The Walking Dead Season 7’s midseason finale brought Rick and Daryl back together at the Hilltop community. The two bros shared a long embrace, but the moment that really stood out was Daryl handing Rick the gun. Rick has his power back; he’s ready for a fight.
It’s been a long eight episodes. We saw The Walking Dead Season 7 kill off four characters: Abraham, Glenn, Spencer and Olivia. All of those people died because Negan wanted them dead. It wasn’t until Rick stabbed Walker Spencer in the head that he realized his arrangement with Negan would never work out, which is why he visited Maggie at the Hilltop.
Andrew Lincoln, who plays Rick on the show, explained to Entertainment Weekly how relieved he is that the gang is back together.
“It sucks for that first half of the season to be a guy that led this group for so long — and they’ve been not without their trials and tribulations but there’s always been some semblance of hope in Rick — and to have that beaten out of him is heartbreaking, at least it was for me. I did not enjoy filming on set,” Lincoln said. “I was not a happy camper. To have unity, just the beginnings of the flame being ignited again, was enough to get me excited for the back eight.”
The best part for Lincoln was definitely seeing Norman Reedus out of those awful sweat pants Daryl had to wear. The costume designers apparently didn’t wash the clothes between takes because Reedus got super funky towards to the end. Hugging a “clean” Daryl was enough to cause Lincoln to get emotional on set.
“Dude, it was embarrassing. What you saw was nothing. You should have seen us in between action and cut. It was just never-ending! You couldn’t pry us apart,” Lincoln told EW. “I started to cry because I was so relieved he was out of the sweatpants because he stank and he was really unpleasant. I was so relieved that I didn’t have to hug him in those awful sweats.”
Daryl might be back, but he definitely isn’t the same person he once was. Daryl beat a man to death with a pipe, a man who offered to look the other way as he escaped the compound. What do you think Daryl is capable of doing next? Do you think Negan broke him? Let us know in the comments below.
The Walking Dead Season 7 returns February 2017 to AMC.
