‘The Walking Dead’ season 10 episode 19 recap: Gabriel and Aaron put their faith to the test

NME

Having caught up with Maggie, Daryl and Carol (and Dog) in the first two episodes of The Walking Dead season 10c, this week we go on the road with Father Gabriel (Seth Gilliam) and Aaron (Ross Marquand) during their increasingly desperate quest for food and supplies. Stumbling upon a potentially fruitful warehouse, could it be the answer to their prayers – or are the hunters about to become the hunted? Here’s what went down in The Walking Dead season 10 episode 19, ‘One More’.

What happened in The Walking Dead this week?

• Gabriel and Aaron are following Maggie’s map in a bid to find any remaining supplies from the old world for the community in Alexandria. However, as we join the pair two weeks into their exhausting scavenger hunt, things aren’t looking great: trips to a burned-down house and an already ransacked supermarket just about sum up their current luck. Aaron is tired of both the hunt and having to put down walker after walker on their travels, telling Gabriel that he misses his daughter, Grace. A similarly spent-looking Gabriel retains his faith in the map, though, and they press on – until Gabriel comes a cropper through some unexpected mud-wrestling with a walker. Aaron saves the day, but the map is ruined: it’s time to go home, lads.
• On their way back to Alexandria, the two come across a warehouse that wasn’t on the map. Breaking inside, they spy signs of life – Gabriel comes across a bible with the pages freshly ripped out – and Aaron approaches a door after hearing rustling. Gabriel comes rushing after hearing an ear-piercing yelp to find a startled Aaron and a freshly slayed wild boar. “That was quite the scream,” Gabriel teases.
• Elated to have finally found a source of food, their lucky streak continues as Gabriel happens upon a $2000 bottle of bourbon. The two eat, drink and be merry, with the night ending in drunken discussion about faith, evil and the future. “I don’t wanna preach anymore,” Gabriel says. “You really think things are going to go back to the way they were?… The world isn’t built for the way we used to be.” Aaron tries to talk him round by arguing that he may be suffering from Whisperers trauma, but Gabriel isn’t convinced: “Evil people aren’t the exception to the rule: they are the rule.”
• The next morning, Gabriel wakes up to find Aaron gone – but there’s a scary new presence in the warehouse, and he’s not happy. A scar-faced man (Robert Patrick) tells Gabriel that this is his hide-out, they’ve killed and eaten his boar and drunk his expensive whisky. Yikes! Threatening Gabriel at gunpoint, the man says he tied Aaron after watching and listening to them all night. He also explains that the he’s been using the aforementioned bible pages as, well, toilet paper (“I’ve read it, cover to cover,” the man explains. “That’s why I’ve been wiping my ass with it.”)

• The man then raises the stakes, wheeling a tied-up Aaron out on a chair to face opposite Gabriel before inserting a single bullet in the chamber of a gun and placing it on the table. It’s Russian roulette time! “Winner goes home,” he explains, adding that he’s putting them through this for “enlightenment” to prove how evil humanity can be.
• The increasingly tense first three rounds see both Aaron and Gabriel survive. Aaron, demanding to know why they’re having to suffer through this, tells the man that they’re not thieves or murderers, they’re good people – perhaps even family at this point in the apocalypse. This prompts the man to tell the pair about his own warped experience of ‘family’: he set out with his brother and his family when the world went to zombie shit but it ended badly, the man claims, after his brother stole his food and came at him with a knife (hence the scar).
• Gabriel confronts the man over the twisted way he justifies “handling” his brother as they continue their faith-at-gunpoint debate, but the man just gets further agitated and demands Aaron pull the trigger on himself to prove his point. But just before Aaron does the deed, the man stops him – prompting Gabriel to plea to the man to “remember who you were”. “We’ve met people like you: good people, who have been broken by the world,” Gabriel says, adding that they’d be willing to accept him into Alexandria and help him through his grief. This promise calms the man down as he puts his gun away and cuts Aaron loose. “Mays… my name is Mays,” the man says. Just as all seems resolved, Gabriel storms in and kills Mays with a sharp, fatal blow to the head using Aaron’s hand mace. “We couldn’t have taken him with us,” Gabriel reasons. “He killed his brother’s family.”
• Or did he? Just as Gabriel and Aaron head off, they decide to find Mays’ hiding place – unsurprisingly, it’s a dreadful sight. As well as two rotting corpses Mays’ twin brother is there, still alive and chained up. Gabriel and Aaron try to free him, but the brother takes Mays’ gun and turns it on himself, firing the single bullet and killing him instantly. Gabriel gathers up the last of Mays’ supplies as a horrified Aaron takes a look at old photos of Mays, his twin and the family in happier, pre-zombie times.

Any new faces?

This week’s one-episode-wonder is Mays, the tragic foe Gabriel and Aaron cross paths with in the warehouse. As with many of the survivors our group encounters, he’s untrusting and untrustworthy – who really puts people through a Russian roulette game to prove a point? – and it’s no surprise that Gabriel is forced to act: kill or be killed.

Artiest walker kill of the week

The very first scene includes a series of beautiful nature shots splattered with walker blood – including one poor cricket who gets covered in the stuff – as Gabriel and Aaron clear yet another group of the undead from their path.

‘The Walking Dead’ airs on Mondays at 9pm on FOX

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