Warning: spoilers ahead for tenth episode of The Walking Dead Season 7, entitled "New Best Friends."
The world of The Walking Dead has expanded in some big ways in Season 7. More communities and groups than ever are on the scene, and some are friendlier than others. Rick and Co. ran into a new band of zombie apocalypse survivors in last week's episode, and Rick had to work pretty hard this week to try and convince them to join his cause against Negan. The new group agreed on the condition that Rick delivers them a whole bunch of guns, and Rick may be going to go to a pretty wild source to try and get them. Rick is probably on his way to Oceanside.
Oceanside hasn't really impacted The Walking Dead since Tara's episode back in the first half of Season 7, and Rick has had more important things to worry about than who Tara met during her adventures away. Now that the Alexandrians are in need of guns, it seems that Oceanside just got a lot more interesting to them. As Jadis said, there's an expiration date on the offer for their groups to join forces. Rick doesn't really have time to try and scrounge the countryside for guns or hunt for undiscovered communities that might have an armory. He has a connection to Oceanside, and Oceanside has guns.
The big question is how the women at Oceanside will react to a request for guns from Rick. They already learned the bloody way what Negan does to people who oppose him, and they might not be too eager to join with a bunch of strangers who come begging for weapons. The Saviors already executed almost all of the men in their group, and they seem to be getting by pretty well on their own. Why would they want to hand over their firearms to a man who wants to start a war when they can just hang onto the guns and eat their fill of fish?
All things considered, the Oceanside women might not take to kindly to Tara bringing any outsiders to their settlement. They're so wary of all things Savior that one of them very nearly killed Tara just because there was a chance that she might lead the Saviors back to Oceanside, and she only escaped due to a lucky break and unexpected friend. As crazy (and kinda cool) as Jadis' garbage heap method of testing Rick was, at least her group had a way to decide whether or not he was worthy. Oceanside is likely to turn Rick and Co. away without giving them much of a chance.
Of course, Rick does have another potential source for guns for Jadis, and it's not one that would require him to travel all the way to Oceanside. Richard over in The Kingdom evidently has quite a cache of weaponry set aside, and Daryl now knows about it. He doesn't seem to be overflowing with loyalty to Richard after Richard was so willing to risk Carol's life, and we can bet that he'd jump at the chance to arm a new group of allies and strike back at the Saviors. If Daryl tips off Rick that they can just swipe Richard's stash, we might not actually see any deals struck with Oceanside any time soon.
Only time will tell. The survivors deserve a break sooner or later. Daryl's crazy reunion with Carol was a nice break from the doom and gloom, but I know I could stand to watch another win for the good guys. Tune in to AMC on Sundays at 9 p.m. ET to see what's next for Rick and Co. in the zombie apocalpse on The Walking Dead, and don't forget to take a look at our midseason TV premiere schedule.
