The Walking Dead: World Beyond – Exit Wounds

THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR EPISODE 203, EXIT WOUNDS.

On this week’s episode of The Walking Dead: World Beyond, Hope continues to investigate the CRM research facility, Elton and Percy run afoul of other travelers, and Huck struggles to return to her past life.  We are in that part of the season where the action slows and the show starts to set up for the finale.  Even without a lot of action, the few bits of fighting we do see are particularly good. However, this is still an episode devoted to moving the pieces around the board for the endgame. 

HOLY SHIT, THEY WERE TURNIPS!

One running bit of business in “Exit Wounds” is the verbal exposition drops.  The episode starts with one as Elton talks on horseback with a groggy Percy.  Elton tells Percy all that he (and the audience) has missed.  With a found horse that Elton has dubbed Theresa, Elton explains that they will be able to find their friends soon enough.  After Percy notices the smoke from a campfire on the horizon, Elton and Percy scout the source.  Siblings Asha and Dev are enjoying a quiet meal next to their full wagon of turnips.  Elton wants to ask for food, but after all, Percy has been through, he understandably wants to steal all the food outright.  Percy believes everyone in the world, even the good people, are too far gone to be helpful.  After all, we have seen, he kind of has a point.

Elton goes the honest route and asks for food.  Asha provides a canteen of water and two turnips for his trouble.  But Percy can’t leave it alone.  While Percy circles around and slides into the wagon to help himself, Elton’s lack of a poker face screws them both.  The jig is most assuredly up, and Percy and Elton take off in the woods, dodging weapons.  While the siblings stop to battle a group of undead, Elton and Percy run straight into a graveyard of flowers and moss-covered empties.  Elton gets a nibble from an empty, but his TuffyStitch corduroy suit saves the day.  So impressed is Asha, that she takes Elton’s suit as payment for her inconvenience.

JENGA, DRINKS, AND OTHER SCIENCE

Hope continues her not-so-subtle reconnaissance of the CRM research facility.  In undead bio class, images on the slide show trigger more flashbacks from Hope’s cross country journey. When the teacher calls out Hope’s distractedness, she fully busts out an answer to his question.  In the process, Hope manages to pinpoint a heretofore unexplored area of dead decomposition involving yeast.  After some playful science banter with Mason, he invites her to a party below the science lab.  The series started in a similar situation, and the remainder of her lost home causes Hope to turn down Mason’s invitation.

After a brief consultation with Leo about the new yeast idea, he confirms that Hope’s idea is a new one and has promise.  Leo wants to provide Hope with a distraction from the distraction of science, so she changes her mind about the party.  Hope may have intended to take the night off from spying, but she soon starts to question Mason.  ABC!  Always Be Casing the joint.

Mason confirms that he is from the Civic Republic, and that CR students at the RF are able to return home for two weeks per year.  Some Portland students reside at the RF, but their trips home are less frequent.  From Mason’s telling, Portland still exists, but if no one has gone home in a while, what are the chances that it met the same end as Campus and Omaha?

EXITS AND RETURNS

After a reunion with lost love Dennis in her bedroom, Huck has a brief conversation with him in the light of day.  Huck notes that what Dennis did had driven her away.  The show is a little vague on this.  Was this the Sunset Protocol incident?  Or did Dennis do something else entirely?  Huck mentions that Dennis’ actions lead to her work which saved five people from the Campus Colony, so was it related to Campus?  Regardless, it is clear that Huck still has feelings for Dennis but is conflicted on if she should continue to act on them.

After everything, Huck is clawing her way back to her old life.  Huck betrayed the friends she made while undercover.  So that life is over.  The CRM has granted clemency for Huck’s actions, so that path back is open.  With Dennis sniffing around again, Huck is pretty close to getting that old life back.  Except Huck is not Jennifer anymore.  When Hope pleads with her for help, Huck tells Dennis that she is not ready to get back together.  But also?  A favor would go a long way toward winning her back.  So Huck asks Dennis to loan her his truck as that favor.  With Hope smuggled in the tool bin of the truck, and a Kublek fan girl working the guard gate, Huck is able to sneak off base.  

EXIT WOUNDS

Asha and Dev take Elton and Percy as prisoners back to their base.  As the wagon rolls past the warning signs for the toxic landscape, Elton and Percy start to panic.  Fortunately, the wagon rolls straight into the Permiter artists’ camp.  Asha and Dev are Indira’s kids, and they have known who Elton and Percy were the whole time.  Iris has an emotional reunion with the boys.

In the second expo drop of the episode, information is rattled off in VO over the face of a pensive Elton.  Apparently, Iris updated Elton and Percy on the destruction of Campus Colony.  Per the VO, Iris thinks the serum is the reason for the sabotage.  Percy takes the information as further proof that the world is terrible, and again, he isn’t wrong.

That night Iris tends to Percy’s wounds with all the swiftness of a tortoise while the pair make eyes at each other.  Iris thanks Percy for the art exhibit he had made for her.  Percy laments that he had not been there to see the look on Iris’ face.  Iris asks Percy to take off his shirt so that she can care for his exit wound, and the obligatory “let me help you with your shirt” moment makes an appearance.  If a kiss was about to happen, the arrival of Hope and Huck outside put a quick end to that.  Iris is thrilled to see her sister.  Percy only has eyes for Huck.  Well, eyes and a really big knife.

WORTH WATCHING?

The sequence at the top of “Exit Wounds” with the walker funerals and the scene with the mossy graveyard is definitely worth watching.  Hope’s life seems to be treading water a bit.  Leo spends most of his time huffing and puffing about his daughters without doing much actual scientific work.  A bit of a stretch to think that Hope’s yeast inspiration was something that Leo had not thought about yet, but they do have to justify Hope’s importance to CRM.  It was nice to see Iris lose some of her newly acquired edge in her moments with Percy.  After all, Iris is still a teenage girl who had a relatively normal teenage life until a couple of months ago.  In the end, though, this episode is mostly about bringing all the group back together in preparation for the finale of the series.

ODDS & EGGS

• The eyeballs of the dead were very solid in the close ups.  Shouldn’t they be more like jelly at this point?
• For all those debating the toughness of Elton’s ToughyStitch, the debate seems to be over now.
• Why does Huck have a photo of her with Dennis in their CRM duds?  The shot of Huck’s closet shows they do wear civilian clothes.  I guess nothing screams romance like unflattering black uniforms in front of greenery.

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