TWD: Daryl Dixon Recap: All Aboard The Pain Train!
Daryl hit the road this week on The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon, befriending a community of lepers before taking a ride on the rails, zombie apocalypse-style.
We pick up with Daryl, Carol and Antonio searching for Roberto, and they find the kid unconscious and hanging from a rope right above a swarm of hungry walkers. A couple of El Alcazar guys are gleefully dangling him in harm's way, but Daryl and company take them out, rescuing Roberto just in time. Roberto tells them he found Justina and they escaped together, but the El Alcazar men ran them off the road and captured them again. Plus, he drops a bombshell: Justina never volunteered herself. She confronted Fede about cheating on la ofrenda and threatened to rat him out, so he shipped her off. Daryl volunteers to go chase down Justina on the way to Barcelona, while Carol and Antonio take a wounded Roberto back to the village.
Daryl rides alone through the desert on his bike, stopping to assist a man with no eyes begging for water. The guy greedily tries to guzzle all of Daryl's water before pointing to the vultures circling overhead and telling him, "You're next." (Gee, you're welcome.) As Daryl drives off, he spots a train being pulled on the rails by a gaggle of chained-up walkers. Aboard it sits a man named Chofo, who indulges in a bath with a lady friend before spotting Daryl on his bike. "I want the bike," Chofo tells a henchman. "And food for Lola," he adds, handing what looks like an eyeball to... something. Oh god, guys, who or what is Lola?!
Chofo's men speed after Daryl on dirt bikes, and Daryl rides towards one of them head-on like a medieval joust, but he gets knocked off his motorcycle and is forced to trudge through the desert on foot. He crosses paths with a group of lepers, all with weird bubbling facial deformities, who lead him to water. One of them, named Mateo, hopes Daryl can help them get back the water Chofo's men stole from them, but a woman named Amaia — the only one not afflicted with leprosy — doesn't trust Daryl one bit. Daryl wins her over, though, and he only has four bullets left, so he and the lepers craft makeshift weapons out of rope and nails, Home Alone-style, to take out a roving band of Chofo's men (aka the Buzzards) and give Daryl the ammo he needs to take on Chofo's train.
He pulls off a sneak attack on the train, freeing the walkers so they can chomp down on the guards. (Oh, and Lola is an iguana, by the way. We were picturing something much worse.) Daryl charges inside and fights off walkers before strangling Chofo in the bathtub. He triumphantly returns the tankard of water to the lepers, and a little girl named Rosa gives him her thermos before he heads back on the road to Barcelona.
Elsewhere in the episode: Carol straight-up lied to Fede about what happened to Roberto, telling him that Roberto was jumped by bandoleros. (She also explained Daryl's absence by saying he was working on their boat.) Fede's mother Doña Marga tried to heal Roberto with herbs, and we learned that Roberto's mother Maria was a terrific baker. Valentina noticed a vibe between Carol and Antonio, telling her, "You prefer the local wine." (Jeez, this lady is all up in Carol's business, isn't she?) Carol did invite Antonio to come to America with her and Daryl — but he didn't give her an answer. And Doña Marga noticed Roberto had the compass necklace he gave to Justina and brought it to Fede... and Fede sent a henchman to go check on Daryl's boat to see if Carol was lying. Which she most definitely was. Get back soon, Daryl!
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