The Walking Dead season 11, episode 14 recap: The Rotten Core

Looks like Negan and Maggie team up once again to take out Commonwealth soldiers while Daryl and Rosita find themselves unwillingly working for Sebastian Milton on The Walking Dead season 11 episode 14 titled, “The Rotten Core”.

The Walking Dead Season 11 Episode 14 recap – Daryl and Rosita’s suicide mission

After Daryl and Carol plan to have lunch, he and Rosita are assigned their work for the day. However, two Commonwealth soldiers change their plans and the duo meet with Sebastian Milton, Governor Pamela Milton’s spoiled rotten son.

Just on the horizon are several expensive mansions surrounded by walkers. Sebastian requires Daryl and Rosita to enter a mansion and steal the money inside.

Why? Because Sebastian’s mother cut him off and he needs to find other means of getting money.

When Daryl and Rosita initially decline, Sebastian mentions Judith and Coco which sets off Daryl. (Who honestly doesn’t love it when Daryl gets protective?)

Either Daryl and Rosita work for Sebastian or they are killed leaving the children orphans. Daryl and Rosita cover their Commonwealth soldier armor in walker guts and make it inside the mansion.

When they do, they find out the room with the safe is locked and with the power out, there is no way to get inside. On top of that, a woman named April had been trapped inside.

After Daryl is able to get the power back on, he and Rosita start grabbing the cash when the alarm goes off attracting walkers. Lucky for them Mercer and Carol arrive to help.

The group try to leave the walker-filled mansion covered in walker guts but as is the case for most Walking Dead extras, April is killed. (Shocker.)

As the group hands over the cash to the two Commonwealth soldiers from earlier, Mercer unexpectedly kills them. Sebastian gets the cash regardless, none the wiser to what has happened.

Later on, Carol goes to see Lance Hornsby who is waiting to hear from Toby. She reveals what Sebastian has been up to.

It’s obvious during their conversation that neither Carol nor Lance truly trusts each other.

The Walking Dead Season 11 Episode 14 recap – Negan and Hershel

Meanwhile, Maggie, Lydia and Elijah finally meet up with Gabriel, Aaron and Negan hiding out in secret rooms from behind a closet wall. Maggie is not thrilled to see Negan again and Lydia struggles to forgive him for not returning to Alexandria.

Annie refuses to leave without the rest of their people and thus the group splits up. It surprises Aaron, Gabriel and Maggie that Annie’s group trusts Negan.

To add to the surprises Negan and Annie are married and expecting a baby. But wait, there’s more!

Maggie’s son Hershel stowed away and gets captured by the Commonwealth soldiers. After Negan rescues him, he radios Maggie.

Noticing Maggie’s panicked state, Annie reassures her that Hershel is in safe hands. Maggie disagrees revealing Negan killed her son’s father.

Annie isn’t shocked as Negan told her everything and loves him anyway. She believes he truly changed which is something the people of Alexandria still cannot accept.

(Why is that so hard to accept?) When Hershel realizes Negan is the one who killed his father, he pulls out a gun!

Negan is able to convince him to lower the weapon. It’s clear Hershel has a deep hatred for him now.

Together, the group is able to kill all the Commonwealth soldiers with Aaron shooting Toby, resulting in him falling and getting eaten by walkers. (What satisfaction!)

With everyone safely reunited, Negan tells Hershel that he’s willing to settle what they started one day when he’s older. Hershel doesn’t respond nor does he tell Maggie about it.

With the event over, the group doesn’t know what to do. Aaron and Gabriel agree that they need to go back to The Commonwealth to tell Lance what happened.

But if Annie and Negan’s group didn’t kill The Commonwealth soldiers or steal supplies, who did?

The Walking Dead Season 11 Episode 14 recap – Leah’s revenge

With so much stuff going on it was easy to forget that Leah survived. The way Lance has been working you’d think he’d plan the entire event.

But turns out Leah was the one responsible for killing the Commonwealth soldiers and stealing the supplies two weeks prior. Why?

We don’t know. As we recall she was the last of her people, The Reapers, to survive after Maggie went back on her agreement and killed the remaining few.

Leah only managed to survive because Daryl let her go. What plan does she have in store for The Commonwealth?

The Walking Dead Season 11 Episode 14 review

There was a lot of build up from the previous episode and it definitely paid off! The episode really put in incredible effort to make every moment work.

Arguably the biggest surprise was Negan’s involvement as he not only found a new group he wasn’t leading, but actually got married (for real) for a second time and is going to be a father. While this recent development in Negan’s character arc has a lot of fans split, from my point of view, it wasn’t nearly as bad as it seemed.

Yes, Negan and Annie got together too fast and off camera but time is precious and Negan isn’t going to take any of it for granted. Perhaps it would have been nice to see their relationship blossom but just from their body language alone, he is very protective of her, and they act as a team.

Is this spitting in the face of Maggie? Yes and no.

Again, we know Maggie and Negan survive the final season due to their announced spin-off. Does making Negan a husband with a baby on the way ensure Maggie wouldn’t kill him?

Will Hershel actually kill Negan one day? Maybe.

It was frustrating to see the group still distrust Negan and appear nearly disgusted at the fact he was married. Out of all the villains our survivors have come across, I’d like to think The Governor or Alpha should be receiving that kind of hate.

Neither of them would ever have been redeemable. Regardless, trouble keeps heating up at The Commonwealth and I’m just waiting for Mercer to literally start a rebellion himself.

It’s obvious these kind of actions and behaviors have been happening repeatedly and he’s reaching his breaking point. He cares about how job, he cares about the people who live at The Commonwealth.

But constant secrets, deadly missions, people going missing, all of this is becoming too much. What will be the actual cause of a rebellion to happen at The Commonwealth?

I don’t think we’ll need to wait long to find out.

What did you think of The Walking Dead season 11, episode 14? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

The Walking Dead Season 11 Episode 15 airs on April 3, 2022.