Trama

Rick, Glenn, Michonne and Tyreese take Noah to his home in Shirewilt Estates with hopes of finding sanctuary, but what they encounter is something else entirely.

Still recovering from Beth's death Rick, Tyreese, Glen and Michonne decide to honor her wish to help Noah get to his home. He had been living in a walled community in Richmond Virginia and they're hopeful that it may also provide them with a home. By the time they arrive, there's nothing left and the compound has been overrun. They now face a dilemma as to what to do next. One of the group is bitten by a walker however.—garykmcd

After the death of Beth, the group of survivors splits in two cars and Rick, Glen, Michonne and Tyreese drive with Noah to his home to fulfill Beth's last wish. Soon they find that Noah's community was trespass by walkers and is completely destroyed. While scavenging the place and deciding the next move, something tragic happens.—Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

The story picks up after Beth's death, with a close-up on brown soil. A shovel's head bites into it, scoop by scoop. As the sound of a grave being dug runs in the background, we cut to a watercolor painting of a simple house.

Cutting to another scene: Maggie weeping. Noah weeping. Glenn and Rick, clearing an area filled with abandoned cars. Cut again, this time to a shot of the road rolling by, as seen from the window of a moving car. Then, photos of two young boys -- twins -- happy together. Interspersed in these shots is a photo of the prison.

Father Gabriel reads a eulogy over the grave: "We look not at what can be seen, but what cannot be seen. For what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal. For we know that if the Earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God -- a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens."

Noah tells Rick that Beth had planned to accompany him to Shirewilt Estates, Noah's family's community outside of Richmond, Virginia. Rick takes the idea to the group. He acknowledges that it's a long trip, "but if it works out, it's the last long trip that we have to make."

"And what if it isn't around any more?" Glenn asks

Rick answers, "Then we keep going."

"Until we find a new place," Michonne says in agreement.

The flashes continue between memory and...something else. Train tracks, a zombie in a forgotten car, the shovel. And then, a shot of Lizzie and Mika -- Mika bleeding through her gut, Lizzie bleeding from her head wound, but both are sitting up, active and smiling. They seem to be in a bedroom.

"It's better now," Mika says happily.

Back to the painting of the house...beautiful, colorful, until a dark pool of blood starts pooling on it.

And that's the cold open.

We catch up with Rick, Michonne, Glenn, Noah and Tyreese on the road. Tyreese drives. Rick checks in with Carol via the walkie talkie; she's hanging back with the rest of the group.

Tyreese and Noah talk. Noah tells Tyreese the trade for Beth was the right play, even though it turned out badly. Tyreese replies that it happened the way it had to, how it was going to. Tyreese goes on to say he had problems facing terrible things -- what happened, and what was going on. He remembers that when he was little, his father would put news on the radio, terrible stories about things that happened to people halfway around the world. Tyreese never wanted to listen, but his dad kept it on. He called it keeping his eyes open, thinking it as the way of paying the high cost of living.

Noah shares that he lost his dad in Atlanta, but he still has his mother and younger twin brothers. They get to a point on the highway that Rick tells Tyreese to pull over. He chooses to approach Shirewilt through the woods on foot. As the group hikes, they pass what looks like a charred skeleton.

Passing through a barrier of wire, they hike a little while longer until they finally get to the outer walls of the compound. The gate, which has been reinforced, is still locked. Glenn climbs up on a brick column to see over the wall, but his face falls not long after he gets a look. Noah climbs up and over, and the group follows.

The place has been overrun. But more than that, it looks as if the houses have been burned out -- not the work of a walker horde, but perhaps human. Noah breaks down, but Tyreese assures him he has a place with the group.

Rick apologizes to the crushed young man and advises the group to scavenge for what they need. Michonne, clearly angry and disappointed, goes to clear walkers. Rick gets on the walkie to Carol.

"We made it...it's gone."

Rick, Michonne and Glenn gather at a house with an open garage to salvage what they can. Glenn and Rick confer. Rick admits that after Beth got shot, even though he knew Officer Dawn Lerner didn't mean to kill Beth, he wanted to kill her anyway. He admits to Glenn he probably thought Shirewilt was gone, but he wanted to get Noah here because Beth wanted to. He did it for her.

Elsewhere, as Noah weeps on the ground, Tyreese tells him the story of losing the woman he loved, and wanting to die, but because he chose to live, he was able to save Judith and get her back to Rick.

"Noah," he says poignantly, "this isn't the end."

Noah rises from the ground slowly. Tyreese sees this as a good sign. But then Noah takes off running. He's decided to go back to his house, to see what's still there. Tyreese chases him.

Glenn recounts his recent trials -- after prison, getting Maggie back, was OK. But then losing the hope offered by Washington, losing Beth right after finding her, was too much. Until he spoke with Rick in this moment, he says, he wouldn't have stopped here. He would have run right by. And, Glenn adds, he would have shot Dawn.

Michonne says that they need to stop, that they've been out on the road for too long.

At Noah's house, Tyreese offers to go inside first to make sure it's clear. He enters slowly, but almost immediately encounters a body on the floor, a woman's. There's a massive hole in her head. Noah comes in, doesn't say a word. He takes a nearby blanket and covers her.

Tyreese heads into the back rooms. He hears a walker behind a closed door, but leaves it to go into an open bedroom instead. He sees the body of a young boy on the bed. He takes a moment to comprehend what he's seeing, then notices photos on the wall -- the pictures from earlier of a pair of twin brothers. Noah's younger siblings. He's so caught up in looking at the photos and he doesn't hear the second little boy, now undead, walk up behind him and take a chomp out of his arm.

Hearing Tyreese's screams, Noah runs in and puts a sharp toy through his zombiefied little brother's eye. He tells Tyreese to hang on as he goes to find the rest of the recon party.

We see the flashes of imagery from the start of the episode again: the tower at the prison, the road, train tracks, the watercolor of the house. Then there's a transmission on the radio, with an announcer talking about 68 "citizens of the Republic" being killed by roving bands roaming the countryside uncontested as the Republic's military has fallen into disarray. Later the announcer talks about revenge attacks involving bands of armed men setting on villagers with machetes and setting them on fire.

Tyreese has slumped on the floor of the bedroom, and he's hallucinating. First he sees, Martin, the man he spared at Terminus, who taunts him for having let him go, that if Tyreese hadn't spare Martin, Bob would still be alive. Then he sees Bob, who tells him that "it went the way it had to, the way it was always going to." Then he sees the Governor, who disagrees, saying "the bill has to be paid." He reminds Tyreese that he told the Governor he'd do whatever he had to do to earn his keep. But Mika and Lizzie, who are also there, reassure him that "it's better now." The Governor gets more aggressive, closing in on Tyreese from across the room until Tyreese realizes that it's a walker. Tyreese, weakened, does what he can to fight off the zombie but ultimately has to stop him by sticking his already injured arm into the monster's mouth before bludgeoning its skull.

Back with Rick and Glenn, Michonne tries to make a case for reinforcing the walls and staying in Shirewilt, but Rick counters by pointing out that the place is surrounded by woods -- no sight lines. They wouldn't be able to see if someone or something else is attacking until they're on top of them. Michonne is adamant until she steps into a clearing just beyond the place where the wall was clearly blown open...and sees dozens of dismembered body parts in the glass. The outside of the walls also look like they'd taken heavy arms fire.

They're despondent until Michonne suggests Washington. She knows Eugene lied, but she also figures he did the math: if there were a place that found a way to survive, it's Washington D.C. They're only 100 miles away.

"It's a chance," Michonne says passionately. "Instead of just being out here. Instead of just making it. Because right now, this is what 'making it' looks like. Don't you want one more day with a chance?"

As a small group of walkers approaches from the treeline, Rick agrees: They should go to Washington. It's at that moment that they hear Noah screaming.

Rick, Glenn and Michonne run toward him to find him under attack by two walkers, with a third closing. They dispatch with the undead, although Michonne has more trouble than usual, thanks to one having stumbled into some rebar that reinforces his neck. Once Noah is safe, he takes them to Tyreese, telling them the big man's been bitten.

In the house, Tyreese is hallucinating as he watches Beth sing a beautiful version of Jimmy Cliff's "Struggling Man" while strumming an acoustic guitar, as scenes from memory flash before his eyes. She stops and looks at him.

"It's OK, Tyreese. You gotta know that now," Beth says.

"It's OK that you didn't want to be a part of it, Ty," Bob adds.

"You don't have to be a part of it," Lizzie tells him.

Martin laughs at him, telling him that being "part of it" is just being. Mika tells him, again, that he doesn't have to. Then the Governor adds that his eyes were open, but he didn't want to see. "But did you adapt? Did you change? No. That you would sit there in front of a woman who killed someone you loved...and you would forgive her?"

Bob cuts in softly, "That's all there is."

The Governor, more forcefully, cuts in again. "This is all there is. This is it."

Tyreese, struggling to his feet, repudiates the Governor, saying he didn't know who he was talking to, that he didn't know who the Governor really was. "But I know who I am. I know what happened, and what's going on. I know. You didn't show me sh*t. You, you dead. Everything that you were is dead. And it's not over. I forgave her because it's not over." Tyreese breaks down crying.

"I didn't turn away. I kept listening to the news so I could do what I could to help," he continues. "I'm not giving up. You hear me? I'm not giving up! People like me...they can live. Ain't nobody gotta die today."

His vision fades to darkness, and the Governor pushes him. "You have to pay the bill!" Tyreese collapses back to the floor again. He looks over to Mika and Lizzie, who gently take him by his bloody arm and hold it, smiling.

Then, in a flash, we see what's really going on: It's Rick holding Tyreese's arm as Michonne slices it off with her sword.

Rick, Michonne, Glenn and Noah take turns holding up a near-dead Tyreese as they fight their way back to the road -- first through a herd of walkers, then through the wire surrounding the enclosure. Throughout their ordeal, Tyreese flits in and out of hallucinations and memories. He hears Beth's voice singing sweetly to him: "I'm a struggling man...and I've gotta move on."

They get him back to the car's back seat. Rick calls Carol and updates her, telling that they've got to cauterize the wound. As they drive, Rick has the radio on (we think) and the announcer is talking about instances of violence against civilians and cannibalism.

"Turn it off," Tyreese whispers.

He hallucinates seeing Bob, sitting in the front passenger seat, who asks Tyreese if he's sure. Mika and Lizzie, next to him in the back seat, tell Tyreese that it's OK, in fact, more than OK, it's better now. He looks up at the front seat to see Beth driving. She smiles calmly at him. He turns his view to the sky and the land rolling by outside. It goes blurry and fades to black.

A long shot follows the car a bit down the road before it stops. Everyone gets out and pulls Tyreese from the back. From the group's body language, seen from a distance, it's clear that Tyreese is gone.

Cut to a hole in that familiar patch of red earth. Tyreese is laying in it. A sheet drops over his face, and the shovel we saw in the beginning scoops dirt onto his body. We hear Gabriel's eulogy -- for Tyreese, not Beth.

"If the Earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God -- a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens," Father Gabriel intones, then repeats, "in the heavens."

Daryl hands the shovel to Sasha, but she can barely hold it as she stares at her brother's fresh grave. She drops a scoop of dirt, drops the shovel and wanders away in a daze. Rick picks it up and digs with force, solemnly. The episode closes with a shot of a cross made of two tree branches, with Tyreese's trademark knit hat slung across the top.