He began the show by laying down his bike on the pavement amid gunfire before recovering enough to flee and lay it down again in the forest. Soon he was shedding his leather jacket and giving away tickets to the gun show, no doubt fulfilling some biceps screen-time clause in Norman Reedus’s contract. (Jokes, Norman. They’re just jokes.)

Before long Daryl was knocked out and captured by the couple who would eventually steal his bow and who mistook him for a member of some other unpleasant sounding group in the vicinity. The couple (I didn’t catch their names) was fleeing said group and had a delicate diabetic named Tina in tow, along with Tina’s contraband insulin. Their grievances lacked specificity but the gist was their old group had offered security in exchange for an escalating series of indignities. “People will trade anything for safety,” the man said, reflecting a theme we’ve watched unfold in the increasingly Ricktatorial confines of Alexandria.

This other group is more of a Wadeocracy. When the group came for its insulin, a man named Wade, who we heard but never actually saw in full, sounded like he was in charge. He might just be middle management, however — “The Walking Dead” is apparently finally ready to bring on a villain named Negan, one of the baddest bad guys in the comic books, whose arrival has been hotly anticipated by fans for awhile. Reports last week claimed the show has cast Jeffrey Dean Morgan as Negan, who will debut at the end of this season. (Here’s a Negan primer if you don’t mind potential spoilers.)

It was unclear to me, someone who hasn’t read the comics, whether Team Wade, Negan and the Wolves are affiliated or enemies or what. (Those who have read them please refrain from posting spoilers, though we all know the show diverges from the books.) The ambush at the beginning of the episode seemed like it could have been intended for someone else — perhaps the woods of Northern Virginia are more crowded than we thought. Perhaps after years of zombies and mostly isolated human threats, we’re entering an era of warring post-apocalyptic city-states, something Andrew Lincoln has alluded to in interviews. (Abraham’s military misadventures and uniform modeling on Sunday could have been foreshadowing this.)

For awhile it looked like Daryl the recruiter was going to draft his captors onto his side, returning to help them escape Wade and friends. Tina didn’t make it, ultimately, but seems lucky to have lasted as long as she did, based on her diabetes and general lack of survival skills. All it took was one walker to open its eyes for Tina to first throw herself atop a pair of them and then roll over to offer a better biting angle on her neck. The other woman took it pretty hard but I just sort of shrugged — I’d only known Tina for like 11 minutes.