‘The Walking Dead’ Recap: ‘Rendition’

Written by John Edward Betancourt

Caution: This article contains spoilers for Episode 1104 of ‘The Walking Dead’.
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Love affairs can be quite the uplifting experience. Because when we enter into one, our spirits are left soaring. After all, we’re in love and we’re enjoying all the benefits of adoration and passion and everything in between, and of course, the emotions we feel are so strong, that we truly believe that we can accomplish anything, especially with our love at our side. But while it is indeed wonderful to feel love surging through our veins and enjoy the euphoria that accompanies it, what we don’t like to talk about all that often… is the downside to the love affair. Because sadly, they never last, and having those joyous feeling robbed from us can potentially put one in a dark place.
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One where are suddenly at our lowest and unsure if we will ever find love in the slightest. Because more often than not, we genuinely believe that love affairs have introduced us to our soul mate and the feelings we enjoy are the direct result of that and the connection we share with this person. But the harsh reality about the love affair is that they designed to be fleeting by nature, for they are in fact... nothing more than a chemical explosion and the result of a powerful attraction and once we get to know the person in question and see the incompatibility between us or the chemistry wears off... we split and deal with that painful fallout. If anything, this darker side to the love affair is of note today, because it just so happened to serve as the focal theme of the next episode of The Walking Dead, and that made ‘Rendition’ one surprisingly original and engaging tale. 

For in this particular tale, we catch up with Daryl Dixon shortly after he and Dog escape the ambush with the Reapers and well, despite Daryl’s best efforts to escape their clutches, they keep finding him and eventually they appear to harm dearest Dog. An act that forces Daryl to stick around and try to find his four-legged bestie to gain closure of some form and that particular search leads to quite the stunning set of surprises for certain. In that, not only does he find Dog at last, but that sweet little pup is sitting next to someone that Daryl thought he would never see again… Leah. Yes, that’s right. Out here, in the middle of nowhere with the Reapers near, the woman that brought out the best in him through the healing power of a love affair is once again standing in front of him, making it seem as though this episode was about to take quite the positive turn.

But alas, it doesn’t take long for the viewer or Daryl to figure out, that the only reason Leah is here, is because she is in fact, a Reaper. A revelation that forces Daryl to reconcile that reality and the reality of his situation quickly, in order to save his hide and his friends and thanks to his quick thinking… he is able to do so. For Leah demands that her fellow Reapers capture him and bring him back to Meridian, and they do so under the guise that he is a loner and a rebel, one that abandoned the friends he spoke of in Alexandria to survive another day and that is a guise that Daryl keeps rolling when he realizes a friend from home is there… to try and keep everyone safe. And once he is securely behind bars and settled into this strange place, is when that examination of the darker side of the love affair gets underway.

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Because Daryl in essence, is forced to realize the fact… that what he and Leah had… wasn’t real. Instead, it was powerful attraction and chemistry, forged out of sorrow and hard loneliness that brought them together for that brief period of time and because he let those emotions wash over him, because he needed a win in that moment, he sacrificed and compromised a personal standard. In that, he didn’t really get to know Leah in the slightest and had he done so… perhaps this scary reality could have come to fruition and spared him the worry and pain and strife he felt when she left. An epiphany that made it clear that knowing someone through and through is the real key to making a love affair become a love of a lifetime or to find us peace when it ends... and in the process, Daryl also came to realize that he was going to have to use that connection to his advantage if he wanted to make it out of this mess alive.
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For he truly was in the midst of something scary and awful. Because as Daryl sat back and observed and fed Leah what she needed emotionally, he came to discover that the Reapers were more than just a troupe of violent raiders. No instead, they were in fact, a group of zealots. One led by an enigmatic leader named Pope and their current existence and beliefs were forged from the end of the world. For before the world fell to living death, Leah and her friends were well-trained military mercenaries, and they were hired to help fight the dead when things got rough and unfortunately for them… they were caught up in the middle of Operation: Cobalt and, on that night, the Reapers were born. For they survived the onslaught of napalm and that led Pope to believe that God Himself had blessed them with a mission to survive and bring order to the world.

But while finding faith at the end of the world is nothing new in this universe or fiction, what makes it so significant… is that it has clearly driven Pope mad. To the point where he believes that any and all of his actions are related to the Lord’s word and that gives him the power to decide who lives and who dies during the apocalypse, and that he can bless and sanction who belongs to his group. As evidenced by the horrifying trial by fire that he put Daryl through… and by what he did to a member of his own outfit. For apparently, turning to avoid injury in the midst of combat is frowned upon and will lead to one being branded as a coward and a traitor to the Lord’s mission and the penalty for that is severe, since Pope tossed the offender into a raging fire to hammer home their need to abide by God’s plan and Pope’s machinations, and that also makes it clear that Daryl Dixon is surrounded by perhaps… the toughest situation he has faced to date. 

Because this time around, there’s no cavalry coming for Daryl, nor is there is going to be some organized resistance against the Reapers. It is just Daryl, and he will need to pull upon all his experience and his cunning and his smarts to outwit and outmaneuver these monsters to survive and see his friends/extended family once again and while we wait to see how he does that, we can revel in the wonder of one intense and incredible tale. One that genuinely reminded us of the importance of taking the time to get to know someone that has caught our eye and our emotions and of course, it also took the time to reinforce the dangers of religion when mixed with fear, as evidenced by Pope and his ‘holy transformation’ and well, now that this harrowing tale has come to a close… who knows where we go from here. Because this is uncharted territory for the group and that’s both scary and exciting and it will definitely motivate us to eagerly count down the minutes until next week’s entry, to see how the heroes of Alexandria defeat this powerful enemy. Until next time.

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