Raise your hand if you thought that Daryl Dixon was going to die on last night’s episode of The Walking Dead. Good. Now, take that same hand and smack yourself with it — because that was a really dumb prediction. The gang behind TWD doesn’t know how to hold on to their showrunners, but they know to not kill the most popular character on their show. Also, biceps. Moving on.

Last night’s episode, “The Suicide King,” was all about trust, and family, and the various things that can tear a family apart, and really just how you shouldn’t trust anybody at all, ever, because they’ll beat you with a shovel or not kill the guy who sexually assaulted your girlfriend. Everybody but zombie-bait Beth and Hershel the Wise is now angry at and/or not trusting someone, and Rick Grimes, God bless him, has finally gone completely bananas — and without Daryl “Unlikely Voice of Reason” Dixon by his side, things are looking grim for the Gang of Grimes. (But wait, can’t we say that every week?)

Before we get started on the Dixon showdown and the various new factions that exist within the show, I want to talk about how much I love Chad Coleman AKA Tyreese AKA Cutty from The Wire on this show, already. This may be because he’s essentially playing a zombie apocalypse version of Cutty from The Wire, or because Carol said “Daryl has his code — this world needs men like that” and that had me thinking about Omar from The Wire with his code and his shotgun, and how Daryl’s kind of like that with his cross-bow, only Daryl’s not gay (I think) and he doesn’t murder drug dealers. Okay, so maybe Daryl’s not that much like Omar from The Wire, but he is one of the few characters on the show with an open heart and a firm moral code, so yeah. I guess the point is that I want to watch The Wire. Also, I’m tired.

The only thing that can get in the way of Daryl’s good ol’ moral code is his brother Merle, so it’s unfortunate that both brothers walked away from the death match over in Woodbury. We never got to find out if either brother was capable of killing the other, though it didn’t seem like it. Maybe Daryl would have fought harder if Merle had kept kicking him, but when Merle looked at him and said “just follow my lead, little brother,” Daryl was relieved to do so. They fought with the zombies the Governor had added to the spectacle, giving in to the audience’s thirst for blood for jusssstttt enough time for them to get rescued.

Then things got sort of weird. Back at the highway, everyone bickered over who should stay, and who should go. Everyone basically agreed that Michonne — who finally admitted via scowl that she knew Andrea — was untrustworthy and needed to go, eventually. Fine enough. But why would Merle — who was A, absolutely delighted to be there and B, the only person around who knew everything about their evil genius mortal enemy the Governor, be set free? Like, couldn’t Rick have brought him back to the prison to torture him for information? Rick Grimes: good with a pistol, absolutely terrible at decision making. But more on that later. Let’s talk about Daryl.

read more: http://www.hollywood.com/recaps/55000686/the-walking-dead-recap-suicide-king-daryl-dixon-alive