The Walking Dead Season 4 Episode 14 “The Grove” GIFs, Reaction and Recap

Now you see them, next week you won’t

If you told me I was going to see 2 little girls get offed in one episode this season, I’d assume it’d be the finale.  Nope.  See those 2 little girls in the pic above?  They’re gone… and Carol had to pop one herself.  Damn.  Season 4 Episode 14 is easily the most controversial Walking Dead episode of all time.

The episode starts off with a little girl “playing” with a walker.  We don’t find out til later that the little girl is Lizzie, Mika’s big sister.  We’ve known since the first half of Season 4 that Lizzie is batshit crazy, and we find out just how nuts the pre-teen is in this episode.  Not only does she pretty much play tag with a walker, she feeds one a mouse, and eventually tries to turn her little sister Mika into one.  You read that correctly.  Lizzie stabs her little sister to death so she can prove to Carol that walkers aren’t all bad.  Umm… what?

Before that happens, though, a lot of shit goes down in “The Grove”.  Tyreese, Carol, Judith, Lizzie and Mika stumble upon a house that is very habitable.  While Tyreese and Carol are scoping it out inside, Mika and Lizzie are watching Judith outside.  Of course, a walker stumbles out the back door and little Mika has to pull out her gat and waste the walker.  The poor girl can barely hold the gun, but after a couple of shots she puts the zombie down.  The scene was intense because there were no adults in sight and Lizzie just sat there doing nothing.  Tyrese and Carol run out, happy to see everyone’s OK.

The rest of the episode is pretty much all about the little girls.  Carol is doing her best to explain how a world full of walkers works, and that they want to eat Lizzie, not be her friend.  When she’s not trying to talk some sense into her big sister, Carol tries to teach Mika that there will be times she may have to be mean, or hurt people, who are trying to hurt her.  Mike understands that walkers are dangerous, but she doesn’t ever want to kill a living person.  She’s just a genuine, nice kid.  Lizzie on the other hand belongs in a mental institution.

About 3/4 into the episode, they flash back to the little girl running around with the walker.  When Carol sees what’s going on, she runs out, tackles the walker, and jams her knife into it’s head.  Lizzie freaks the fuck out and starts screaming at Carol for killing her “friend”.  Lizzie doesn’t want to kill walkers, she wants to befriend them.  Girl is messed up.  A little while later, a gang of crispy walkers from the fire in the distance find their way to the grove and almost get Mika and Lizzie as the elder sister is feeding a walker (who is trapped in the train tracks) a mouse.  Carol, Tyrese, Mika and Lizzie all take out their guns and start popping off at the threat.  Thankfully, everyone is OK again, and it looks like Lizzie understands how dangerous the zombies are.  Nope.  Not even close.

As Carol and Tyrese are off looking for food, they come back to Lizzie standing over Mika’s body, her hand drenched in blood.  The crazy little girl stabbed her sister to death so she can show Carol when Mika comes back as a walker that she’s fine.  Lizzie pulls out her gun and threatens to shoot Carol if she touches Mika, and even says she plans to turn Judith into a walker too.  Carol talks Mike into handing over her gun, and tells the girl they’ll tie up Mika so she doesn’t get away.  After a quick conversation with Tyreese, Carol decides Lizzie can’t be around people, and walks her out into the yard.  While Lizzie is looking at flowers to give to her sister when she “wakes up”, Carol puts a bullet in the back of her head.

AMC obviously didn’t show either of the kids getting waxed, but the sheer fact that 2 children were killed in one episode is shocking enough.  While Tyreese had wanted to stay in the grove for a bit instead of heading to Terminus, the weight of what just happened is making that decision a difficult one.  After popping Lizzie, Carol sits at the table and slides the gun over to Tyreese.  She tells him how she was the one who killed Karen and David at the prison, and that he should do what he has to do.  An extremely emotional Tyreese puts his hand on the gun, but then lets it go, and forgives Karen.  They bury the 2 children, and move on to Terminus, as there’s no way they can stay in the grove.

This was easily a top 5 Walking Dead episode of all-time, and brings some redemption to the second half of Season 4.  Episodes 11 and 12 were so bad I didn’t even bother to write about them.  Now I can’t wait to see what happens next week.