In the penultimate Season 2 episode of The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon, emotions were running high. But our heroes’ flight back to the States? Not so much. In fact, it looked like it might never get off the ground!

As “Vouloir, C’est Pouvoir” began, Codron and then Daryl and Carol made their way to Fallou’s camp. There, Daryl broke it to Laurent that, right on the hells of Sylvie’s death, Isabelle had been killed. “It’s a terrible thing to think of,” said the boy, “a world without them in it.” Daryl knew, but on the off chance that he didn’t, Laurent told him that Isabelle had loved him. (Heartbreaking, restrained reaction from Norman Reedus, no?) Daryl was ready to take his ward back to the Commonwealth, but Laurent refused to go, saying that he was happy and at peace with Fallou and his peeps.

The following day, Daryl and Carol made tracks to the Demimonde in hopes of gleaning intel on the whereabouts of Ash, who they’d discovered was no longer chilling in the hangar in which he’d stashed the plane. Off a tip from Anna, now living large and in charge of the hot spot, the duo headed for Maison Mère, where they found Ash dehydrated, concussed and trapped in a car surrounded by walkers. In a spectacularly grody scene, Daryl got them out of the mess by giving a walker a shot of Genet’s Zombie Red Bull and letting it tear apart all of its peers.

Back at Fallou’s camp, no sooner had Laurent assured Codron that God had already forgiven him for his past misdeeds than Losang and Jacinta showed up with a battalion of guerriers. One thing led to another, and the religious nuts were chasing after the boy in the tunnels beneath the Demimonde. In two spectacular face-offs, Daryl utterly destroyed Losang (and, for good measure, bashed his head in with a skull), and Codron shook off a stabbing to hurl Jacinta into a wall. If only she’d croaked from her injuries, the vile creature!

When all was said and done, Laurent admitted that the reason he didn’t want to go to the States with Daryl was an understandable fear that his protector would meet the same fate as Isabelle and Sylvie. The choice was his, Daryl told the boy, and ultimately, he agreed to make the trip. There were just two problems: 1. After Carol confessed that Sophia had died a dozen years ago and she’d always really been searching for Daryl, Ash was livid. “Using your dead daughter to manipulate me… ” he exclaimed. “What kind of person does that?!?” 2. Daryl and Carol were dreaming if they thought that Ash’s plane could carry all of them and Laurent. “Paris,” quipped the pilot, “we have a problem.”