Warning: spoilers ahead for Episode 11 of The Walking Dead Season 7, "Hostiles and Calamities."
The Walking Dead has never been for the faint of heart, and it's been especially gruesome in Season 7 thanks to Negan and his endlessly creative ways of brutalizing his enemies and minions. An awful lot has gone down at The Sanctuary ever since Daryl made his daring escape, and in "Hostiles and Calamities," we saw that Negan wasn't just going to let the fiasco slide. While Daryl is obviously the person most cruisin' for a bruisin,' Negan found another person who needed to pay for the escape with his life, and it was none other than Dr. Emmett Carson.
One of the biggest mysteries of The Walking Dead Season 7 over the past few months has been of who passed Daryl the note that told him to make a run for it while Negan and many of his enforcers were away. We learned in "Hostiles and Calamities" that Sherry was the person who decided to let him go, but Sherry didn't exactly stick around The Sanctuary to make a full confession. She bailed on The Sanctuary, leaving Dwight to decide whether he should reveal her role in Daryl's escape, claim to have done the deed himself, or come up with a patsy to take the blame (and possibly an iron to the face).
Dwight went for Option #3 and told Negan that Dr. Carson fell for Sherry and was an accomplice in both her and Daryl's escapes. Unfortunately for Dr. Carson, Negan decided that Dwight was so broken that he wouldn't dare lie to Negan's face, and so Dr. Carson was murdered in front of a crowd of Saviors. For a few moments, it actually looked like he would get away with just humiliation and maybe a bit of maiming. Seeing no alternative, Carson confessed to the crime that he didn't commit and begged for Negan's forgiveness. Instead, Negan channeled his inner Sweeney Todd and flung Carson into the fire to burn alive, screaming in agony.
So, all in all, it was just another fun episode of happy adventures at The Sanctuary. Negan may actually discover that killing Dr. Carson was a massive mistake. Doctors are in short supply in the zombie apocalypse, and it presumably won't be too long before Negan realizes that his new Dr. Smartypants isn't quite as much of a trained smartypants as he claimed. To his very slight credit, Eugene was savvy enough not to claim that he was a medical doctor, but those PhDs in science that he made up to impress Negan may have been what convinced Negan that it was perfectly okay to make an example of Dr. Emmett Carson. He could definitely kill off the good doctor if there was a replacement scientist waiting in the wings clutching a pickle jar, right?
All in all, we can bet that the matter of Daryl and Sherry's escapes won't have entirely resolved itself with Dr. Carson's death. As far as we know, Sherry is still alive and kicking, although hopefully not in her little black dress and heels if she wants to make it very far on her own in the zombie apocalypse. Throw in Eugene's uncertain position within the Saviors and Dwight's questionable loyalties, and we still have plenty of complications ahead of us at The Sanctuary.
New episodes of The Walking Dead air on Sundays at 9 p.m. ET on AMC. Take a look at our midseason TV premiere schedule to see your other viewing options, and don't forget to check out our 2017 Netflix premiere schedule.
