The Tainted Weapons Massacre is a major battle that took place during the eighth season of AMC's The Walking Dead.
Battle[]
Morgan stands watch in the woods when he has a vision of a dead, bloodied Gavin. He snaps out of it and hears a horn in the distance alerting him to the arrival of the Saviors. He runs to his truck and honks the horn, alerting the other lookouts. Daryl sounds an air horn. Jerry, Tobin, and Kal hear the horn from their post and prepare for battle. Inside the Barrington House as the survivors prepare for battle, Henry begs Ezekiel to let him fight, but Ezekiel and Carol order him to stay inside.
In the Hilltop's medical trailer, Dr. Dana grills Siddiq about his medical background when he offers his help, deriding him for not having experience. Eventually, Siddiq tires of the criticism and lashes back that everything he's done since the outbreak has been with inexperience, but obviously successful. Dana smiles and tells him that she approves of him. That night, Jerry spots a Savior convoy approaching. He signals Maggie.
The Savior convoy runs into a spike strip. Maggie radios Simon and demands to speak with Negan. She threatens to kill the thirty-eight Savior prisoners unless Simon retreats. Simon writes off the prisoners as "damaged goods" and proceeds with his attack.
Simon mobilizes the Saviors for battle. Dwight warns that Negan might still be alive and will punish Simon if he kills everyone at Hilltop. As Daryl approaches from the rear on his motorcycle and opens fire with his machine gun, Hilltop opens the main gate. Simon's convoy follows Daryl through the gate, but Hilltoppers block the convoy with a bus and fire at the Saviors. The battle begins in earnest. The Saviors fire arrows from outside the walls, raining down on the militia inside Hilltop. On the balcony of the Barrington House, several Saviors are hit by arrows, prompting Maggie to order Dianne to bring the prisoners to her office. One of the prisoners, Alden, offers to help defend Hilltop, but Maggie ignores him. In the midst of battle, a Savior stabs Tobin in the gut. Carol kills the Savior and runs to Tobin's aid. She aims her gun when someone approaches them, but lowers her weapon when she realizes it's Siddiq, the newcomer doctor Carl had saved in the woods a couple days ago. Siddiq offers to stay with the gravely wounded Tobin while Carol rejoins the fight. Simon spots Tara and orders Dwight to hunt her down. Daryl sees Simon and Dwight sneaking up on Tara and shouts a warning. Dwight shoots Tara in the arm with an arrow before Simon can fire a shot at her.
Ezekiel and Rosita shoot out the headlights on the Savior vehicles. Hilltop goes silent and dark. Simon assumes the Hilltoppers have fled and prepares to enter the Barrington House. As they spread out to surround the house, a row of headlights turns on and blinds the Saviors as the house's windows light up with gunfire directed at the Saviors. Meanwhile, Rick and the other lookouts charge into Hilltop from the gate with guns blazing. Rick runs into Siddiq and Tobin and tells them to stay low. While fighting, Morgan hallucinates and sees Gavin again. "You know what it is," says Gavin. Simon, Arat, Gary, Dwight, and the other Saviors flee Hilltop. Rick and Maggie chase after them as the Saviors flee in their vehicles. They continue firing upon the vehicles. Rick tells Maggie that he saw Negan earlier in the day and tried to kill him. The next day, Hilltop cleans up in the aftermath of battle. Maggie tells Enid that they lack the resources to fight off another attack. Tara downplays her wound, but Daryl refuses to forgive Dwight. Rick pulls planks off a bedroom window. Michonne tries to talk with him and offers to tend his wound, but he insists on cleaning up the mess. Maggie watches Jerry dig graves for the dead. She cuts Alden's bonds and tells him to bury the dead Saviors guarded only by Kal. Disillusioned by the events, Alden makes it clear that he doesn't consider the Saviors his people anymore. Dianne commends Maggie for being a good leader. Maggie regrets not killing Negan.
Carol visits Tobin, who is recuperating in the infirmary, and apologizes for leaving him back in Alexandria. She admits that she had started to develop feelings for him. Alden digs graves for the Saviors. Jesus locks the prisoners in the pen. Meanwhile, Henry finds a rifle in the house and sneaks away with it. Siddiq offers to treat Rick's wound and tries to console him about Carl's death. "Don't," Rick says and walks off. That night, Maggie checks in with the Hilltoppers as they prepare beds on the floors of the main house. One of the wounded Hilltoppers, Wesley, tells Maggie that he's doing well after Siddiq and Dr. Dana stitched up his wound.
Tobin dies in his sleep in the middle of the night. A while later, he reanimates into a walker and devours an unsuspecting medical attendant as well as Dr. Dana. In the main house, the wounded Wesley reanimates and tumbles down the stairs where a group of people are sleeping. The undead Tobin, along with the freshly reanimated Kurt and Dr. Dana, are drawn from the infirmary to the Barrington House by the sound of a crying baby. Meanwhile, Henry walks up to the Savior pen with his gun and demands to know who killed his brother, Benjamin. He threatens to start shooting Saviors until someone confesses, but is interrupted by screams from the main house. Mayhem breaks out as the walkers attack the sleeping survivors. Rick, Michonne, Daryl, Ezekiel, Jesus, and Siddiq wake up and fight back, helping their fellow survivors flee outside to safety. After several of the walkers are killed, they notice that the walkers were all their people: Wesley, Kurt, Dr. Dana, an Alexandrian woman, and a few others. Henry enters the pen with an ultimatum: if someone doesn't confess within ten seconds, he will open fire. A Savior who was injured during the attack has died in her sleep. She reanimates and bites a nearby Savior, causing chaos. Henry starts shooting. Jared tackles him and escapes with the others.
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Walker Tobin attacks a Hilltop woman named Bertie trapped in one of the bedrooms with Bruce. Carol wrestles him off and ends him. She informs Rick, Daryl, and Maggie that Tobin wasn't bitten. Rick recalls that Negan's bat was covered in walker blood, leading them to realize that the Saviors used their weapons to infect them. The injured Bruce who didn't turn yet overhears and realizes that he is infected as well. Bruce requests the group to kill him since he will soon turn and he doesn't have the strength to kill himself. Sadly, they honor his request. Rick and Daryl inform Tara. Having been wounded by a Savior arrow, Tara accepts her fate.
Siddiq goes to check on the prisoners and kills the reanimated Savior who had attacked her comrades. Siddiq is nearly killed by a second walker, but is unexpectedly saved by Alden who kills the walker with a shovel. As Maggie and several members of the Militia show up, Alden explains that he and several other Saviors chose to stay at Hilltop of their own free will even though they have no more strategic value to the Militia anymore. Alden points out that the captured Saviors mean nothing to Negan and Simon and states that "those of us that stayed, stayed. We had plenty of chances to run." Seeing the defecting Saviors struggling to close the gate against a herd of walkers drawn by the gunfire of the battle, Dianne and several Militia members rush to help while Maggie appears to accept Alden's explanation. Ezekiel and Carol search for Henry who has disappeared. Morgan closes his eyes and sees Gavin again.
Maggie and Rick look on as Jerry and Jesus dig more graves for the dead in the ever-expanding Hilltop cemetery.
Participants[]
The Militia[] |
The Saviors[] |
Casualties[]
The Militia[] |
The Saviors[] |
Result[]
- The Saviors are defeated and driven off.
- Henry's actions indirectly allow several prisoners of the Hilltop to escape.
- The prisoners from the Hilltop are separated: some abandon the Hilltop, while many, including Alden, remain, having been disillusioned by Simon's willingness to let them die.
- Several Militia soldiers or Hilltop members, including Tobin, die during the battle due to the use of tainted weapons which infect their open wounds.
Trivia[]
- Talking Dead revealed that there were 20 Savior extras armed with bows and more than 30 Savior extras with tainted handheld weapons, putting the Savior army that attacked the Hilltop at approximately 50+ soldiers.
- People unexpectedly dying, reanimating while everyone is sleeping and attacking is a reference to the events in the episode "Infected" when people began dying of the prison flu suddenly.
- Maggie refers to herself as "The Widow" while talking to Simon which is the Saviors' name for Maggie as seen in several episode.