'The Walking Dead' Season 3, Episode 4 Recap - 'Killer Within'

Wow. Right? Wow. This week's episode played out like a season finale, even though it's only the fourth episode of the season. When the cast and creators promised a bloodbath this season, they weren't kidding.

Let's start with the events at Woodbury, though, since they were a little less... well, eventful.

Woodbury

Now that Andrea is recovered, she and Michonne are getting ready to leave. Michonne is still very clearly ready to go: her spider-sense is tingling, and a close inspection of the jeep from the army guys doesn't put her mind at ease, what with the blood and bullet holes. But the Governor is as calm as ever, spinning lie after lie to fend off Michonne's prying.

Andrea is far more oblivious, especially after she has a heart-to-heart with the Governor. There's clearly a bit of a crush here (we've talked about Andrea's horrible taste in men), and Andrea is considering sticking around in Woodbury. The Guv even brings out his real name (Philip, he claims) to gain Andrea's trust.

Merle, meanwhile, wants to leave to go find Darryl, but the Guv clearly doesn't want him to go. In his snake-like way, he gives Merle a potential go-ahead, but something tells me it won't be that easy for the lovable racist to go off looking for his brother.

The Prison

Things start off positively enough at the prison: Hershel's walking, crops will soon be planted, Glenn and Maggie are banging on the regular. But things take a very quick turn when someone cuts the chain to the gate and leaves some deer organs to lure in walkers.

Chaos ensues, and the group is quickly split. Hershel and his daughter lock up in the yard, while Maggie runs off with Carl and Lori and T-Dog takes off with Carol. Rick, Darryl and Glenn enlist the help of the as-yet-untrustworthy Oscar and Axel, who have been pleading to be part of the group, to find the shutoff for the generator to turn off the alarm, which is luring walkers to the prison.

Today we say goodbye to T-Dog, who gets a nasty bite in the shoulder while fleeing with Carol. Later, he sacrifices himself further by holding down two walkers so that Carol can escape. By the time Rick gets to him, he's been more or less picked apart.

Alas, poor T-Dog. You never got enough screen time, and have been mostly invisible as a character since the beginning of season two. At least you got to go out like a badass.

Another shocker follows shortly: Lori goes into labor during this wild chase, because why wouldn't she go into labor at the worst possible time? She's Lori. Everything she does is wrong.

Fans will be happy to know that Lori bites the bullet this episode as well, as the pregnancy goes awry. It quickly becomes clear that she won't be able to deliver, so she demands that Maggie give her a C-section. Mind you, this is with no anesthetic, a probably fairly dull knife that Carl has been carrying, and oh yeah Carl has to watch the whole thing.

It's horrifying. Thankfully Lori passes out pretty quickly, and the baby is delivered safely. Lori is dispatched by Carl, who shoots her in the head (we presume, since it was off-camera).

Even Lori, who was not well liked by viewers to say the least, gets a good send-off. She and Carl share a pretty heartwarming moment before the bloodbath, so at least they got to patch things up before Carl had to help slice open her uterus and then shoot her in the brain.

Rick didn't get that closure, and considering his awfully cold gesture in last week's episode, his reaction to the news of Lori's death is warranted. He stutters in disbelief, he yells in denial, he wails and collapses to the ground. It's the kind of performance that we've seen before from Andrew Lincoln in these moments of high emotion: it's almost silly how he handles it, but there's something to be said for his disregard for how he looks or sounds in the moment.

The only positive here is that the culprit in all the shenanigans, Andrew, was killed by Oscar, and now Oscar and the entertaining Axel are part of the group. The gang could use a guy with a mustache like Axel's.

So far, the body count at the prison is much higher than it was in the eight months the group spent on the road. Maybe this wasn't such a great idea after all.