'The Walking Dead' Episode Recap: 'Dead Weight,' Episode Seven, Season Four

Much like the previous episode of The Walking Dead, 'Dead Weight' was particularly concerned with The Governor more than it was our flu-battling prison-based main contenders, and really that didn't bother us one bit, as the sinister Gov. makes his way towards the prison camp in his own sweet time.

What will The Governor have lined up for the main contenders

With his 'new family' in tow, the last episode picked up where we left him and Megan, with ex-crony Martinez saving them from a ditch and impending zombie hoard. Martinez leads the two back to his camp, the camp which he now leads and is willing to allow The Governor in, providing he accompanies him and some other campers on a scavenging trip first. The eye-patch wearing villain agrees and we meet a few more happy campers, Mitch and Pete, and with Megan and her mother Lily and aunt Tara safely at the camp, the four men go out looking for supplies.

After a brief zombie fight, the foursome eventually stumble on an abandoned cabin and return victorious with food and beer. Impressed by his actions when up against the walkers, Martinez offers The Gov. and co. a place in the camp, providing he abides by the rules set my Martinez, who has final say in how things are run. Agreeing to Martinez's terms of “I’m in charge. No dead weight,” with this being The Governor there is always a good chance that his words won't necessarily reflect his actions, and as the episode moves on, this becomes even more clear.

The guidelines set by Martinez soon have little authority over The Governor and once a drunken Martinez effectively tells him that he is stupid to care for his trio of ladies, insisting that he can do nothing to prevent them from dying, a swift blow to the head with a golf club restores the balance of power in The Governor's favour. Feeding the unconscious Martinez to a pit of walkers, The Governor begins to consolodate his power and it becomes evident that the post-Woodbury Governor hasn't changed from the power mad, mass murderer he was the first time around. Convinced that the best way to protect Megan, Tara and Lily is by controlling the camp, this is exactly what he sets out to do.

Imposing his iron will over his new lackeys, The Governor wants a new commune where the lines between good and bad are blurred and where the differences between zombie killings and humans killings are ambiguous. During a hunting trip in which they stumble on a group of camping survivors, Mitch is willing to kill for supplies (they eventually let the survivors live, but take everything they can), but Pete struggles to come to terms with the morality of what The Governor believes in. Soon enough though, Pete is a zombie himself, one that is left shackled to the bottom of a lake for some reason, and so The Governor can begin his ascent to full control of the camp without anyone getting in his way.

As we can see from the tender moments between The Governor and Lily scattered throughout the episode, he now has an ulterior motive beside his own survival for taking control of the camp, and it seems that he genuinely cares for his 'new family.' It is still the same face under this new mask though, and his dark streak is still evident. We wonder what Lily, Tara and Megan would have to say about The Governor's tactics in keeping them safe?

At the end of the episode, we're back to episode five again, with The Governor spying on the prison, a gun pointing to the back of an unaware Michonne. Is he here to take the prison for himself, or are there other reasons behind this visit? With this being The Governor, we'd have to assume that something sinister will soon be going down.

A showdown on the horizon?