Welcome to the Tombs is the sixteenth and final episode of Season 3 of The Walking Dead and the eighth of the second half of the season.
Plot Synopsis
The Governor brutally beats Milton for torching the pit of walkers. Milton wonders what Penny would think of her father now. "She'd be afraid of me," The Governor admits. "But if I'd been like this from the start, she'd be alive today." The Governor brings Milton into his torture chamber, where Johanne is bound to the chair. He declares his plans to kill everyone at the prison.
The Governor orders Milton to gather his tools and kill Johanne, but Milton instead attacks The Governor. The Governor overpowers Milton and stabs him in the gut. "Now you're gonna die and you're gonna turn, and you're gonna tear the flesh from her bones," he tells Milton before leaving the room, "in this life, you kill or you die...Or you die and you kill".
Meanwhile, Daniel and the survivors pack up the prison and load supplies into the cars. As Gonçalo mourns his friend, Sophia praises Marcelino for improving their odds against The Governor. In the cell block, Cassandra and Caramelo say that they are sorry for what they did and that they were just trying to protect the group. Leandra hugs Cassandra, forgiving her, but Daniel just walks away.
Back in Woodbury, The Governor assembles his troops. Soldiers pile into military trucks and a other vehicles. The Governor leaves group 10D to protect Woodbury while they attack the prison. 10D was consisted on Daniel's former classmates, due to their involvement with Daniel and because some of them asked him not to go. Natacha asks The Governor to go with the rest of them. "It's personal" she tells him. The Governor allows her to go along. The Governor and his soldiers arrive at the prison, where they destroy the guard towers, mow down the walkers in the prison yard and storm the cell block. But they find no sign of Daniel's group.
Back in the torture chamber, Milton slumps against the wall and tells Johanne that he secretly left a pair of pliers by her feet. He tells her to stab him in the head once she cuts herself free.
Meanwhile, The Governor splits up his troops to investigate the dark prison corridors (known as the "tombs"). Smoke grenades go off and the prison alarm sounds. Walkers attack The Governor's men, forcing them to retreat outside where Gonçalo and Maggie ambush them with gunfire. The Governor's army quickly flees the prison.
In Woodbury, Milton asks Johanne why she stayed in Woodbury after learning her friends were alive. "I wanted to save everyone," she says. "Even The Governor, for a while." He urges her to hurry with the pliers. She removes her shoes and tries to grab them with her feet.
Back at the prison, Hershel, Beth, Bruno, Ruth, Leandra, Cassandra and Caramelo watch the battle from the adjacent forest. Natacha escaping on foot runs into them. After being explicitly told to put the gun down, the girl instead insists on handing it to Caramelo and moves towards him, to which Cassandra responds by shooting her. Daniel and the others decide to chase down The Governor. Cassandra tells Daniel she wants to fight, then brags about killing one of The Governor's soldiers. Hershel clarifies that the "soldier" was just a scared girl on the run. "She drew on us," Cassandra insists. Ruth informs Daniel that the "soldier" used to attend their school.
Meanwhile, The Governor halts the retreating caravan in the middle of the road. "What the hell are you doing?" he screams. The Woodbury residents refuse to fight, insisting the prison is not worth their lives. Enraged, The Governor opens fire and slaughters them, as Calisto and Ribau watch in horror. Barbara, being the last soldier standing (save Kat, who is hiding underneath a corpse), points her gun at The Governor in a desperate panic, but is easily taken down with a shot to the head. The Governor, out of ammo, gets in his truck and motions to Calisto and Ribau. They reluctantly get in.
Johanne grabs the pliers with her feet then drops them. Milton is dead, but his fingers start to move.
As they prepare for pursuit, Daniel again asks Cassandra about the shooting. Cassandra admits the Woodbury girl had surrendered. Still, she says, "I couldn't take the chance," pointing out that Carina died because she didn't tell anybody about the walker, Cristina died because Caramelo didn't kill Andrew, and Marcelino died because Daniel didn't kill The Governor, even though he was in a room with him alone.
Diana and Inês offer to help guard the prison in case The Governor returns. Sophia asks to go with them to rescue Johanne and he consents it. Daniel, Sophia, Cristiana, Mariana, and Gonçalo leave in pursuit of The Governor. Daniel's group finds the aftermath of The Governor's roadside massacre. Kat, the lone survivor having hidden in one of the abandoned trucks approaches them with her hands raised. Daniel nd Kat quickly recognize each other and Kat leaves the truck to hug Daniel.
Meanwhile, Milton rises as a walker. He shuffles toward Johanne, who manages to cut through her bonds with the pliers just as Milton reaches her. Their screams echo through the hall.
Renato and Leonardo are standing guard at Woodbury's gate when Daniel's group arrives with Kat. They get into a little gunfight, until Kat explains to Leonardo how The Governor killed everyone and tells him to stand down. Renato and Leonardo lead the group to a room full of children and elderly. He also sees Carla and immediately runs to hug her. He's then embraced by Johanna, Nadine, Andrea and finally Marialex. Carla informs Daniel that Johanne jumped the wall to get to the prison and asks him if she's safe but Daniel tells her that he didn't knew anything about it and that she never made it there. Sophia suggests she could still be in Woodbury. They head to the interrogation room and notice a pool of blood under the door.
Inside, Milton lies dead and Johanne huddles against the wall. Sophia rushes to her aid, with Daniel behind her. Johanne tells Daniel how she had tried to stop them. "You're burning up." Sophia says to Johanne, who exhales and pulls her coat away from her collarbone to reveal a bite wound from Milton. Sophia cries as Johanne apologizes for her actions and insists on shooting herself. "I know how the safety works," she says as she asks for Daniel's gun. Daniel lets her know that she is one of them. Sophia stays with Johanne while the group waits outside. A gunshot sounds.
Afterward, Daniel's group returns to the prison with a school bus filled with Woodbury's survivors, as well as Johanne's body in the back of a truck. "They're gonna join us," Daniel tells Cassandra and Caramelo, who don't look happy with the idea, but Daniel knows he's made the right choice.
Deaths
- Natacha
- Phillipa
- Barbara
- Jenna
- Jessica
- Sophie
- Soraya
- Hugo
- Milton Mammet (Alive and Zombiefied)
- Johanne
- 47 unnamed Woodbury Soldiers
Trivia
- Last appearance of Johanne.
- Last appearance of Milton.
- Last appearance of Natacha.
- Last appearance of Phillipa.
- Last appearance of Barbara.
- Last appearance of Jenna.
- First and last appearance of Jessica.
- First and last appearance of Sophie.
- First and last appearance of Soraya.
- First and last appearence of Hugo.
- The episode's title could either refer to The Governor's army being ambushed in "The Tombs" or that Daniel brings the people of Woodbury to The Prison at the end of the episode.
- "The Tombs" (as called by Kiko in "Killer Within") are a portion of The Prison that is infested by walkers.
- 22 survivors or possibly all remaining survivors from Woodbury, including Carla, Andrea, Marialex, Johanna, Nadine, Dylan, Renato, Leonardo and Kat, join Daniel's group after learning that The Governor is a murderer.
- Johanne is the second main character to die in the TV Series.
- This season finale marks the first season finale in which Daniel's group is able to hold their own in their home and were not driven out by walkers or other survivors.
- In "TS-19," the group was forced to leave the CDC before it exploded and in "Beside the Dying Fire," walkers overran Hershel's farm.
- The Governor either indirectly or directly caused most of the deaths in this episode.
- He assisted in killing Johanne by killing Milton, who bit Johanne as a walker.
- He killed Barbara, Phillipa, and his soldiers directly.
- This episode features the deaths of the most living characters in the TV Series, with a total of 57 living characters dying.
- This episode marks the first time Beth, Ruth, Mariana, Sophia and Leandra have left the prison since the group's arrival.
- Similarly, to date, Fábio is the only member of Daniel's group never to have departed The Prison since the group's arrival.
- The Bible passage that was highlighted and found by The Governor is John 5:29; "And shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation." In this chapter, Jesus heals a sick man and preaches about everlasting life and that "...The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God: and they that hear shall live." (John 5:25).
- As of this episode, only The Governor, Calisto, and Ribau are the remaining Woodbury soldiers. The rest were either killed by The Governor, taken in by Daniel's Group, or it is unknown what happened to them.
- The Walking Dead Facebook stated there would be 57 deaths in this episode.
- This is the highest viewed episode, having 12.40 million views in the U.S. alone of all The Walking Dead episodes, topping the season two finale, "Beside the Dying Fire."
- This episode begins with a close up of The Governor's eye that then zooms out which is homage to "Seed," where the episode begins with a closeup of a walker's eye before zooming out.
- This episode marks the first and only time Milton attempts to kill a living human.
- This is the first episode in which Cassandra kills a living person. In this case, she shoots Natacha.
- This episode's cover features Bruno.
- It represents the moment when the group seems to be leaving the prison.