[Spoilers ahead]
This week’s episode opened with one of my favourite characters, Carol, as she picked out ingredients and cooked beet cookies for the Alexandrians. It’s a mark of her character and her terrifying nature that something as seemingly innocent as making cookies can make you feel so uneasy. She could just as easily be dusting them off with arsenic as she could with icing sugar!
I’m glad that Carol is getting more screen time now as she wasn’t featured very much in the past few episodes and I was getting antsy. Her continued development as a character blows everyone else’s out of the water, except perhaps Father Gabriel’s, but I’ll get to him in a minute. Carol went from meek, abused housewife to tough but firm, to hero, to psycho and now she’s toeing the line between keeping things together and falling spectacularly to pieces. It’s so interesting to see because Carol is very strong and for a while I thought her development had stagnated, but she was just keeping things together.
Morgan seems to have had a much more drastic effect on her psyche than I previously thought and the cracks only widen as this episode goes on. This is particularly apparent when Carol can’t sleep and takes out her diary where she is seen counting up the people she’s killed: 18 (although I honestly thought her kill count was much higher). Far from being indifferent, Carol is clearly upset. Morgan and his extreme views have definitely 
gotten to her, and perhaps she has started to see some of his point of view.
As the group have made a deal with Hilltop to take care of their Negan problem, I expected there to be a filler episode or two as the group prepares to attack. I was pleasantly surprised to see the group jumping in with both feet because it made the attack seem even more tense and highlighted their over-confidence. Greg Nicotero directed this episode and he did a fantastic job. I felt sick with anxiety during several scenes and things were so fast-paced and fluid that it was an absolute dream to watch. Or a nightmare, depending on how nervous you were during the episode.
So far, both Glenn and Heath have managed to get through the apocalypse without having to kill any live humans, but in this episode their luck came to an end. Glenn’s initial kills were quiet and disturbing, as he took out two men as they lay sleeping in their beds. Despite everyone agreeing to go and take Negan’s people out, Morgan certainly wouldn’t be the only one feeling uneasy about killing someone as they slept and Glenn’s face was the picture of anguish as he took their lives.
Although it’s easy to see how Glenn’s actions could haunt him, I think he accepted the kills quite quickly as he looked at the wall above one of the dead men to see pictures of around 20 people with their skulls bashed in. This probably reminded him of the type of people they were dealing with and it was some really nice foreshadowing for us comic readers. The scene was hard to watch but one of the parts I liked was Glenn’s attempt to save Heath from having to kill, instead killing both men in the room himself. This gesture ultimately proved fruitless, though, as both he and Heath went Rambo on a door later in the episode, killing another four to five people.
Father Gabriel has redeemed himself completely from the sniveling, cowardly priest that he was when we first met him. Not only does Rick trust him, with his only daughter no less, he’s become a part of the rest of the group and has accepted this new world that he’s living and surviving in. Gabriel has a truly epic Pulp Fiction-style moment outside the compound and it was especially powerful because nobody else was around to see him. He did what he had to do because he’s grown as a character, not because he was trying to please anyone else and I loved him for it. Plus his ‘Amen’ really nailed one of the best scenes of the season.
If I could nitpick at any inconsistencies and stupid mistakes, it would be that Maggie was brought along on the attack (why on earth would you bring a pregnant woman to a battle when it’s totally needless?) and Abraham’s last conversation with Rosita which was unnecessarily cruel and quite out of character for him. Other than that, however, I really enjoyed ‘Not Tomorrow Yet’ and I’m especially warming to Jesus, who I can see will become a fan-favourite very quickly. Possibly Daryl-level popular.
This is fast becoming my favourite season of the entire series and, although it’s not perfect by any means, I’ve ended each episode with a craving for more, with satisfaction at what I’ve just watched and total excitement at the events unfolding for the group. And that’s what makes a good episode; when the viewer comes out of it even more excited than when they pressed play at the start.
What did you think of this week’s episode? Let us know in the comments!
