Walking Dead: Season 9's Most Killer Moments
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4. Cemetery Plot
What Jesus didn't know sure did hurt him. Unaware of the kind of monster he was really fighting, Maggie's Hilltop successor met his maker in the midseason finale when he hung back in a graveyard to protect Eugene's rescuers from a herd that included among the walkers diabolical Whisperers.
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6. Child's Play
"Scars" flashbacks revealed the horrifying reason that Alexandria had rolled up its welcome mat: During her pregnancy with R.J., Michonne had been reunited with old pal Jocelyn, who it turned out had so warped the minds of the kids in her care that Michonne had been forced to kill them to save her own life.
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10. Smackdown
Not a can of whupass was left unopened when Daryl and Beta went mano a mano in "Chokepoint." But Daryl really should have checked to make sure that Alpha's second in command was dead after encouraging him to take a flying leap by shoving him into an elevator shaft.
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2. A New Lease on Life
Since Rick spent all of "What Comes After" riding away from walkers and hallucinating lost loved ones (Shane! Hershel! Sasha!), we were sure that his "last episode" would end with his death. So you could've knocked us over with a feather when instead Anne had him helicoptered to safety.
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8. Burn, Baby, Burn!
We were as stunned as Henry when, in "Who Are You Now?," Carol allowed Jed to make off with her engagement ring from Ezekiel. But we were even more stunned when, that very night, she snuck up on the Saviors, doused them with gasoline, reclaimed her prized possession and set the bastards on fire!
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14. Head Case
It's debatable whether the Whisperer who encouraged her boyfriend to challenge Alpha's authority in "Guardians" had lost her head before their tense confrontation. But, as this photo so graphically illustrates, there could be no debating whether or not the woman had lost it after the standoff.
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15. Her A Game
When Gabriel refused to keep secret the fact that, as a Scavenger, new lover Anne had been trading people for supplies, the erstwhile Jadis knocked him out for use as the A that would buy her a helicopter ride out of the Heaps. "And all this time," she marveled, "I thought you were a B."
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13. Ring Leader
Having nearly lost Ezekiel in the Season 9 premiere, Carol reconsidered his marriage proposal in "The Bridge" and allowed him to put a ring on it — provided he didn't get down on one knee and make a scene. "But... " he protested, "I wrote a speech." Of course he had!
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11. Fatal Reaction
In "Warning Signs," it looked like Daryl or Anne was picking off Saviors — till he and Maggie discovered a bunch of Oceansiders about to make Arat their next victim. Turned out, the Hilltop's leader had given them the idea when she'd hanged Gregory. "You showed us the way," Cyndie said.
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9. Well-Hung
The season-starting "A New Beginning" marked the end of Gregory: After setting up a grieving Earl to murder Maggie, then pathetically trying to do the job himself, the Hilltop's weaselly old leader was sentenced to death by its formidable new one. What's more, said Maggie, "I'm not ashamed."
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5. Fast-Forward
We were still reeling from the turn of events at No. 2 on this list when boom! We jumped ahead by six years and met a little ass-kicker who was brave enough to rescue Magna, Yumiko, Luke, Connie and Kelly from walkers. The kid's name? "Judith," she said, placing Carl's hat on her head. "Judith Grimes."
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3. Life Sentence
At long last, Maggie showed up in Alexandria ready to avenge Glenn's murder in "What Comes After." But then she got a sense of the pathetic shell of a man Negan had become in captivity, and decided against it. "I came to kill Negan," she observed, "and you're already worse than dead."
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1. High Stakes
After Lydia refused to leave the Kingdom's fair with her mother in "The Calm Before," Alpha accepted defeat — by marking the border of the Whisperers' territory with a row of pikes, atop each one the head of another character! Among the victims: Tara, Enid, Tammy Rose, the Highwaymen and Henry.
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7. A Cold Day in Hell
When during "The Storm" Judith leapt into action to rescue Dog, Negan leapt into action to save her. And we'll be damned if it didn't seem like the Saviors' former leader didn't care about his pint-sized confidante as much as he ever had Lucille, his barbed-wire-covered bat.
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12. Ring Toss
Sadly, Ezekiel and Carol's relationship couldn't survive Henry's death. In the season finale, she revealed that she wouldn't be relocating with him to Hilltop and returned his ring, if not his heart. "I will never stop loving you," he said. "And I'll never regret the fairy tale," she replied. Sniffle.