The Walking Dead: Rooting for death over redemption [Discussion]
By Adam Carlson
AMC’s The Walking Dead is a show full of death and despair, but why do fans root for murder more than they hope for characters to redeem themselves?
There is an interesting thing going on in the world of AMC’s The Walking Dead. The survivors are trying to build a community full of people with diverse skills and jobs to help the area flourish and prosper. However, fans aren’t quite ready to accept the less bloodthirsty characters on the show.
We saw this back when Tyreese was not willing to kill, but now we’re experiencing a similar character with Morgan. His “life is precious” idea should be a refreshing change from the rest of the characters on the show, but instead many fans see it as an annoying trait for a weak character.
That’s even more compounded with Carol’s confrontation with of Morgan regarding the member of The Wolves that was being kept in the house. This theme in the show is something very interesting that we recently were contacted about on our social media channels.
Here is the question we were asked by Kyle West on Facebook:
"“Why do you think more people support Carol over Morgan when it comes to the life and death of the young man from The Wolves? Do you think it’s odd for people to be rooting for murder over redemption?”"
Luckily, our friends at TheStream.TV answered this question for us during their most recent episode of The Walking Dead After Show. Here is the video of that episode, with the Su Castillo and Michael Tiberi joined by Cas Anvar answering the question at the 26 minute mark.
Michael Tiberi believes that the lack of compassion for Morgan in this situation has more to do with people enjoying the character of Carol than the actual dilemma at hand. Cas, on the other hand, feels as though the situation itself is what makes things hard because of who the member of The Wolves is and what he has done, as well as what he is promising to do if he gets healthy. He feels that the character is beyond redemption at this point and would no longer be a murder-type scenario. Su explains that all the lives that were lost in the attack on Alexandria as well as the mental state of the young man make him too dangerous to try to convert into a functioning member of the community.
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Personally, I think people have gotten too accustomed to violence in the media to want to root for salvation. It makes for better tv for two people to fight to the death than to work out their differences and find a compromise. People only really starting liking characters like Carol on a big scale when they took a turn for the violent, which is a disturbing trend.
I guess I would love to see that member of The Wolves on The Walking Dead become reformed and become an upstanding citizen, but this is one case where it just doesn’t appear to be in the cards. I commend Morgan for thinking that it was possible to help this young man, but some people are just too far gone, and Carol knew that. Still, I hope there are more situations in the future where misguided and troubled people can find their way and learn to live with the community.
Be sure to check in with our friends at TheStream.TV for more great coverage of The Walking Dead as well as numerous other shows and events. You can connect with the hosts of The Walking Dead After Show on Twitter and follow TheStream.TV the following ways:
Let us know what you think about the idea of killing compared to redeeming on The Walking Dead by commenting below. This is a topic that I’ve been wondering about for a long time on the hit AMC drama, but never quite knew how to tackle, so huge thanks go out to Kyle West on Facebook for the question.