and search for Daryl, and predicts that he’ll be home at Alexandria! The group took all of the explosives they could, but sees a monster walker heard coming their way! Rick comes up with a plan for Michonne and him to tie the wires to two of the cars they found and fight off the heard together. After fighting half of the bloody zombie army, they got out of their vehicles, fought the heard, survived, and got into their escape car and drove off until they felt they were far enough to rig the area to explode! Once the explosion happened, Michonne told Rick to smile because they just survived the army of walkers!

Once Rick and company showed up at Alexandria, they were being followed by the Saviors with a search warrant to find Daryl. The Saviors raided/destroyed all of the homes in Alexandria, but no luck with finding Daryl. When the Saviors were searching in the pantry, it was cleared out! The leader of this pack, Simon, was curious why the pantry was empty, so Aaron made an excuse that there’s a lot of people in Alexandria and they were running out of food to eat. Luckily, the Saviors believed his lie and took the conversation outside to tell Rick that if Daryl shows up back in Alexandria, Carl would be the first to go!

Rick demanded to know what happened to the pantry.  Some people suspected it was Father Gabriel because Aaron was supposed to take his shift in the morning as the watcher, but Gabriel wasn’t there and a car was missing. Others assumed that he took all of the goods and ran off without leaving a trail of where he’s going. That was the case until Rick picked up his trusted bible where he finds the word ”boat” which was the same place Rick and Aaron were last episode to gather supplies for the Saviors. Aaron and his boyfriend, Eric had an argument about whether or not Aaron should go because he just got back home, and whether or not Aaron still loves Eric, but Aaron went anyway. Rick leads his group to the river from the last episode where he finds a footprint. They follow this footprint, and hear a gunshot and are quickly surrounded by a new group (possibly leading to the rumored debut of the “Garbage Pail Kids”).  The episode ends with Rick smiling at someone, or something.   

Overall, this was a well done Walking Dead return. I enjoyed all of the scenes that brought upon this return and made me jump to conclusion that this new group is the garbage pail kids! Next week, we’ll be reviewing who this new group is and whether or not Father Gabriel is here and whether or not this new group will join our heroes in the battle against the Saviors. This is Pedro Vasquez signing off leaving you with this message, don’t make friends with the person that slept with your dead boyfriend; ta-ta!