Zeb Larson reviews The Walking Dead #155…
“THE TIP OF THE SPEAR”
If the fragile peace between the Whisperers and Rick’s people could be held together, it’s been irreparably broken in this issue. The Whisperers are directly attacked by some of Rick’s people, while Negan attempts to worm his way into the good graces of Alpha. Relatively little outside of that happens here, and it becomes clear that there’s going to be no coming back from what happens here. We might not yet be at the point of a bloodbath, but I have a feeling we’re one or two issues away from a veritable slaughter. This review will be full of spoilers, so consider yourself forewarned.
Michonne and Aaron are almost overwhelmed by the Whisperers before Dwight shows up suddenly to save the day, guns blazing. He’d been sent by Rick to rescue Michonne and Aaron, and recognizing that things are already hopelessly screwed between the two sides, he decides to press on and bring back Negan. Negan isn’t making much of a positive impression; his trademark charms are absolutely lost on Alpha, and she quickly figures out what his basic agenda is: revenge. Andrea finally has a chance to talk to Rick and point out that he’s been behaving like Negan, an observation which seems to fly over his head.
The coming war should be violent, though I’m wondering whether or not Kirkman is tweaking our expectations of what it will look like. After all, a straight fight between just the Whisperers and Dwight’s soldiers would be a one-sided bloodbath, and based on their opening night performance, an encore performance shouldn’t be hard to replicate. At the end of the day, practiced shots working in formation with good fire control can do a lot of damage, especially when their opponents are wielding knives.
But the thing that’s made the Whisperers so dangerous is also something they can’t exactly control, and don’t exactly need to. Killing Alpha and the others would be, at the end of the day, relatively easy, but I just don’t see how Dwight and his people have the numbers or firepower to work through the sheer number of walkers that are sitting in that quarry. Alpha was certainly concerned with keeping quiet around them when Rick showed up; would enough gunfire set them off? In that case, even a victory against the Whisperers would be utterly Pyrrhic, and the tide of Walkers would be more like the wrath of God unleashed on the Alexandria communities.
In a way, that outcome would bring the entire arc full circle. Rick’s decision to embrace Negan’s way of doing things would result in the destruction of everything he’s built up, a bitter reminder that the old way of being a leader was ultimately safer, if seemingly less stable. It would also give that voice on the radio a real purpose; with everything burning down around them, Rick and whoever survives might have no choice but to flee for somewhere safer.
Or maybe that’s just the ending I’m hoping for. The idea that Negan would side with the Whisperers just to get back at Rick has never sat well with me. I just can’t imagine that Negan would abandon all his desire for power just to burn everything down; it would send him down the path the Governor trod, and we’ve already seen that narrative arc. Instead, the idea that all of this is as series of mistakes leading to calamity seems more like The Walking Dead than just a simple war.
Rating: 8/10
Zeb Larson
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Originally published June 7, 2016. Updated April 14, 2018.
