Zeb Larson reviews The Walking Dead #154…
Led to slaughter.
The Walking Dead #154 is still building toward a new crisis with the Whisperers, but it potentially takes a less-interesting turn here. I’m hoping that this isn’t the case and that my ideas about Negan’s end game will hold true. But based on what we see here, I’m suddenly not feeling so sure. Oh well. At least we can look forward to a nasty conflict between Rick’s people and the Whisperers in the near future; that fragile peace was never going to last, and now it appears ready to completely fall apart. Warning: I will be discussing spoilers, so consider yourself forewarned.
Michonne and Aaron are still on Negan’s trail, crossing the border into Whisperer territory. Andrea and Maggie meet up, and Andrea tries to persuade Carl to return to Rick. He wants to stay, however. When Andrea returns to Rick, she’s disturbed by the propaganda on the walls and alarmed by the beating Rick took, but he merely tells her that it made him a better leader. Eugene learns the name of the person on the radio: Stephanie.
Negan meanwhile finds a group of Whisperers and announces that he’s there as a friend: he wants to join. Beta (or as Negan prefers, Frowny McTwoknives) allows Negan to meet with Alpha. Negan promptly declares that he’s in love with her. Beta then corners Michonne and Aaron, and when they say they’re chasing a fugitive, he uses that as an opportunity to stab Aaron in the stomach.
If there was any hope of keeping the peace, it’s going to expire now that Aaron has been gutted like this. Michonne could easily wind up killing a few of the Whisperers trying to get away, and with that, a war starts. If Negan was hoping to provoke a conflict, he played his hand pretty beautifully. He built up Rick to be just confident enough that he would send his people out and allow them to cross the border, and then gave him an excuse to break the peace that existed.
A conflict like that would be interesting, in part because I have trouble accepting that Negan actually likes the Whisperers. Negan was always interested in power and in using that power over people. Suddenly abandoning to live like an animal with a dead man’s skin over his face seems wildly out of character. No, I have to believe that he’s playing the Whisperers to some greater end.
I don’t think he wants to burn down what Rick has created. It’s possible he thinks he can engineer a conflict, beat the Whisperers, and then make a claim for leadership in the kingdom. That’s an easy route to take, and it would certainly keep Negan as the compelling villain. But a part of me still thinks Negan is seeking a weird kind of redemption. My belief in that might be rocky, going all the way back to issue #125, when Rick convinced him that by working together they could accomplish more. Negan genuinely seemed to believe him in that moment. Perhaps Negan thinks he can help bring the Whisperers down from the inside and prove that he’s changed. It’s a crazy idea, but it’s the story idea I would like more. A villain with a bizarre and dangerous plan for redemption makes for more compelling reading than a bad guy being a bad guy.
In any event, I’m hoping for the latter. Notwithstanding Michonne’s dust-up with the Whisperers, what happens here is a little lifeless (though I’m entertained to think that Eugene might be engaging in the zombie wasteland’s first long-distance relationship). We’re getting close to the end of the arc. Something’s going to go down.
Rating: 7.5/10
Zeb Larson
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https://youtu.be/b7Ozs5mj5ao?list=PL18yMRIfoszEaHYNDTy5C-cH9Oa2gN5ng
Originally published May 6, 2016. Updated April 14, 2018.
