Season one episode five of AMC’s post-apocalyptic anthology series Tales of the Walking Dead opens with Davon (Jessie T. Usher, The Boys) waking up from a blow to the head. The season’s penultimate episode is told in a non-linear style, so it’s a bit confusing to see this just-introduced character is handcuffed to a zombie who’s trying to attack him.
Davon experiences a brief flashback of a woman and some drawings on a wall. He grabs a prostatic leg and begins to hit the zombie over the head with it.
It’s the dead of night as this is going down, and a little girl finds him. He asks for help, and she yells for her mom. It’s obvious she knows him as she yells, “Davon! It’s him! He’s here!” before running off.
Davon is oblivious to what’s happening (and so is the audience). The zombie wakes up, and he hallucinates the dead person calling him a murderer.
As Davon drags the zombie along, he continues to hallucinate. The zombie accuses him of doing this to her and says that’s why they’re looking for him. He briefly hides under an upturned tree and then continues walking with the zombie to a small boathouse. Unfortunately, he’s unable to get inside it.
He discovers a photo in his boot and keys on the zombie. “Who are you?” he asks, and the zombie responds, “897.” Davon keeps walking through the community, and the zombie says the numbers again, right as they stumble upon that address.
Davon has a flashback of two French Canadian women and of his leg being chopped off.
The story leaps backward seven weeks, finally allowing viewers to begin to piece together what’s transpired.
Two women rescue Davon, and he regains consciousness in bed to discover one of his saviors tending to the wound on his leg. He asks for his boot, and one of the women hands him the photo of his family that was inside of it.
Flipping back to the present, Davon and his zombie friend enter 897’s garage. There are pieces of flesh, blood, and his missing boot on the floor. The zombie begins to explain this is where he killed her as he experiences multiple, rapid flashbacks. He has a vision of the woman becoming a zombie and of her saying, “Sometimes murder is mercy.”
He’s done dragging the zombie around and grabs a hacksaw. He cuts off the zombie’s hand so that she’s no longer his shadow.
Davon carries the zombie inside and lays it on the table. He’s struck with another flashback of the women – Nora (Loan Chabanol) and pre-zombie Amanda (Embeth Davidtz) – along with himself and a teenage boy named Arnaud (Gage Munroe) sitting at that very table, enjoying a meal. Amanda explains her son, Arnaud, got the scar on his throat because he and his father went out too far beyond the wall. His father didn’t make it back.
After that fond memory, Davon smiles at the zombie and says, “Amanda, I’m sorry.”
He glances at a piano and remembers Nora teaching him how to play. She encouraged him to keep trying, and the flashback reveals there was an attraction between him and Nora. (A shadowy figure watched from behind.)
Davon begins to explore the house and makes his way upstairs. After tending to the wound on his head, he has yet another flashback when he spots a poster on the wall. (This episode is littered with flashbacks!) This time his vision shows him waking up in bed after being rescued and Nora and Amanda giving him glasses because his were broken. He finds out he’s in Maine and recalls telling these helpful strangers that he ran into an unfriendly man in the woods. He didn’t shoot the man, but the man shot him. He believes murder isn’t the only option, but Amanda disagrees. Amanda thinks sometimes murder is the only option.
A short leap back in time shows Davon clearly hearing a child repeatedly saying the same thing in French through a vent. He heads down to the basement to investigate and discovers a zombie child chained up down there. He has a flashback of stabbing it in the head and of Amanda coming down the stairs. She said, “Sometimes murder is mercy,” before placing a black hood over his head.
Back to another flashback, Devon is bringing Nora strawberries which makes her happy. She wanted some for her salad, even though Davon thinks adding them ruins the salad. There is some flirtation going on between the two.
And now to the present… Davon is tied up to a gravestone as the hood’s removed from his head. The angry mob calls him a murderer and wonders how he could do this to children. Even Nora is there, and she also believes he’s done something.
Arnaud steps forward and drops to his knees next to Amanda’s body, accusing Davon of killing his mother. Davon insists he didn’t do it and would only kill if he was forced to or if someone was trying to kill him. Arnaud weeps as he calls his mother a good, kind person who took care of everyone. Arnaud suggests Davon murdered her after she discovered what he did.
Davon still has no clue what’s going on and what they’re talking about.
The angry mob demands to know where the children are, and Davon continues to be confused. He admits he saw one boy, and then one-by-one they all begin to extend their hands, palms up. (It’s some sort of signal they use to vote.) Davon attempts to get Nora to tell him what’s happening as she drops to her knees in front of him. She begs him to say where he saw the boy, and he confirms it was in the basement.
They drag Davon to a van and sentence him to death for killing children. They order him to get into the van and reveal it will be crushed once he’s inside.
Davon’s memory seems to clear a little amid the chaos, and he pleads with them, again claiming he’s innocent. He thinks it was Amanda who killed the children, and if they do this to him, an innocent man will be put to death for murders he didn’t commit. That will make them all murderers.
He begs Nora for help as they toss him into the van. Once inside he has a flashback of drawings of boys, and that triggers a memory.
Davon recalls being in the basement and seeing boys chained up down there. Amanda found him there and told him he didn’t belong in the basement.
As the bulldozer is about to crush the van, Davon screams out that there’s a boy who’s still alive. Nora orders the execution be put on hold as Davon says the boy is her son, Garen. The execution is still moving forward, despite Nora’s plea for them to stop. The townsfolk think Davon’s lying to save himself.
As she and Davon continue to scream, the bulldozer begins to crush the van.
Nora tries to stop the man operating the bulldozer, and a fight breaks out. The angry mob is divided and fights amongst themselves as Davon sees Arnaud running away.
The next morning Davon returns to the boathouse that he couldn’t get into before and sees Arnaud entering it. He quietly peeks in the door and sees Garen chained up. Arnaud is lecturing Garen about how it was very bad of him to run away but he forgives him.
Arnaud tells Garen that whenever he was scared, his mom would give him a treat. Davon has a flashback of reading in his room when he heard the child through the vent. He visualizes going down to the basement and finding a boy chained up there who was repeating flavors over and over, just like Arnaud is doing to Garen right now. Davon remembers seeing Garen in the basement and trying to free the boy but being thwarted by Amanda who then knocked him out.
Garen got away and Amanda tried to stop him, but Davon fought her off. Davon then handcuffed himself to her so couldn’t go after Garen. They made it into the garage and during the struggle, she faceplanted into a bucket of acid. Her face melted and she died.
Right after she passed away, Arnaud hit Davon in the head with a tire iron.
We get caught up on all the events as we see Davon waking up and then carrying Amanda through the woods. He was looking for help before collapsing.
Snippets of scenes we’ve already been shown flow by, but now we see Garen is in them too. Garen was with Davon right before Davon passed out.
Davon enters the boathouse and confronts Arnaud with a wooden club. Arnaud is armed with a knife as he confesses he knew Davon would be a problem, but because of Nora he was allowed to stay. Davon is stunned and asks why he’s killing kids, and Arnaud reveals he’s saving them from growing up in the world that they now live in now. He parrots his mom and says, “Sometimes murder is mercy.”
Davon realizes Amanda knew what her son was doing. Arnaud gets upset that Davon is bringing up his mother.
Arnaud explains that, at first, Amanda didn’t know but then she caught him. She tried to save his first victim, but they realized they couldn’t let him go because he’d tell. They wound up leaving him in the woods. Apparently, Amanda wouldn’t do anything about it because Arnaud is her son and she’d almost lost him once. She didn’t want to lose him for good.
Davon and Arnaud have made it out of the boathouse and are in the nearby field. He can hear zombies beneath him and that distracts Arnaud just enough for Davon to hit him with the club. Davon then pulls back a piece of wood and exposes two zombie children who’ve been buried beneath it.
Davon screams Nora’s name over and over as Arnaud drops to his knees, begging Davon not to do this. He swears he’ll leave and never come back.
Garen walks outside as Nora and the others come running. Garen tells everyone what Arnaud’s been doing and Arnaud calls Garen a liar. Fortunately, no one believes Arnaud.
Davon calls Arnaud a murderer and addresses the townspeople. “You would’ve killed me. Do you even care? Would you have regretted it when Arnaud killed another one of your children and then you realized that it wasn’t even me?”
Davon tells them they don’t have to live like this. There is still life out there. There is still hope.
Nora isn’t swayed by Davon’s powerful words and slaps Arnaud in the face. One by one the others run up and hit or kick Arnaud.
As Arnaud is being dragged toward the hole, he tries one last time to blame Davon. The men dragging him toss him in with the two zombie boys he killed. He dies a fitting death, being bit by those he murdered.
The most confusing episode of the season ends with Davon walking away and saying in French, “I will see.”
- Tales of the Walking Dead Season 1 Episode 1 “Evie/Joe” Recap
- Tales of the Walking Dead Season 1 Episode 2 “Blair/Gina” Recap
- Tales of the Walking Dead Season 1 Episode 3 “Dee” Recap
- Tales of the Walking Dead Season 1 Episode 4 “Amy/Dr. Everett” Recap
- Tales of the Walking Dead Season 1 Episode 6 “La Dona” Finale Recap
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