Tensions boiled over in a big way on The Walking Dead. With only two episodes remaining in season 3, we got significant advances in the storylines for two characters: Andrea and Tyrese.

I’ll do my best not to give too many spoilers along the way, but be advised, if you haven’t seen the episode yet, this might not be the review you should be reading.

Andrea

When we start the episode, it’s not readily apparent whether Andrea has decided to side with Woodbury & The Governor or to rejoin her original group with Rick and the rest of the group at The Prison. It seems as though she’s likely to go with Micchone back to the group at The Prison, but she also still seems to be holding onto some notion that she could help in Woodbury. As the one individual who can communicate with both sides, it’s easy to see her usefulness in that regard, and understand why she might feel like she needs to try to do more.

By the end of the episode, there’s no doubt what she wants to do.

In fact, it’s fairly early in the episode when Andrea decides to escape, and the majority of the episode revolves around her flight. And what a flight it was.

Perhaps the final impetus for her decision comes when Milton shows her The Governor’s “workshop”. From the gallery above, Andrea gets to see a dentist-style chair with a customized restraint system, and an array of torture devices. It is there that Andrea looks to be ready to kill The Governor, but during her delay, Milton steps in and takes her gun away.

The decision becomes clear at this point, and Andrea decides she has to leave. When she gets to the wall, we get a very key scene between Andrea and Tyrese which serves to set things up for later in the episode, and likely what’s to occur in the final two episodes of the season. Andrea explains that she’s leaving because the “utopia” is anything BUT a perfect situation, and she clues Tyrese into the fact that The Governor isn’t a good guy. More on Tyrese in a bit.

Nary an escape run smooth, Andrea becomes the PREY as mentioned in the episode’s title. The Governor realizes that Milton told Andrea about the offer made to exchange freedom for the folks at The Prison in exchange for Micchone, so he takes it upon himself to track down Andrea himself.

In one of the most tense scenes in the show thus far, The Governor tracks Andrea down and corners her in a warehouse, and the way she ends up escaping him is an ingenious move that you have to see for yourself.

Just when it seems like Andrea has made it back to The Prison, making it all the way back to the tree-line, with Rick visible up in the watchtower, things go south for Andrea. As far “south” as one might imagine. I can’t give that away, but the parting shot of the episode, while not unexpected, is certainly one which is likely to cause your mouth to drop open in shock, dismay, disgust, fear… you name it.

Tyrese

Though I’m not someone who has been reading the comic books source material, I have heard that Tyrese is a very popular character amongst the faithful, along with Micchone. That said, I’ve been waiting for the show to give me more than just a glimpse at why people latch onto either of them, and while we’re starting to get that more and more with Micchone, they haven’t focused too much on Tyrese yet.

That appears to be changing.

It was encouraging to see the interactions between Tyrese and Sasha show more of their personalities. The target practice session was a nice way to add some levity into an otherwise EXTREMELY tense episode.

After Andrea’s escape, The Governor sends Tyrese and his group to deal with an off-campus set of walkers they’ve assembled, and this leads both to some tension and additional character exposition for Tyrese. While there, Tyrese stands up to on-site Woodbury leadership (which doesn’t include The Governor), saying he doesn’t agree with feeding women and children to walkers. One of the members of his traveling squad stands up to him, telling him not to rock the boat for their group, and that leads to a scuffle – showing that inter-group dynamics are important on the show, and that Tyrese doesn’t simply just speak for the group he was traveling with.

Later in the episode, it was refreshing to see Tyrese stand up to The Governor, questioning his tactics and saying he disagreed with the approach. Though he relented a bit when The Governor gave him a song and dance about how it wasn’t something they intended to use for anything more than intimidation, it’s still more than what I’ve seen from most characters.

Another vital part of that scene came just before The Governor left the room. Having learned that someone went to the off-campus site and torched the walkers, The Governor asked Tyrese where he got the gasoline. At that point we (and The Governor) learn that it wasn’t Tyrese who set fire to the “means for intimidation”, as he didn’t know anything about the incident. It becomes clear to The Governor and the viewers that it was, in fact, Milton who set the fire… and Milton finds out that The Governor knows it was him.

Expectations for the Walking Dead Finale

What do I expect to happen as the season rolls to a close?

– The Governor is going to die, one way or another. I’d place odds at 50/50 on Andrea dying in the process (which I suppose is a spoiler, if you thought perhaps she had died during PREY).

– Milton’s odds of survival are probably at about 50/50 as well, and I could see him replacing Andrea as the one who brings about The Governor’s death even at the cost of his own life, or I could see him joining the group at The Prison. I don’t, however, see much hope in both he AND Andrea joining up with Rick and their crew.

– Tyrese is going to finally get in with the group at The Prison. I’d wager that Sasha is there with him, but as for the other two members of the group, don’t hold your breath.

– Someone else from the group at The Prison is going to die. It wouldn’t seem like much of an eventful season finale if all the current members live. I can’t imagine that Rick, Carl, Darryl, Glenn, Maggie or Micchone will die. While I still think it’s likely to be Andrea, I wouldn’t count out some sort of combination of Hershel, Carol, Merle or Beth dying.

– I don’t expect them to stay in The Prison much longer. It’s not as secure as it used to be, and food is likely running low, not to mention they’ve probably exhausted most of the resources of nearby towns, so they’ll need to move on to find more food.

– What of the helicopter from the beginning of the season? I had originally thought it might have something to do with Woodbury, but that’s clearly not the case. Obviously we saw the fate of that particular helicopter, and the soldiers who were waiting along the road, but perhaps there’s more to that situation than we’ve already learned.