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Starting with last season’s finale, it was obvious that Rick’s hopeful vision for the future, and the “let’s all forgive each other” message he pushed to achieve it, would be a bitter pill for many to swallow. With “Warning Signs”, we finally discover just how bitter it is, and for how many. We’ve known for some time that there was postwar tension between the communities and a philosophical rift forming between Rick/Michonne and Maggie/Daryl, and by the end of the episode we finally understand just how deeply those differences run. Not only does this episode do a fine job of revealing to us (by way of a murder mystery plotline) how badly things are coming apart at the seams, it makes a surprisingly compelling case for capital punishment, even though its protagonist probably wouldn’t agree with that.

The episode opens with a couple of very effective sequences showing how much better life has gotten for Rick since the war with the Saviors ended. In the first, he pulls a ripe tomato from the garden and puts it on Carl’s grave, a way of expressing how he is building the world his son wanted. In the second, we see a montage of him spending the day with Michonne and his daughter Judith, playing and enjoying each other like a normal, happy family. As enjoyable as it is to see them in such contentment, this is clearly the calm before the storm for him.

In the main plotline, the body of Justin (the jerky long-haired ex-Savior from the last episode) has been discovered, murdered. It’s obvious that someone is targeting Saviors for death, and Team Rick’s inability to protect them threatens to cause a full-scale riot and rip the communities apart, not to mention prevent the crucial bridge from being built. (Symbolism, anyone?)

Rick and his group set out to track down who is committing the murders, and in the course of that another ex-Savior, a woman named Arat, is abducted. After a series of violent close encounters in the woods with both human and Walker alike, Maggie and Daryl (both of whom have serious grudges against the Saviors) track her down and discover to their shock that it’s the women of Oceanside who have been killing the Saviors, as retribution for the murders of their husbands, sons etc. in the past. Not only that, but they only started the killing after seeing Maggie execute Gregory. That act showed them that they don’t need to follow Rick’s blanket amnesty, which was all the justification they needed to start avenging the wrongs of the past.

Arat, who has genuinely been trying to earn her redemption and become part of the new community, begs Maggie to save her from the vengeful women. Maggie is at first horrified by the vigilante justice she has inspired, but after learning that Arat sadistically murdered an 11 year-old boy when she was a Savior, she and Daryl walk away and let the Oceansiders take their bloody revenge. They promise that Arat is the last one they kill, but as this show has shown us in the past, bloodlust can’t just be turned off like a tap. As a result of Rick’s inability to prevent Arat’s death, the Saviors walk way from the bridge-building project and presumably away from the communities, the postwar alliance finally broken.

Daryl and Maggie, inspired by Oceanside’s example, walk back to Alexandria and decide it’s time to do what they’ve been wanting to do from the beginning: walk into Negan’s cell and kill him, consequences be damned. It’s gonna be tough for Rick to fix this one.

In the b-plot, we finally learn one of Ann’s big secrets: back when she was Jadis, the reason she and her friends were so rich in resources and safety was because she abducted people and “traded” them to whatever community the helicopter represents. Father Gabriel discovers this, and she tries to placate him by suggesting he leave with her so that they can be together. When he (understandably) says that he wants no part of anything that involves human trafficking, she knocks him out with a pistol, and implies that he will be her next abductee. Poor guy just can’t catch a break.

Random thoughts on this episode:

-Zombie kill of the week goes to Maggie, for bottlenecking a bunch Walkers up in a hallway and knifing them in the head in quick succession. Really cool move. (Cyndie’s stabbing one up through the chin with a pitchfork was pretty cool too, and a nice foreshadowing of how she would later stab Arat in the head.)

-Interestingly, “Warning Signs” felt more like a character-driven episode, even though in retrospect there was plenty of action and tension involved. It’s to the show’s credit that so much of each element could be packed into one episode while keeping us focused on the plot.

-Having the Oceansiders be revealed as the murderers was a nice twist. Up until now, most of the tension was with the former Saviors, which made sense but was getting stale quickly, so it was refreshing to have the real threat come from somewhere else. And it makes sense, given that these women were not part of the main group, but got pulled into the war against their will, thus they don’t feel any particular affinity for Rick or his rules.

-I’m not sure we’re supposed to condone the kidnapping and murder of Arat, but her horrible crimes as a Savior definitely deserved punishment. And in a postapocalyptic world completely devoid of laws, wronged people will still thirst for justice, and while Rick’s blanket amnesty was well-intentioned, it didn’t provide anyone that. It shows how desperate this society needs rule of law and punishment restored, which is hopefully where Michonne will come in.

-Rather unexpectedly, AMC has announced that the next two episodes will be Rick’s last. Obviously, things aren’t going to end well between him and Maggie (although Lauren Cohan is apparently leaving the show soon as well), and I’m very curious to see how they wrap his character’s story up for the next couple of weeks. (Michonne is gonna have her hands full, since it’s being implied here that she and Rick are working on another kid, which means she’s going to have to rebuild law and order while raising two kids on her own.)

-That one Savior really thinks he can take Carol hostage. That’s adorable.

-The climactic scene of this episode involves a woman being murdered by other women to avenge a boy, while yet another woman lets it happen. That’s got to offend a man-hating feminist somewhere.

-Other than that scene where he interrogates Daryl, we never really get to see Rick put his skills as an ex-cop to much use in investigating the Saviors’ murders. That seems like a wasted opportunity. I know he was just a small-town Sheriff and all, but it would’ve been cool to see him go full Sherlock Holmes for an episode.

-A wicked bit of irony: during the big zombie fight scene, both Maggie and Daryl save Cyndie’s life. Later, they watch her commit a murder that probably would never have happened if the Walkers had killed her (she was taking revenge for her little brother’s death). So a weird twist of fate made them unintentionally complicit in the death, in addition to them letting it happen.