Great introductions of characters on The Walking Dead

When we meet characters on The Walking Dead, sometimes it’s gradually woven into the story. Other times it’s a dramatic entrance with much fanfare.

First impressions. Just as in life, on television, as soon as we meet people, we gain information and start making judgments as soon as we meet them. That doesn’t mean we’re judging them in prejudicial ways, but our brain makes assessments.

Do we trust this person? Do we think we will like this person? Will he be kind? Will she be interesting?  We wonder. Where does he live? What does she do? I like his shirt. I like her hair. I like his eyes. And on and on.

Our impressions are affected by what the person gives us at that time. Is she happy and polite at that moment? Is he grumpy and tired? Is she putting on a fake smile? Does he want something from you? How is the person dressed that day?

With a television show, we are affected even further. We are affected by how the writers and directors want us to feel about that character. We can have our first impressions manipulated.

another great read: Highlighting Season 6 Walkers

Sometimes we can be tricked into really liking a character who turns out to be a rat. Or really hate someone who turns out to be someone we love later. Sometimes a character gets a subtle introduction so we only learn bits and pieces and get to know the character more slowly and don’t form solid impressions right away.

Other times the character makes a pretty dramatic entrance so we get a pretty good idea of what we think even if, in true The Walking Dead fashion, we want to hold off on our assessment and not trust or not like or dislike, we can’t help ourselves.

For example, in season 1, Andrea, Morales, T-dog and Jacqui made pretty subtle and gradual introductions. Whereas, Merle and Glenn made pretty strong entrances. It doesn’t make one better or worse–just different for different purposes.

Next: Great introductions to characters : Daryl Dixon

In this series, I’m going to look at some of the more dramatic or strong introductions of characters. The ones where we got quite a bit of information about the character in just that first impression. Surely, we learned more as we got to know them, but we couldn’t help but make some quick decisions about them right from the get go.

Let’s start with Daryl Dixon.