The Walking Dead “Prey” 

Finally!! Since the beginning of the season, everybody and their dog have been telling Andrea (Laurie Holden) what a madman the Governor (David Morrissey) is.  Even after the heads, the arena fights, the Governor trying to kill Daryl and Merle, Andrea is still fixated on the monster.  Tonight, everything changes.  People begin questioning their loyalties and the leaders of the team they are on, no doubt leading up to the explosive season finale which we have come to expect of a series like The Walking Dead.

So, what is the deal-breaker for Andrea?  Milton (Dallas Roberts) catches the Governor building what appears to be a homegrown House of Horrors.  A chair with straps, needles, pliers, basically everything you’ll need if you want to torture someone to death.  Besides showing Andrea the contraption, Milton reveals the Governor’s true plan.  There’s not going to be any “peace” or bullshit like that; instead, the Governor intends to capture and torture Michonne (Danai Gurira), while slaughtering the rest of Rick’s group.

From this point on, we have some fantastic character development in the episode. Andrea, after all of these months, finally sees that she belongs back with Rick’s group, and most importantly, she needs to get to the prison to warn them of the Governor’s impending attack.  After pulling a knife on Tyreese (Chad Coleman) to get past the walls of Woodbury, she races towards the prison – on foot and with nightfall close behind.

What makes this interesting is that instead of sending goons like Martinez to find Andrea, as the Governor have done in the past, the Governor goes on the search alone.  Why?  Because if he does find Andrea, he doesn’t want anyone else in Woodbury to know.  Now, that would screw up his plans for torturing and killing her, right?  Andrea does finally make it to the outskirts of the prison, and the next few scenes are fantastic.  While it wasn’t perfect, the writers did a very good job mimicking the scenes and backgrounds of famous horror movies.  Even the Governor’s whistling was creepy enough to give me the willies.  Andrea is finally captured by the Governor, but not before Andrea unleashes a mini-herd of walkers on her former lover.  This is a strong testament that Andrea is done with the Governor, and for good.

While Laurie Holden did a wonderful job in this episode, if I had to pick an MVP it actually would be Milton.  He shows Andrea the freaky room of horrors, spills the beans on the Governor’s plans to wipe out Rick’s group, and in the end, does an even more ballsy thing of torching the Governor’s stash of walkers (at least we are led to believe he is the one who did it).  We don’t know the details of Milton’s relationship with the Governor, but we do learn tonight that they knew each other before Woodbury.  And, since we know that Milton does not “do relationships”, this should tell us that the Governor once was a very close friend.  We can see Milton struggle with the allegiance he feels for his friend, but ultimately doing the right thing wins out.  I find Milton’s character very refreshing and intriguing, and while most people are saying his days are numbered (and I don’t disagree with that), I hope he gets a little more airtime, possibly taking his betrayal to the Governor a few steps further.

The only part I really didn’t like in this episode was the opening scene.  Upon seeing Michonne’s pets alive again, at first I was a little confused and really didn’t know it was a flashback until a few moments later.  That said, I think the writers could have done a better job making it clearer we were viewing a flashback.  Secondly, the scene just didn’t flow with the rest of the episode.  I understand it was put there to highlight Michonne and Andrea’s past friendship, but it just didn’t … fit.  The one good part is that we learned a little more about Michonne’s pets.  In the comics, one of them was a former boyfriend, and both of them were people Michonne had been close to.  In the television series, with Michonne’s comment “They weren’t even human and got what they deserved”, it indicates that they were, in fact, bad people.  I’m sure this topic will be revisited in the near future as Michonne’s character is developed more and more.

All in all, I thought this was a top-notch episode, as usual.  It still didn’t have all of the gore and action that some viewers have grown accustomed to, but the entire episode was super-tense, leaving fans on the edges of the seats until the very end.  It also had some superb character development, shifting even more people to Rick’s side of the camp.  I was completely stunned with the season 1 and 2 finales, but I have a feeling this finale is going to blow them all out of the water.  Buckle down, everyone, and prepared to be wow’ed out of your seat!