Ep. 5.01 “No Sanctuary”

We're baaaccckkk!

 

QUICKLOOK:  The Termites are cannibals, Rick and Carl reunite with Judith and Carol is one badass motherfucker!

We open with a flashback of the termites.  They are locked in a dark room listening to screams of their companions.  One man (I think his name is Alex) says they never should’ve put up the signs telling people to come to Terminus because they led the bad people there.  Gareth pops out of the corner and says they were trying to do a good thing.  Alex asks if those are the bad guys outside “what are we then Gareth?”

Cut to Now:  After they catch everyone up on how they got there, our crew get busy in the train car ripping things apart to use as weapons and trying to devise a plan when the Termites come to the car and tell them to stand up against the wall.  Rick and crew get ready to attack, but are caught by surprise when the top opens and they throw in a can of gas to knock them out.  This obviously isn’t the Termites first rodeo.

Through Rick’s hazy vision as he’s being dragged off, we see some Termites cutting up a dead man and 3 bins marked, feed, clean and dump.  Rick, Darryl, Bob and Glenn have been grabbed along with four other unknown men.  They are placed before a long silver trough with their hands zip tied together and their mouths gagged.   The two termites cutting up the man stop and come over with a bat and a big knife.  The batter swings a couple of times, working on his aim.  The first man at the trough is the blonde hippie guy that Carol and Rick met when he banished her.  He looks at Rick with desperation, but there is nothing Rick can do at that moment.  Finally the batter steps up, hits him in the head to stun him and the other guy slits his throat pushing him back over the trough to bleed out.  They move on to the next and the next, finishing them off all the way until Glenn, who is lined up first from our group.  Glenn watches the blood flowing down the trough into the drain and probably needs to change his pants right about now. 

Just as the batter goes to stun him Gareth walks in.  He needs to know the two guys shell counts from the round up.  See, Terminus (as we’ve seen) looks all cozy and welcoming, until you figure out what they are.  That’s when the gunfire starts and you get thrown in a train car.  They have to keep up appearances though, so they can’t have shells lying around.  The first guy gives his count, but the second doesn’t remember because it was his first round up.  Gareth tells them they have time to be messy now, but they need to dial it in by sundown. 

Bob tries to talk through his gag and get Gareth’s attention.  Gareth removes it and Bob tells him they don’t need to do this.  They have someone who knows how to stop the virus they just have to get him to Washington.  Gareth tells him they can’t go back and re-gags him.  Then Gareth decides to ask Rick why he took a bag into the woods and didn’t come back with it.  He’d like to know what was in it.  Rick says they should go out together and he’ll show him.  After Gareth puts a knife to Bob’s eye Rick confesses that the bag is full of guns and a machete with a red handle, which he will “use to kill” Gareth.  (Kind of looking forward to that moment.)  While all of this is going on, Rick has taken a piece of sharp wood from inside his sleeve and has been working on getting free from his ties.  As Gareth re-gags him we hear gunfire and then what seems like a bomb that makes the whole place shake.

Carol, Tyrese and Judith are getting close to Terminus.  She says she will get both of them there, but she won’t stay.  Some walkers come up and Tyrese asks Carol to kill them.  He just can’t do it yet.  She tells him he will have to be able to.  She kills the one, but a whole herd is coming.  They start to run, but hear gunshots so they stay hidden.  Because of the gunshots the walkers seem to fall in line and walk on the train tracks, straight to Terminus. Tyrese isn’t so sure about Terminus any more since they don’t know where the gunshots came from, but Carol says it will be okay. 

Some guy is setting off fireworks and talking on a walkie. He tells the woman on the other end that he knew the chick with the sword was going to be a big deal and he wants the kids hat once they bleed him out.  He gets a gun to the head from Carol who tells him they are friends of the chick with the sword and the kid and they aren’t buying his bullshit.  He tries to tell them Michonne and Carl attacked them and that they are the only ones who showed up to Terminus.  Carol doesn’t by it.  The guy says they set up the fireworks to lead the walkers away, but Carol tells him he fucked up and a whole heard is heading to Terminus. 

Carol leaves Tyrese and Judith to watch the Termite and she leaves with a plan to go see what Terminus really is.  She covers herself with zombie guts.  The Termite asks Tyrese if the baby is his and if the woman is his friend.  He tells Tyrese he’s a good guy and that’s why he will die today.  It could all be okay though because Tyrese could take the baby and the car and just leave.

Carol gets to Terminus in time to see the Termites rounding up Rick, Darryl, Bob and Glenn.  She pulls out a gun, but sees a herd of walkers so she blows up one of the tanks.  Which is the bomb that interrupts Gareth from killing Rick et al.  Burning walkers attack the Termites and Carol strides in with them.  Gareth goes to see what’s wrong while Rick cuts free and kills the two butchers.  They enter the drying room with cut up bodies hanging and getting prepared to serve.  They grab what weapons they can find.  They need to get by the walkers, but Glenn says they need to let the people in the other train car go.  They do, but they free some crazy guy that ends up getting attacked by a walker and killed by Darryl. 

Carol walks into a room where all of the unlucky peoples possessions are kept.  She finds Ricks watch and Darryl’s crossbow.  Unfortunately, we did not see Michonne’s sword.  She then enters the candle room and comes across Mary.  Mary has a gun pointed at her and Carol acts like she will surrender, but uses her gun to shoot Mary instead.  Mary tells Carol that this place used to be a sanctuary, but people came and raped and killed them and laughed.  So they fought back because you can be the butcher or the cattle.  Carol asks where her friends are and leaves Maggie to get eaten.  Outside, Rick gets a hold of the machine gun and lays some Termites down for dinner. 

Back at the cabin, Tyrese gets distracted and the guy gets hold of Judith and threatens to snap her neck.  He makes Tyrese go outside with the walkers.  We hear all kinds of noise and more and more walkers until suddenly it gets deadly quiet.  Tyrese barrels in and kicks the Termites ass until he’s dead.

While they are still trapped in the train car, Sasha asks Eugene what the cure is and he says it’s classified.  He says he was part of a team that used diseases to fight diseases and he knows how to kill everyone on the planet, so he wants to use that knowledge to kill the walkers instead.  Rick frees them and they go to the woods to retrieve the bag of guns.  Carol walks up.  She and Darryl hug, then Rick asks if she did all of that and hugs her.  She tells him to come with her because she has Judith.  They decide to go away from Terminus although at first Rick wants to go back and finish them off.

We see another Termite flashback where the men are taking women and Gareth decides they are either the butcher or the cattle, and they won’t be the cattle any more.

Rick wipes outs the sanctuary sign so that others won’t go there.   

End credits...

After the credits role, we see our old friend Morgan from seasons 1 and 3.  He follows the marks Darryl left to where the guns were buried and follows it.  Hmm, what’s he up too?  And doesn’t he look more sane than we last left him?

BTW, Mary is Gareth’s mom and Alex was his brother.  Alex was the poor guy on the table when Rick and the others were taken into the butcher room.  What could’ve happened for him to end up on that table?

Until next week!