Spoilers about last night's Walking Dead after the jump, but before we get there, let me just share this piece of wisdom with you:
That moment when you realize that #TheWalkingDead is just a long con for @SonnyBunch to tell people "You see? YOU SEE??!!"
— Daniel Drezner (@dandrezner) October 26, 2015
The creators of The Walking Dead have gone out of their way time and again to show that in an unforgiving, cruel world, redemption is a lie and kindness gets you and your loved ones killed. The proof, as I noted at the end of last season, keeps coming:
Tyreese fails to kill one of the genocidaires from Terminus who was threatening Rick’s baby; later, that genocidaire tracks the group down and literally eats one of Tyreese’s companions. Glenn (Steven Yeun) warns that the young toughs of Alexandria aren’t up to the task of going on gear runs; sure enough, their inexperience gets the beloved newbie Noah (Tyler James Williams) gruesomely eaten to death by a pack of zombies. Morgan (Lennie James), a man searching for and inspired by Rick back when he was a peacenik, allows a pair of marauders to live; those marauders are then seen at the end of the episode cutting the throat of an innocent traveler and setting a trap filled with zombies. Rick warns that a wife-beating drunk named Pete (Corey Brill) needs to be taken out, to the horror of the former congresswoman who is in charge of Alexandria when Rick and Co. show up. She refuses to let him do what needs to be done, and Pete repays her kindness by cutting her husband’s throat.
This season has only added more fuel to the Ricktatorship fire. Every single time someone questions his worldview (which boils down to preemptively killing those who threaten the group) or disobeys him, that person dies. Every. Single. Time. The guy from Alexandria who tried to foment an insurrection? Eaten by zombies. The guy who questioned his plan at the start of last night's episode? Eaten by zombies. Glenn's refusal at the end of last season to kill a guy who tried to murder him as well as Glenn's ignoring Rick's command to keep moving last night and leave behind stragglers?
It gets Glenn eaten by zombies.*
Look, this isn't rocket science. Forgiveness in the zombie apocalypse does not exist. Gentleness is a curse. These are outdated concepts in a state of nature. Weakness and strength are all that matter—a fact that Rick understands and everyone except Carol seems to forget. Glenn didn't die because he got unlucky. Glenn died because he chose poorly. Glenn died because he disobeyed the show's font of wisdom.
Glenn, frankly, deserved to die. The only question is this: How many more have to be eaten before the Ricktatorship is allowed to rule?
*There is, apparently, some discussion over whether or not Glenn was, in fact, killed at the end of last night's episode. If he's not dead it's a betrayal of the whole ethos of the show. There's no way he survives at the bottom of that herd. Even if he wasn't eaten, somehow, he'd be trampled to death.