The ad campaign for Season 5 of The Walking Dead promised this would be a “very dangerous” year for our heroes. Initially, that phrase didn’t have much impact. After four years of increasingly devastating loss and horrific monsters, how could The Walking Dead possibly raise the stakes in Season 5? Well, now we know, the danger didn’t come from the outside, it came from the inside. Our heroes are officially the monsters now and we rooted for them to get there.
At Comic-Con last year, The Walking Dead’s executive producer Scott Gimple hinted at this outcome:
When they lost the prison, once they lost Hershel, all bets were of. I think they found out that you can’t come back from the things you’ve done. You have to live with them. But the things you’ve done make you incredibly formidable. Everyone who is alive has done unspeakable things. Who do they become? What are they going to be? This season will define what they become.
What they’ve become (or what Rick’s become anyway), is a danger to the community they’ve invaded. In next week’s season finale, Rick et al are likely to find themselves facing eviction from Alexandria. And they’ll have no one to blame but themselves. True, there are several factors working against Rick and his group. Both Nicholas (a resident of Alexandria) and Father Gabriel (and member of Rick’s own group) have planted seeds of doubt. “They can’t be trusted,” Father Gabriel said. “They’re dangerous.”
But then again, he’s not wrong.
The Walking Dead has had plenty of opportunity to explore the way the everyday struggle erodes little things that make you human, forcing more and more moral compromise among Rick and his fellow survivors. But never has this transformation in Rick’s group been more dramatic than this year and it all started with Gareth and Terminus. It was a little surprising how quickly the Terminus threat was neutralized this year given all the build up in Season 4. But Gareth and his band of merry cannibals were around just long enough to show us how easily good people can turn into monsters in the name of the greater good and to drop this bit of cannibalism justification/moral absolutism.
It was that kind of “black or white” mentality driving Rick in mid-frenzy last night as he took on Pete. (Did you notice how the struggle was filmed like a Walker attack? Were those cloudy contacts inAndrew Lincoln’s eyes?) Just before Michonne put him out of his misery, Rick shouted, “If you don’t fight, you die.” And while that may be literally true in the midst of a zombie attack, it’s less applicable when you’re beating the life out of a man because you want to sleep with his wife.
And that’s where Rick’s actions last night cross the line past all the other questionable things his group has done in the name of “the greater good.” Rick admits to Jessie that his vendetta against her (admittedly scumbag) husband, Pete, is motivated by his desire for her. Try fitting that justification into a rousing heroic speech, Rick.
The show has been giving us a visual warning of this transformation all season. Or did you miss all the clues about wolves?
There may be another wolfish comic-book-based threat coming (in fact, we’ll talk about that after a spoiler warning at the end of this post), but what became obvious in this episode is that Rick, Carol, and the rest are the wolves in sheep’s clothing here. But Carol’s sweater sets and Rick’s law-enforcement togs aren’t fooling Deanna anymore.
So what does this mean? Have we been watching one long super-villain origin story? Have we slowly watched forces for moral good like Hershel and Tyreese die . . .
. . . only to be replaced by more brutal group members like Abraham? And what happened to the group’s brightest spot: Glenn and Maggie? Is their seemingly indestructible relationship another casualty of the zombie apocalypse? Finally, is there any coming back in the season finale or are we stuck with Rick as the villain for the rest of the series? That’s where the spoilers come into play.
The final showdown in Alexandria is not going to be between Rick and Deanna. It’s going to be from some outside force. Those “W”s carved into Walker foreheads and mysteriously dismembered bodies mean something wicked is coming and the comic book has no shortage of evocatively named groups to menace Rick et al. It could be the Scavengers, a group of hostile survivors led by a man named Derek, who loot and kill indiscriminately (which explains the chopped up bodies). Could be the Saviors, led by comic-book favorite Negan. This nasty group chains walkers to their Sanctuary and has used them as weapons before.
~vanityfair.com/jrobinson
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