Tara stumbles on a new community

“Swear” showed that it's not all bloodshed in the new world and some of these survivors still cling to their humanity. We see characters deal with who they’ve lost and who they’ve killed. We also see them try to choose a less violent path/.

The  scene opens in an unusual location – a beach. Where is the usual abandoned buildings, walker-filled streets and camps of people pretending to be busy? A woman and a girl are walking on the beach – like regular people – except this little girl(Rachel) is quite eager to kill and she almost tests her spear on Tara who just washed ashore and is seemingly unconscious. The little girl is stopped by her protector (Cyndie) who thinks Tara should be left alone. Cyndie ends up dragging Tara from the edge of the water and leaves her with food, a spear and not one but two  bottles of water. What a generous saviour! It turns out that Tara is only pretending to be passed out as she wakes up when she’s alone and chooses to trail her saviour.

Tara and Heath


The last time we saw Tara, she and Heath (who was feeling gloom about the mass murder he witnessed at the satellite outpost) left for a two week scavenger hunt. Its been two weeks and all they have to show for their time out is “eight rusty cans of okra and a bottle of aspirin”. Heath thinks its all pointless and they should turn back. He launches into a speech where he paints every human alive as a selfish killer who would do anything to save their hide. Tara still thinks they should push forth because people back home are depending on them.

They get to a bridge fortified with vehicles and they climb over it to see if they can get supplies. Tara finds a big bag buried under a heap of sand and thoughtlessly pulls on it just as Heath is uncovering bullets in the sand and telling her not to. (The bullets probably signified someone or a group of people had tried to protect themselves from the undead). Tara successfully frees the bag – along with tens of walkers who had been buried under the heap of sand. She and heath get separated by a ton of walkers out to get some fresh meat.

A new community – and they are not friendly


Tara is still ungratefully trailing Cyndie who saved her until she gets to her community. The community looks self-sufficient with small farms, women, children and a shed filled with ammunition. Tara sneaks around the mostly-female community for a couple of minutes and I can’t help but wonder why. Does she really hope to steal from (and possibly overpower) a whole community by her lonesome? Tara doesn’t have much time to go over whatever half-baked plan she may have had as the people are somehow aware of her presence and start shooting at her. Considering the amount of people firing guns and the fact that none of them hit Tara, there are but two options – either Tara has some bullet repelling magic she needs to tell everyone about or the entire community is made up of lousy shots. Tara’s escape is cut short when that bloodthirsty little girl from the beach - Rachel pulls a gun on her. Cyndie jumps in front of the gun and saves Tara again. Tara is surrounded by a handful of armed women and she says - 

“Hi… I’m cool”


The new community however is very uncool as they take Tara and cuff her in a room. The leader of the group (Netanya) wants to know where Tara comes from and how she found their community. Tara decides to lie to a fishing community that she and her friend are fishermen. She also tells Netanya that she followed the woman who shaved her so she could check out her community and see if they were friendly.  In other communities, Cyndie may have been killed for spearing a stranger then leading them to their supposedly secret community. Something Tara should have considered before blurting out.

Later when Tara is invited to dinner with Netanya and three others (including Cyndie and Beatrice – the woman she knocked out), Netanya tells her that they usually kill strangers on sight because they’d rather not be found out. While Tara is gulping down food like she hasn’t eaten in days, Netanya offers her an invite to stay in the community – a way to keep her alive and their community a secret. When Tara is called out on her fishing lie, she tells them about Alexandria and talks a bit proudly about how they killed people at the satellite outpost because they “had to”. The mass murder reveal seemed unnecessary and a little careless as these people could be friends of the murdered. Tara however talked about how great her community is and how she has a great girlfriend waiting for her – a reminder that she is unaware that her precious community is now under Negan’s thumb and her awesome girlfriend is dead. At the end of dinner, they come to an agreement that Tara would leave with an escort the next morning to Alexandria.


Gene Page/AMC

It’s an execution!


The next day, while they are walking their way to the bridge, Tara magically senses that her escorts may be her murderers and decides to make a run for it. She ends up facing the mouth of a gun and her soon-to-be-murderer (Beatrice) explained why they don’t take too kindly to strangers. Just like every other community, they too were under the thumb of Negan and the Saviors. They tried to fight back and the Saviors killed every male under the age of 10 to prove a point. They ran away from their  old home and made a new one free of the Saviors. She also breaks the news to Tara that her people may very well be dead because they didn’t get all the Saviors. Tara is saved from execution when Cyndie saves her life again by knocking out Beatrice and promptly telling her to “run”.

Cyndie later catches up to Tara and wants her to swear that she would never come back to the community or reveal its location to anyone else. When Tara swears, Cyndie takes her to the bridge,  and watches her back while she fights her way through walkers. Just as Tara makes it across, she looks back to see Cyndie being dragged off by the two women who tried to execute her.
 The bridge brings back memories to Tara as she remembers the last time she saw Heath.

“We’re in this together”


In a scene worthy of teen telenovelas, Tara is yelling Heath’s name while she is pushed backwards by walkers. Heath is also fighting off walkers and yells at her to “go”. She screams “we’re in this together” and dramatically falls off the bridge. If this scene was supposed to be serve as comic relief, it worked.

After reliving her separation from Heath, Tara yells his name around but he’s nowhere in sight. She however sees a walker with dreadlocks wearing the same color of shirt as Heath. The walker turns out to be female. It was a moment where the viewers were supposed to briefly panic for Heath but some have called it “enormously stupid”. Tara later finds Heath’s broken glasses and a bike trail and takes that as a sign that he is alive. She makes it back to Alexandria with only a backpack. At the gate, Eugene tells her about Denise.

Rosita who is still holding on strongly to the idea that they can they fight Negan asks Tara if she saw anywhere out there that had weapons. To this, Tara stays true to her word and says no.
That fishing community will most likely be coming back into the TWD narrative. Either a partnership between them and Alexandria or Rick and co. do what they do best – take and kill.



We never really found out the contents of that bag Tara and Heath almost got killed for