It’s funny how six single words “She can’t be around other people” can take a show to such a place where there is no turning back.

Ever since the explosive mid season finale of The Walking Dead, things have felt a bit displaced and very slow at moving the story along and with the survivors split up into several groups, we were beginning to feel a bit cheated about not seeing certain beloved characters for weeks on end

Then ‘The Grove’ episode came along and gave us one of the most darkest and torturing episodes of The Walking Dead we’ve seen to date.

I’ve been questioning for a while now just what exactly Lizzie’s end game was in The Walking Dead ever since she began earning more and more screen time.  I knew there was something big planned for the character as she was featured quite regularly early on in the season and honestly felt, in the mid-season finale when she killed Tara’s girlfriend (which saved Tyreece’s life) we had reached her end point. 

Guess I was wrong.

We were informed of the fact that Lizzie was damaged before the world changed, a fact which, we were blind to due to the chaotic nature of the world around them.  Her inability to note a difference between human and walker were cast off as ‘childish thoughts’ and as time progressed, the evil within Lizzie’s mind was allowed to bloom.  Walkers were not bad, they were just different and in her mind, she had to prove to everyone how this is so.

You have to feel for Carol.  After loosing Sophia and then taking Mika and Lizzie under her wing, plus dealing with the secret of killing David and Karen, not only was this episode Lizzie’s end game, but it was also Carol’s new beginning.

Mika’s death drove the show into dark territory in which the callousness behind this killing is something not explored within the show. Sure The Governor was a few stubbies short of a six pack but he killed in order to exert his dominance and for purposes of revenge. Mika on the other hand was murdered, by her own sister, just to prove a point – that walkers are just different.

The Grove was an episode mixed with the perfect amount of hope and madness and how this will translate to the last two episodes of this current season and into the next is still unknown.