Warning: Major spoilers ahead.
Are you kidding me? No, seriously. Are you kidding me? Glenn is alive. And, in a total curveball, The Walking Dead gave us that info right off the bat. It's literally the first scene.
Glenn slides away from underneath Nicholas and makes a little nook for himself under a dumpster. Then he's just stabbing walkers and waits it out until the walkers disperse. Finally, the next morning, he emerges, ALIVE, looking for water.
Enid throws him a water bottle. "Hey! Heads up!" How convenient. He follows her into a little hideout she's made for herself while Enid catches him up on all the shit that went down in Alexandria. Glenn just wants to know if Maggie's okay, but Enid has scurried away before she can answer him. But none of this matters because HOW IS GLENN WALKING AROUND AND TALKING?
Back at Alexandria, Rick approaches Maggie, who's obsessed with standing watch on the wall, where she waits for any sign of Glenn. Gabriel is hanging up signs for a prayer circle around town, and Rick walks by and tears the sign down. So, either Rick is having a Kanye moment where he thinks he's God, or he's having a jaded Rick moment where he's like, "God isn't real."
Morgan, Rick, Michonne, and Carol have a little meeting. They want to know why Morgan didn't kill the Wolves when they came and started slaughtering people — why he let them go. (Remember: the ones he let go are the ones who ended up attacking Rick in his RV.) "I don't know what's right anymore," Morgan tried to explain to them. "I did want to kill those men," he said. "I knew I could end it. But I also know that people can change. 'Cause everyone sitting here has." He's right. But, the group reminds him that he may have to start facing facts. It's often a them-or-us situation.
Meanwhile, back in an apparently real situation, Glenn tries to bring Enid back to Alexandria. She's having none of that. She even pulls a gun on him to show how serious she is. I'd chalk it up to teen angst, but Enid definitely spent a lot of time eating turtles in the wild. So it has to be a deeper problem than hormones.
"You're not gonna pull the trigger," Glenn tells her. And she's all, "I will if you make me." Then he disarms her and she's like, "Asshole." If this riveting dialogue is the reason Glenn is alive, I'm not sure what to say about that. She and Glenn take off toward Alexandria, and Enid finds some balloons. He tells her there are more balloons and a helium tank in the bushes, which seems to interest her. As she inflates some balloons, Glenn gets her talking about who she lived with back home and about how she's scared. In another life, Glenn could have been a guidance counselor. And it's actually a really great moment where we see that he'll be a great dad. "We don't have to talk," Enid eventually says, when Glenn brings up her deceased parents.
Enid, now with a bunch of balloons tied to her backpack, rolls up to Alexandria with Glenn. They see it's surrounded by walkers and Enid takes that as a sign that all hope is lost. "The world is trying to die. We're supposed to just let it," she tells Glenn. But he remains positive. "No. You're wrong." He reminds her the walls and houses are still up. And isn't that something?
In other news, Spencer does some moves straight out of Legends Of The Hidden Temple and tries to scoot his way across a wire hanging above a group of zombies. It's among the worst ideas out there. Tara saves him, but nearly kills herself in the process. Rick freaks out about this, because he feels that she would have sacrificed herself unnecessarily. In response, she flips Rick the bird, because she's amazing.
Morgan visits Denise, who is owning this whole doctor thing. He wants to know how well the community is stocked with antibiotics, but reveals that it's for someone else's wound. Carol notices something suspicious about their behavior, so she drops off Judith at Jessie's house so she can go investigate. While she's there, Sam asks her, "If you kill people, do you turn into one of the monsters?" Carol, ever the business woman, responds, "The only thing that keeps you from becoming a monster is killing." She confronts Morgan and demands to know who he's hiding. My money is on one of the Wolves.
Finally, we have our moment. Enid and Glenn release their balloons into the air. Maggie sees the balloons floating in the sky and runs to Rick. "That's Glenn," she says. Then one of the watchtowers falls, letting in that pesky heard of walkers that Rick tried so hard to divert away from Alexandria. Next week is bound to be brutal.
Alright, I'm going to go lick my wounds now. You see, I've been walking around R29 offices for weeks now clinging to the idea that Glenn was a goner. Now I undoubtedly face a bunch of "I told you so" smirks from fellow editors — and all of Twitter.