'The Walking Dead' Season 2, Episode 12 Recap - 'Better Angels' and Revelations

"There can be a lot of bloodshed in the next two episodes," showrunner Glen Mazzara told THR in an interview about the remainder of season two of "The Walking Dead." He wasn't kidding, was he?

The show's M.O. of late seems to be lulling us into a false sense of security with a dialogue-heavy episode, then twisting the knife (as it were) right at the end. We saw that last week with Dale's death at the hands (as it were) of Carl's pet Walker, a move that fans of the comics were not expecting. After all, Dale hadn't even lost his leg yet.

This week's death was a little less surprising, at least in that it had to happen. How it happened, however, was a little more shocking.

As the group finally starts to move into the house (Herschel seems to have tired of his whole "us vs. them" routine), Rick works to get things ready to set Randal loose at a safe distance. Shane, however, egged on by Rick's inaction and by a confrontation from Lori, takes matters into his own hands: he stages an escape for Randal and tells him he wants to defect to his group, then takes him into the forest and breaks his neck.

Returning to the group (after ramming his face into a tree to make things look convincing), Shane claims that Randal clocked him, took his gun and ran off. Rick, Shane, Glenn and Daryl head off into the woods and split up to track the kid down.

What's the end game for Shane? Simple: get Rick alone. Shane leads Rick into the night and takes him to a clearing, Rick piecing together Shane's lies bit by bit. By the time he truly gets it, though, it's too late: Shane has his gun drawn and pointed straight at Rick, yelling about how Rick is too weak and implying that he would be a better husband and father to Lori and Carl.

"I thought you said you weren't the good guy anymore?" says Shane has Rick holds out his gun, refusing to shoot Shane. "You're going to have to shoot an unarmed man," responds Rick, edging closer with his revolver out at arm's length. And then, in a move different from but still reminiscent of his quick-draw at the bar, Rick pulls his knife and stabs Shane straight in the chest.

So, even though Lori seemed to have struck a chord with Shane earlier in the episode, FINALLY taking some responsibility for her actions and apologizing to Shane, it looks like this is the end of our resident rageball.

Or is it? Some truly creepy quick cuts of zombies chewing through flesh later, it looks as though Shane is beginning to stir, just as Carl (who must have witnessed some of the scene through his binoculars) shows up to see Rick standing over Shane's lifeless corpse. Carl pulls the gun and points it at Rick, but ends up sending a bullet straight through Shane's head, after Shane rises from the ground as a Walker and stumbles toward Rick.

Here's our first major revelation of the secret that readers of the comics will have known already: you don't have to be bitten to become a Walker. Is this what Jenner whispered to Rick right before they left the CDC? That everyone, dead or alive, is infected, and all it takes is a death by any means to become a flesh-eating zombie?

Answer: yeah, probably. Expect our heroes to agonize over this point for a while longer, though.

Another episode of truly groundbreaking events: Shane is dead, and T-Dog actually spoke a few lines. It's a miracle! All that, and we haven't even hit the season finale yet, which will be next Sunday. Tune in here for the recap.