WARNING: The following contains spoilers for The Walking Dead Season 11, Episode 5, “Out of the Ashes,” which aired Sunday on AMC.
The first few episodes of The Walking Dead Season 11 have primarily focused on Maggie’s search for food and the subsequent Reaper attack. Now, “Out of the Ashes” takes a better look at what’s going on back home in Alexandria, and it’s not pretty. Shockingly, Aaron and Co. even discover that the Whisperers may not be completely gone.
With Maggie, Gabriel and Alden on a mission, Aaron has become the head honcho, and it’s taking a toll on him. In fact, the episode opens with a terrifying dream sequence where he cannot protect his daughter from various foes in Aaron’s past, including a Wolf, a Savior, a Whisperer and Mays from 10C. When he wakes up, things aren’t much better. Food is low, and the walls are crumbling. There’s even a breach in the episode's opening minutes.
Since the Whisperers completely razed Alexandria, Aaron, Carol, Jerry and Lydia decide to go back to the ashes of Hilltop in search of smithy tools that might have survived the fire. They find a few tools and some supplies while having to kill walkers that they had known in life. Then, they notice walkers walking in unnatural circles. Someone is herding them, and that can only mean one thing -- Whisperers.
The four of them -- knowing their enemies' potential -- make quick work of the walkers and find a single Whisperer. His name is Keith, and he’s terrified of the four armed foes threatening him. However, that doesn’t stop him from lying. When he says that he’s the last of his kind, Aaron can immediately see that he’s withholding information. They decide to put Keith into the cellar, and there, they find that he’s actually hiding four more people.
Aaron doesn’t take kindly to that, and he’s even more put out when Keith lunges at him with a knife so that his Whisperer friends can flee. When that happens, they are done playing nice; Aaron and Jerry string up Keith for interrogation. With his hands over his head and a walker ready to bite, Aaron demands answers. But all Keith can say is that he and his friends are not a threat. He also calls them out and says that Alpha was right about them. It’s clear that Aaron isn’t going to be satisfied until he hears that there are more Whisperers that he can kill for revenge. He even lets the walker bite Keith’s hand.
Eventually, Carol shoots the walker and has a heart-to-heart with Aaron. She explains that he has a right to be angry but choosing to exact revenge only leads to more suffering -- case and point, how she became obsessed with Alpha after Henry’s death. By the end, Aaron sees the error in his ways and frees Keith. There may be a few Whisperers left, but they are no longer a threat. As thanks for letting him live and as a gesture of goodwill, Keith tells them that he saw one of their people come out of a cave after it collapsed. It’s a good thing that they didn’t kill him because now they know that Connie is alive.
To see what Aaron and Co. are doing after the Whisperer War, tune into Season 11 of The Walking Dead. The series airs Sundays at 9 p.m. ET/PT on AMC and is available to stream early on AMC+.