This series has taken seven weeks to come to the boil, but with The Walking Dead season 10 episode 7, we finally saw the heat being turned all the way up. ‘Open Your Eyes’ was jam-packed with infiltrators, interrogations and deaths — oh, the deaths. Whisper it like Alpha, but The Walking Dead is ever-so-quietly getting quite good again. Honestly!
What happened in The Walking Dead season 10 episode 7?
The dark shadow of season nine’s Kingdom Fair Massacre still looms large over our survivors, with Siddiq suffering the most. Alexandria’s number one physician was made to watch as a number of his pals were savagely beheaded by Alpha and her creepy gang of skin mask-wearing hoodlums, and his subsequent struggles with PTSD have been a recurrent theme across season 10. This regular, if arguably overblown, signposting of Siddiq’s trauma – in this episode, he hallucinates being grabbed by a set of arms which emerge from a sofa he’s sitting on – has prompted those of us on the other side of the screen to anxiously wonder how this potentially devastating storyline will be resolved. Some TWD fans had even begun speculating that Siddiq was reluctantly recruited as a Whisperers spy at the scene of the Massacre in exchange for his life.
- Read more: The Walking Dead season 10: release date, trailer, plot, cast and everything else we know
Tending to those Alexandrians who have been struck down by the mysterious illness which is plaguing the community, Siddiq is then taunted by visions of Alpha before being summoned, along with Dante, to treat Carol’s Whisperer prisoner from last week as he’s dragged into Negan’s vacated cell. But when the captured Whisperer remarks that he recognises Siddiq (presumably from the massacre), he goes white as a sheet. When will this mental torture end?
Unfortunately for Siddiq, he’s called back to the cell later in the episode as the Alexandrian captive is checking out of, well, life. After throwing up blood on Dante, the feverish Whisperer collapses to the floor and, shit, he’s only gone and died. Siddiq tries to cast suspicion on Dante by demanding to know why he treated the baddie with poisonous hemlock pills. But who erroneously packed them in the medical bag earlier on? Why, it was Siddiq: and now the ball is back in the court of those backing the whole Siddiq-is-a-Whisperers-mole theory.
Did Dante kill Siddiq on The Walking Dead?
Our suspicions are somewhat offset, however, by the numerous reminders throughout ‘Open Your Eyes’ that Siddiq is A Good Guy™. His sweet, on-again, off-again relationship with Rosita (the pair also have a baby together) is allocated plenty of time throughout the episode, and at one point she even heroically jumps in to Alexandria’s water supply to save Siddiq from drowning himself following another overwhelming brush with survivor’s guilt. Rosita tells him that he has to pull through and fight his demons: “If you can, you will. Because you’re not alone, and you’re the smartest person I know.”
Siddiq then shows off his smarts by finally figuring out why everyone’s been getting sick at Alexandria: somebody’s poisoned the water hole! Duh! And, yeah, it’s at this point that it becomes quite clear that Siddiq isn’t trying to bring Alexandria down from the inside: but who is? As he wrestles with this newfound hunch, enter Dante. The community’s other doctor initially tries to assure Siddiq that everything will turn out OK: after all, they’re mates now! But after delivering this speech about friendship, Dante utters a Hereditary-style mouth click. Now where has Siddiq heard that before?
Finally, his traumatic flashbacks prove useful as Siddiq puts two-and-two together. The Whisperer who made him watch on the night of the massacre made that exact same mouth click in his ear, and it’s finally revealed that Dante is the Whisperers’ mole in Alexandria. Grim realisation in mind, Siddiq lunges for an axe in an effort to kill Dante — but the stocky villain-in-hiding is too strong for the Good Doctor, and with tears of regret in his eyes, Dante chokes out and (presumably) kills Siddiq. “Close your eyes,” he tearfully tells his victim as Siddiq breathes his last.
It’s an admittedly sad end for a character who had been growing in prominence in The Walking Dead — but at least his exit will now expedite the commencement of the inevitable survivors vs Whisperers war which is sure to dominate part two of season 10.
Elsewhere: Lydia heads off into the wild after encountering GammAaron
Lydia manages to get mixed up in two separate storylines this week before seemingly signing off altogether. The flighty ex-Whisperer is a bit of a pariah in Alexandria, although Carol sees her as a big asset in the fight against the Whisperers. “I hate them,” Lydia spits about her former in-the-woods campmates. “But I know them, too… My mom twists people: gets them to do what she wants, makes them think it’s what they want. And people obey because they think they have no other choice.” Lydia reckons that Alexandria’s community and way of life might be enough to turn a number of the Whisperers against Alpha. “That idea is dangerous. It would spread: and there’s nothing that mom could do to stop it.”
Carol’s attempt to kill the Whisperer prisoner with kindness backfires, however, when he spits back a mouthful of jam sandwich at her. “You’re all weak,” he then tells Carol, Daryl and Gabriel as they resort to using force and intimidation to beat answers out of him. “You lie to yourselves, and each other. You fight for sandwiches. You ignore the truth when it’s staring you in the face… I would never betray Alpha… she loves us all. She sacrificed her own daughter for us. I am willing to give my life for Alpha.”
So, it seems, would Gamma — or so we thought. Aaron’s continued efforts to make overtures to the evidently persuadable Whisperer continue in ‘Open Your Eyes’, and, what do you know, it’s starting to work: Gamma inadvertently discloses that she used to have a sister (before she fed her to the walkers in episode two) as the two cross over into ‘frenemy’ territory. Reporting back to Alpha, the Whisperers’ leader is disappointed to hear that Gamma has been bonding with Aaron and lashes her arm several times in punishment in an effort to prove that their gang are always being tested and must remain strong. “Do not be seduced,” she tells her third-in-command.
Gamma returns to the GammAaron meeting point more determined and grabs Aaron by the neck. “Don’t do this, this isn’t you,” Aaron says. “You have no idea who I am,” she replies. Carol, though, shows up in the nick of time to break up the fight — and Gamma is reduced to a stunned silence when she sees Lydia standing beside her. Alpha, after all, has been telling her charges that she killed her daughter once Lydia disobeyed her, but, clearly, that’s not the case. And if Alpha lied about that, what else has she lied to the Whisperers about?
Lydia doesn’t like being used as a pawn in all of these mind games, though, and lashes out at Carol both physically and verbally before running off into the wilderness. Has Lydia’s usefulness to Carol been exhausted now that this dramatic domino effect has begun?
Next week’s mid-season finale, ‘The World Before’, will hopefully start to provide answers to the questions as the march to war continues: all we’re sure of at the moment is that we’ll definitely be tuning in.
The Walking Dead continues Mondays at 9pm on FOX.