The Walking Dead Season 11 Episode 6 Ending Explained
As a series set during an apocalyptic zombie pandemic, "The Walking Dead" has always had one foot firmly planted in the world of horror. Some episodes, however, lean into the genre more significantly than others. "On the Inside" is one of those episodes.
Connie's (Lauren Ridloff) disappearance during the Season 10 cave collapse caused heartache and strife for many Alexandrians. Viewers learned she was still alive long before the characters themselves did and in "On the Inside," we finally get to touch down with her and Virgil (Kevin Carroll), who found her following his fateful trip to Bloodsworth Island with Michonne (Danai Gurira).
Our reunion with these characters is not a joyous one, though, as we immediately drop in with the pair on the run from an unseen creature that has been chasing them through the tall grass. They end up taking shelter in a large manor house surrounded by walkers. Virgil sees this as a temporary safe haven that will allow them some much-needed time to rest and recoup. Connie, on the other hand, is convinced that they are not out of danger yet.
The other main storyline of the episode plays on a different kind of tension. In Meridian, Daryl (Norman Reedus) is now deep in his role as a double agent within the Reapers. While his relationship with Leah (Lynn Collins) provides him good cover, the brewing battle between the community of former military contractors and Maggie's (Lauren Cohan) group threatens to expose his lies in a thousand different ways. Daryl's most immediate concern is Frost (Glenn Stanton), one of Maggie's men who was captured along with Daryl who the Reapers are torturing for information. While Daryl has managed to infiltrate the fanatical group, staying in their good graces is a difficult task and one with deadly consequences should he fail.
Connie and Virgil are not alone
After pushing their way through a walker horde outside (and killing one who slips in through the front door with them), Connie and Virgil find themselves in a creepy old mansion that would be right at home in a survival horror video game. Virgil does a quick sweep of the property and encourages Connie to get some rest, as she is clearly suffering from extreme exhaustion. But Connie is convinced that the house is not a safe place to sleep. She insists on doing a more thorough sweep of the property and confirms her fears when she peers into a hole in the wall behind a medicine cabinet and sees someone looking back at her.
Despite her obvious distress, Virgil is reluctant to believe her. That is until they are suddenly separated by a wall panel sliding shut. Here, the sound for the episode drops out, giving viewers a visceral insight into how Connie, who is deaf, is experiencing this situation. She cannot see the thing that is stalking her through the house even though she knows there is something lurking somewhere. Thankfully for Connie, she's a character known for her tenacity.
While walking through the corridors, Connie puts her hand to the wall and pauses. She senses motion behind her just in time to begin sprinting forward to avoid the creature that has been watching her since they first arrived in the house. A feral man bounds down the hallway, dressed only in a loincloth and running on his hands and feet like an animal. Connie's quick wits help her put distance between her and her pursuer, but she's far from home free.
Connie orchestrates a daring escape
Connie and Virgil manage to reunite but quickly learn that the feral man who was chasing Connie is just one of many. The pair runs through the house to the front door, fending off feral people who emerge from every nook and crevice. It appears that this clan of feral people has a system for hunting and trapping their victims. At the beginning of the episode, Connie and Virgil were being chased by something we could not see — the camera only showed the grass moving behind them to indicate that it was coming their way. This was likely one of the feral people trying to herd them into the house.
When Connie and Virgil arrived in the house, the feral people didn't make themselves known right away. Instead, they were waiting for the pair to let their defenses down. It's then that they would have emerged from their web of secret passageways to attack and kill their prey, using traps like the sliding door in the hallway, to ensure they couldn't get out. A pile of bones Connie discovers in the manor's basement confirms that they've successfully used this technique many times.
And they would have gotten away with it if it wasn't for Connie's insistence that something was not right in that house. Her instincts save her again after she and Virgil, who gets stabbed several times during their escape, become cornered in the foyer. With the feral people closing in, Connie pushes Virgil into the corner, slathers herself in the guts of the walker they killed earlier, and opens the front door.
The walkers from outside stream in. Thanks to the walker guts, they ignore Connie and Virgil and begin attacking the clan of feral people as the pair make their escape.
Daryl's skills as an undercover agent are put to the test
While Connie and Virgil were fighting for their lives, Daryl was in a more subtle, but no less intense, struggle of his own. After torturing the location of Maggie's meeting point out of Frost (with help from Daryl, who was forced to play along to preserve his cover), a team of Reapers goes to round up the unsuspecting Alexandrians.
Frost's admission seems like a disaster for Maggie's group at first but it actually ends up putting them at a strategic advantage thanks to Daryl's quick thinking. When the Reapers arrive at the location of the hideout, Daryl jangles some downed power lines to signal to Maggie that she has company. She and the others hide in the basement of their safehouse, the entrance to which Daryl makes sure to obscure when the Reapers come inside to search. While Maggie's group listens from their hiding place, Daryl then has an open and frank discussion with Leah and Carver (Alex Meraz) about the particulars of the Reapers' current numbers and defense strategy.
Carver is highly suspicious of Daryl and his intentions and although Daryl puts himself on the line to send signals to Maggie's group, he never gives Carver enough rope to hang him with. The best Carver can do is try to bring up how hurt Leah was after she and Daryl's relationship ended the first time. But Leah isn't having any of that, and even after Carver discovers the basement where Maggie had been hiding, his arguing with Daryl gave the group a chance to escape. All in all, the mission goes as well as Daryl could hope for but when they return to Reaper HQ, he finds that he may not be out of the woods yet.
How will Connie's reappearance affect the Alexandrians?
Little did Connie know as she was fleeing the feral people, but Kelly (Angel Theory), Magna (Nadia Hilker), Carol (Melissa McBride), and Rosita (Christian Serratos) were hot on her trail. After Kelly found one of her abandoned camps, the group knew she was close by and thanks to some instinctual reconnoitering, they managed to reunite once she and Virgil spilled out of the house of horrors.
The reunion is brief and tearful. It also sets up a couple of potentially tense dynamics that could be explored in future episodes. Carol's life has been deeply impacted by her involvement in Connie's disappearance and presumed death, which has driven a wedge between her and Daryl. How Connie responds to Carol now that she's back with the group could prove to be a major moment in both characters' development.
Magna may also see some issues come up. She has been encouraging Kelly to move on and stop holding onto hope that Connie is still alive. That wasn't entirely unjustified considering Connie's death was widely speculated. However, as tensions have already been brewing between the two allies, the revelation that Kelly was correct to keep her hope alive may exacerbate things.
And all of that is to not even mention the Virgil factor. Not only has he previously had a bit of a rocky relationship with Judith (Cailey Fleming) — she did once slash him in the leg, after all — but he was also with Michonne when she found evidence that Rick (Andrew Lincoln) may still be alive. Up until now, Judith has kept her father's potential fate a secret. If Virgil decides to share what he found with Michonne, it would be a major revelation for most of the Alexandrians.
Pope calls Daryl's bluff
Daryl's secret mission to make sure Maggie's group wasn't caught by the Reapers was a success but as far as Leah and Carver are concerned, the outing was a failure. When they get back to basecamp, though, Pope is all smiles. He tells the team that while they were away, he continued to interrogate Frost, who clearly died during the torture as he's now a walker tied to a post outside. "He wasn't too talkative," Pope says. "But I got everything I needed out of him."
Pope then merely saunters away, leaving Daryl in a very precarious position. There are two obvious interpretations for what Pope could be doing here. Either he did manage to get Frost to admit that Daryl has been lying to the group and is letting him squirm before planning some kind of retaliation, or he didn't actually get anything out of Frost and is hoping that Daryl will crack under the pressure of not knowing what was said and slip up. Killing Frost was a smart move on Pope's part because it also leaves Daryl with no way to know exactly what was said.
Option Two seems more likely, considering how Pope operates. When he killed one of his own a few episodes ago, he didn't indicate that he had an issue with the man until moments before he knocked him into a bonfire. If he actually did learn that Daryl is lying, tipping him off could do more harm than good. Pope likes to govern by fear and intimidation. Making Daryl think he might be on his bad side, regardless of what intel he actually learned from Frost, could merely be his strategy to keep his new brother in line.
Either way, it's a clear sign that Daryl is not as secure in his position with the Reapers as he might have hoped.