Still Gotta Mean Something

"Still Gotta Mean Something" is the fourteenth episode of the eighth season of AMC's The Walking Dead. It is the one-hundred and thirteenth episode of the series overall. It premiered on April 1, 2018. It was written by Eddie Guzelian and directed by Michael Satrazemis.

Plot
A Heaps prisoner makes a discovery; Carol searches for someone in the nearby forest; Rick and Morgan find themselves in the company of strangers.

Synopsis
In a flashback, Jadis plays possum while Simon and the Saviors massacre her people at the Heaps.

After the Saviors leave, Jadis strips off her bloodied clothing down to her nightgown.

In the present, she weeps in her room. Then she rouses herself, packs a suitcase and grabs a familiar baseball bat. She unlocks the container where Negan is tied to a dolly and drags him out.

At Hilltop, Ezekiel asks Carol to help search for Henry, but she declines. Ezekiel realizes that Carol believes Henry is dead.

Tara tells Daryl that her arrow wound did not infect her. She deduces that Dwight shot her with a clean arrow and abandons her immediate quest to kill him.

Michonne urges Rick to confront his emotions and read the letter that Carl wrote to him.

Morgan tells Carol that he's going to look for Henry. Carol joins him.

Daryl works on his motorcycle and spots a knife with dried blood, which sparks an idea.

In Maggie's office, Dianne reports that they don't have enough ammo to fend off another big attack. Presuming the Saviors are low on ammo themselves, Daryl suggests they fight them hand-to-hand. Rosita points out that Eugene is probably making ammunition for the Saviors.

Jadis checks her watch and prepares to burn Lucille in a wheelbarrow. Negan apologizes for the massacre and insists that he wasn't responsible. Jadis swings Lucille at him, stopping just short of his face.

Morgan sees Henry in the woods and runs after him, only to find "Henry" is only a hallucination. Carol admits she accompanied Morgan to keep an eye on him, not to look for Henry. Morgan spots a trail left by the escaped Savior prisoners.

Rick watches Judith play. He stares at Carl's hat and gets up.

Rick asks Alden where he thinks the Savior escapees might take shelter. Alden suggests Rick check out a nearby dive bar, but implores Rick to bring the Saviors back to Hilltop instead of slaughtering them.

Jadis's watch beeps. She leaves Negan alone for a moment and returns with a walker tied to a cart. Negan fires at her with a gun he managed to get hold of, and threatens to burn a pile of sentimental photos with a flare that he found in her bag.

Morgan and Carol spot a herd crossing the road. A walker approaches them with Henry's fighting stick rammed through its gut. Carol goes to search for Henry while Morgan pursues the Savior escapees.

Jadis begs Negan not to burn her photos. Negan explains that Lucille is all he has left of his wife, whom he named the bat after. Jadis's watch beeps again. She rams the walker into Negan and wrestles the flare away. To her dismay, the flare falls in a puddle of water and the flame is snuffed. A helicopter appears overhead. She tries to hail it to no avail. She is about to burn Lucille when Negan finally dissuades her. He vows to settle things with the perpetrator of the massacre.

Rick catches up with Morgan in the woods. Morgan menaces Rick with his fighting stick, momentarily forgetting who Rick is. "I'm not right," he says as he lowers his weapon. Rick proposes they kill the Saviors together.

Rick and Morgan find a severed arm and foot with visible walker bites. Someone knocks Rick out cold.

Rick comes to and finds himself bound next to Morgan in an abandoned dive bar. Jared and the Savior escapees deliberate about what to do with the Saviors who have fallen sick. Jared insists they ditch the dying Saviors and deliver Rick to Negan. Rick gives his word that he will not harm them if they return to Hilltop. A herd floods into the bar, and the living are quickly outnumbered. A Savior cuts Rick and Morgan loose so they can help take down the herd. Rick and Morgan kill the walkers and, when the moment is right, methodically mow down the Saviors.

Morgan locks Jared behind a gate and watches him get devoured.

A dying Savior reminds Rick that he had given his word not to harm them. Rick says he lied and kills the Savior.

Rick asks Morgan why he decided to save him back in Atlanta when they were strangers. Morgan says it was because his son was with him.

Negan walks free at the junkyard and invites Jadis to join the Saviors. She refuses.

Carol walks through the woods at night and hears Henry pleading for help. Finding him surrounded by walkers, she slaughters them all.

They return to Hilltop. Henry reunites with Ezekiel.

Carol tells Ezekiel that she lost herself after her daughter died, but that she found a better version of herself as a part of Rick's group.

Rick and Morgan return to Hilltop covered in blood. Morgan tells Henry that he killed the man who killed his brother.

Morgan sits alone and weeps.

Jadis returns to her room and lies in bed.

Negan drives toward the Sanctuary and spots someone on the road. He pulls over and tells the person to get in.

Negan arrives at the Sanctuary and instructs the guards to keep his arrival a secret.

Daryl and Rosita observe the Bullet Factory Outpost, they see Eugene receiving a shipment of hundreds of bullet casings to make into new bullets. Rosita decides that instead of taking out the machines, they will take out the man, implying she intends to kill Eugene, something that Daryl agrees with.

Rick braces himself and reads Carl's letter.

​Co-Stars

 * Kerry Cahill as Dianne
 * Macsen Lintz as Henry
 * Nadine Marissa as Nabila
 * Mike Seal as Gary
 * James Chen as Kal
 * Matt Mangum as D.J.
 * Mark Ashworth as Evan
 * Brad Ashten as Escape POW #3
 * Derek Roberts as Escape POW #4
 * Anthony J. Police as Escape POW #9
 * Finch Nissen as Escape POW #13
 * Wallace Krebs as Escape POW #14
 * Neil Hoover as Escape POW #15
 * Traci Dinwiddie as Regina

Uncredited

 * Chloe & Sophia Garcia-Frizzi as Judith Grimes
 * Roe Digi as Red Beanie Savior
 * Gerard Mason as Savior Defector #1
 * Joseph Levine as Savior Defector #4
 * Gary Stephen Brock as Savior

Deaths

 * Evan
 * Jared
 * At least 8 unnamed Saviors

Trivia

 * First (and last) appearance of Evan.
 * Last appearance of Jared.
 * Last appearance of the Scavengers. (Flashback)
 * This episode is 75 minutes long, with commercials, according to AMC's schedule.
 * It is the eleventh extended episode this season and the twenty-ninth overall.
 * This episode marks Christian Serratos' 50th appearance on the show.
 * A flashback reveals that Jadis survived the destruction of The Scavengers in "The Lost and the Plunderers" by faking her own death, successfully tricking the Saviors.
 * Tara is revealed to be clean of the walker infection, suggesting that Dwight shot her with a clean arrow, especially as she was the only one injured who did not get sick. As a result, she lets go of her vendetta against Dwight, recognizing that he very likely saved her life and probably couldn't warn them ahead of time of the attack.
 * The title is a reference to Rick's line to the Saviors when giving them his word: "There's not a lot that means much these days, but a man's word, that's gotta mean something, right?"
 * This episode re-uses a soundtrack from the slaughter scene in the episode "No Sanctuary".
 * This episode also re-uses a soundtrack from the hangman scene in the episode "Last Day on Earth".
 * One of the amputated Saviors was played by Wallace Krebs, who also portrayed a prison resident in "Isolation" of Season 4 and a zombie in "Clear" of Season 3.
 * This episode references previous events;
 * Michonne references the loss of her son and mentions Andrea, one of the original survivors of the Atlanta Survivor Camp.
 * This episode confirms that Andrea knew about Michonne's son, making her the first person to know rather than Carl.
 * Carol reminds Morgan how he saved her life from Roman in "Last Day on Earth".
 * Rick reminding Morgan that he knows him in order to prevent the latter from killing him is a callback to when he did the same thing in "Clear".
 * Several other callbacks and references are made to that episode.
 * Jared brings up Morgan strangling Richard in "Bury Me Here".
 * Rick giving the Saviors his word is exactly the same thing he told Todd, right before both parties were killed.
 * However, Rick was telling the truth to Todd and was intending to let him go until Daryl killed him.
 * Rick almost getting bit by a walker and then saved by a Savior is a reference to when Daryl saved Rick from an incoming walker in "No Sanctuary".
 * Rick approaching a badly-hurt Savior and trying to listen to what he says before killing him is a reference to a similar event with Rick and Bob Lamson in "Coda".
 * Rick reminds Morgan of how they first met back in "Days Gone Bye".
 * Jared's death is very reminiscent of Jimmy's, T-Dog's, Noah's, David's, and Paula's deaths in the fact that all are eaten alive by walkers by a door/fence while another character(s) is able to escape and live. Also, most of them were initially bitten around the face/neck area.
 * Jared's death as a result of Morgan trapping him behind a gate to be devoured by approaching Walkers almost mirrors the way that Rick attempted to kill Andrew in the episode "Sick" in which he trapped him in a courtyard of Walkers after shutting a prison gate. Unlike Jared however, Andrew was able to survive.
 * Henry hiding behind the tree roots in a creek bed from walkers is similar to what Sophia did in "What Lies Ahead" before her disappearance.
 * According to Talking Dead, they used the exact same set.
 * Henry's actor (Macsen Lintz) is the younger brother of Sophia's actress (Madison Lintz) in real life.
 * Carol mentions Sophia and her loss to Ezekiel.
 * Morgan tells Henry "Don't ever be sorry" just like he told Carl after he had shot him back in the episode "Clear".

Goofs/Errors

 * The majority of the Saviors credited and featured at the dive bar were not seen with the other Savior POW’s throughout Season 8. With the exception of a few recurring extras, the Saviors were all brand new as this was the actors’ first appearance on the show as Saviors.