The show opens and mostly closes with Rick (Andrew Lincoln, as grizzled as ever) watching television, a sure sign that the people of the CRM’s hidden city have things much easier than The Commonwealth or anyone else struggling for survival out in the wilderness. Rick is watching news footage of the destruction of Omaha, one of the three rings on the CRM flag along with Secret City (presumably somewhere in Pennsylvania as revealed by conversations later) and Portland. The walls were breached, zombies stormed the place, people holed themselves up in a building but ended up turning and going delta (the CRM word for zombies). It’s an effective big of propaganda to remind the people of Secret City to stay within their walls and keep their mouths shut; viewers of World Beyond know the real story of what happened to Omaha and the CRM’s tendency to liquidate communities, and no doubt Rick has his own suspicions given the world he’s joined.
It’s a world he’s desperately tried to get away from. After his third escape attempt, where he tried to throw the message in a bottle into the river as seen in The Walking Dead series finale, he’s running out of rope, literally. Rick is kept on a leash like a rambunctious three-year-old. It’s been five years since the bridge collapse, and five years since he’s seen his family. But, it’s Rick, and Rick always has a plan. A wrist strap will only keep you secured if you still have a wrist, and Rick’s willing to turn that into a stump to try and get away from the CRM. His escape attempt fails, but he proves something to his handler Okafor (Craig Tate). Rick’s got what it takes to lead.
But, it’s Rick, so he has to be convinced. Rick, down one hand, takes his place on the kill line, bashing zombies with a poking stick day after day after day. When he falls down, Okafor is there to protect him. He’s taken a special interest in Rick and fellow consignee Thorne (Lesley-Ann Brandt), because Okafor is one of those pesky “make the system better from inside” revolutionaries, putting him at philosophical odds with Major General Beale (Terry O’Quinn) and the rest of the army.
To no one’s surprise, the CRM and the city they protect run completely separately; the city doesn’t know what the CRM does, and they don’t want to know. The city rules the inside; the army rules the outside. It’s all a familiar set-up and no doubt Rick knows how it’s going to end. But, he can’t quite seem to get away from Okafor, who won’t give up on Rick because he needs him on the inside to pull off his relatively bloodless revolution.
Okafor has plans, and knows things that even the rank-and-file of the CRM don’t; he’s one of the troops with the blood stripe on their pants, and he seems to be willing to let Rick and Thorne in on the game if they’re willing to make the right actions when the time comes. Thorne has given up trying to get home to South Africa, and Rick? Well, after one last aborted escape attempt and one last lesson in keeping things secret (don’t keep pictures, maps, and write letters to your family if you don’t want people to know you have a family), Rick seems to finally give in, sparked in no small way by the footage of Omaha burning and Okafor’s briefings about just what the military is doing without supervision in the great wide world. Including, suspiciously, setting up a forward-operating base in the Cascades, conveniently close to Portland.
Interspersed throughout the episode are Rick’s dream sequences, which involve him sitting at a park in New Jersey, looking across the river at what appears to be the pre-apocalypse New York City skyline, and eating lunch with a well-dressed version of Michonne (Danai Gurira). The initial meet cute ends up becoming part fantasy, part therapy session for Rick, as Dream Michonne counsels him obliquely through every step of his journey towards accepting Okafor’s offers; first, he accepts the offer to join the military because of Dream Michonne, then he accepts a spot in the conspiracy after Dream Michonne tells him that the whole world can be ours if we want it. “We might not be where we want to be, but we’re not stuck,” she reminds him.
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