The Walking Dead S05E09 Review: Tyreese's Demons

The Walking Dead, Season 5, Episode 9: What's Happened and What's Going On

Well, that was a huge bomb to get back to. It's a beautiful, beautifully crafted episode that so cruelly claims another member of the cast, and the best thing about it is the fake-out. The episode starts off with a dreamlike montage of scenes. Father Gabriel presides over a burial, people are crying, there are disjointed scenes of the past, and we all assume it's Beth's funeral. She's a major character, and she died last episode. And while impactful, her death also felt somewhat hollow at the same time.

The episode plays out like what you'd expect a 'get our bearings together after a tragedy' episode would be. We get some quiet, morose driving. We get to tie up a loose end, which is the community Noah mentions. Noah finds it to be overrun by zombies, of course, and it initially seems like it's going to play into some introspective, philosophical stuff. Which I'm down with. We get Tyreese continuing his character arc, telling Noah how he has to persevere and move on. We get Glenn and Rick debate about whether it would've been right to shoot Dawn last episode, and it's nice to see Glenn do something that doesn't revolve around just being lovesick about Maggie. Michonne chips in, and her impassioned speech about how settling down is just that -- settling down and making do with a bunch of houses,. Whereas trying to go to Washington, Eugene's lies notwithstanding, might actually give them... something more. It's actually a nice bit of meta analysis on Michonne's part. The show needs to go on and they'll never be allowed to really settle down -- the farm and the prison both showed that -- and thus working for a different end goal in mind would be great. 

Then as Tyreese and Noah walks around Noah's old house, with poor Noah being distraught, Tyreese gets bitten by Noah's zombie brother. It's in the arm, of course, and Hershel is a precedent for amputation saving the life of a victim of a zombie bite, and it's a bit of a cruel, cruel joke because we actually go through the motions. Noah gets Rick, Michonne and Glenn back and they amputate Tyreese's arm. They even manage to pull him as he's delirious back into the car. But alas, it was not meant to be.

If you told me that Tyreese was going to die in this episode being bitten by a random walker when he's distracted with a bunch of photographs, slowly hallucinating to death, I would've brushed it off as a shitty death. Because it would! Other characters have died in confrontations against human villains (Beth, Hershel, Bob, the prisoners) or really huge numbers of zombies (everyone else in the farm). To have Tyreese, a very major character that's been with us since season three be killed off unceremoniously like this would be a slap in the face, and seems to be a cheap way to just go 'yeah, he's steadfast in not killing anyone, but this is a world where you become hardcore'.

But no, that's not what happens. Tyreese bleeds out to death as he struggles with the whole, y'know, bleeding-to-death thing and the zombie infection, and he starts seeing hallucinations. People who died this season. Bob, Beth, Mika and Lizzie... and two unsavoury figures from Tyreese's past. The Governor and Mr. Douche Cannibal. Bringing dead characters back as ghosts in a trippy vision is not a good trope unless you're doing something meaningful about it, and Tyreese being challenged about his lifelong philosophies by these ghosts are amazing.

No, Tyreese hasn't been the most consistent character throughout his time on the show, and the ghosts/hallucinations seem to recognize it. Douhe Cannibal mocks Tyreese's weakness and how he might've caused the Terminians to catch up to them and kill Bob. The Governor demands that Tyreese 'pay his bills' like how he said he would do anything to earn his keep in Woodbury. One of them even mocks Tyreese for being shit for allowing Carol to live and not avenge his girlfriend. Bob is a bit more cynical, Beth sings, but in general the friendly characters are, well, a lot friendlier even if they basically tell Tyreese to rest. 

We also learn about the whole radio gimmick from Tyreese, a bit of a backstory we've never heard before that works. Tyreese grew up being exposed to all the atrocities and horrible things that happen in the world because his dad raised him to listen to the radio no matter how horrible the news may be, he'll open his eyes to all of them no matter how awful they are while still keeping who he truly is consistent. But when the news of disaster are actively happening around Tyreese himself, he's beaten down. He's just exhausted, and all the increasingly gray decisions that's happening all around him are wearing him out. We get to see a little bit of a scene of Sasha brutally stabbing one of the cannibals to hammer this point home. And at the end of the episode, when Rick, Michonne, Glenn and Noah slowly fade away into Bob, Beth, Lizzie and Mica, and he tells them to turn off the radio, it makes Tyreese's death scene a beautifully tragic one. 

And it's not like the radio scenes are just there for fancy arstiness either. It's a clever buildup for what I'm assuming are the next bunch of antagonists we'll be facing. We hear news reports about a group that rampages violently, are also cannibals, hacking innocents with machetes, burning people, and while we've seen cannibals recently and looters a lot, what they did to Noah's community is a whole new level. It's not pointed out fully, but the signs are all there. When Rick was saying how they can stay there, the camera lingers on broken down walls and something that seemed more artificial than just a walker attack. There's a group of corpses that are just cut apart, and the truck that Rick hits with his car and it spills open and spills out a whole mass of zombie upper-torsos seem to be more than just a creepy detail. Or it might just be like the creepy suicide zombies that Daryl and Beth met last season or the napalm melted zombies two episodes ago and it's just a cool little detail that doesn't mean anything. The fact that Noah's settlement fell without actually being overran really makes it look like these looters are responsible.

Side-note: Who's manning the radio station during the apocalypse? Or is it just old news repeated over and over?

So, yeah, am I happy that Tyreese died? Hell no. I'm just starting to really get attached to him, his death was very close to Beth's and it feels like a sudden 'ha, betcha you didn't see this coming!' and it's not a heroic death defending his friends, or a last stand, or to show how evil a villain is. It's just a random walker that snuck up on him. But I guess the lesson is the same as what the show has insisted in its earlier seasons -- one mess up, one wrong bite, and you're dead. 

Rest in peace, Tyreese. And Beth, too. You both started off weak but have definitely grown into very, very well-rounded characters that actually affected me when you died. And however Tyreese's death may have disappointed you, at least he died in one of the most beautiful and melancholic episodes that Walking Dead's ever done that doesn't just serve as a grand exit, but also exploring themes like hopelessness, keeping your nature and your no-killing attitude consistent, and the need for a goal and an end-game. It's yet another blow in a series of blows as the group is fractured -- Eugene's big grand hope is a lie, Beth's dead, Tyreese's dead, Noah's entire family is dead, everyone's having a crisis of faith in just what the fuck their endgame is beyond 'survive'... yeah, next episode's probably going to be a big depressing one.