The Best ‘What Ifs’ Of The Walking Dead, Part Three

What If The Group Met The Saviors First, Instead Of Aaron?

Oooh boy. I’m starting to like this one already…

As I mentioned at the beginning of this, Negan told Rick that, if he’d met Rick as he was when The Group first arrived in Alexandria, he would not have messed with him. This left me wondering: What would have happened had Negan found The Group at that point?

Well, first thing’s first, depending on who amongst The Saviors found The Group would determine what the response would be.

For example, if “Timmy and The Dick Brigade” found The Group, things could have turned out very badly. Would Daryl blow Bud and friends to smithereens? No. But, I don’t think Rick and company would be very kind to them, either.

My guess: Sasha would cut them down much like she did the wild dogs that attacked The Group in “Them”. This would also make The Group quite wary of anyone going around speaking for this “Negan” guy.

However, things could have turned out quite differently if the first Savior The Group met were someone like Gavin.

I suspect Gavin would likely have offered The Group shelter. It wouldn’t take Gavin long to figure out just how tough The Group was, just by looking at them.

At this point, I must acknowledge the possibility that The Sanctuary could have reminded The Group a bit too much of Terminus. So long as that didn’t happen, I don’t think it would be long before The Group was introduced to Negan

Clever as he is, Negan would almost certainly try to convince Rick and company to work for him, though he would probably try to put as good a face on things as he could. Rick would not be someone to trifle with.

And this is where things could get interesting.

I imagine that, once The Group was confident The Saviors weren’t another Terminus situation, Rick would instruct the others much as he did when they arrived at Alexandria, namely, that, if things didn’t “Work out”, that they would just take over.

Of course, they would discover how things work with The Saviors fairly quickly, perhaps even being shown the ropes of Negan’s “arrangement” with other groups firsthand. Even in the state Rick was in at the time, I doubt he would stand for how The Saviors operate.

With Rick having no tolerance for Negan’s tyranny, I expect he would begin attempting to find a way to usurp Negan and take The Sanctuary.

How? I’m not sure. My best guess is that Rick would attempt to either A) kill Negan and take over outright or B) Start trying to organize a resistance to Negan underneath his nose.

Who would be part of this resistance? It’s tough to say (Dwight, maybe?). However, I imagine Rick would come into any mutiny attempt with a much better understanding of the scale of The Saviors than he ended up with in Season Six.

But, What About Alexandria?

Without meeting Rick, there’s a very good chance that The Saviors would never realize that Alexandria was even there!

…Of course, there’s an equally good chance that that wouldn’t matter, because everyone in Alexandria would be dead.

Remember, even without The Wolves attacking (Which also wouldn’t happen because Aaron probably wouldn’t visit the warehouse), the quarry herd would still descend upon Alexandria. Once they did, while the walls would probably hold, unless they got lucky and something distracted the herd, sooner or later, either the town would starve to death or breakdown into total chaos as people fought over the remaining scraps of food. If she got lucky, Enid might have been able to slip away unscathed, but that’s it. If The Group ever found Alexandria, it would end up being a grisly ghost town.

The War For Virginia

I don’t know how a mutiny against The Saviors would turn out, to be honest. But, I think that, if Rick and company convince enough people to back them up, The Group could, at the very least, take out The Saviors at The Sanctuary.

So long as they had enough people and acted quickly enough, they could prevent any Saviors from escaping to warn Negan’s many outposts. The Group would then have a task on its hands, trying to shut down as many outposts as they could before the word got out.

In the end, I can’t predict exactly how this would end. I do believe that Rick would either kill Negan or remove him from power. If The Group couldn’t move quickly enough, either Cam, or Simon, or Paula might have risen up to regroup The Saviors and try to reclaim The Sanctuary.

Regardless, The Group would have a war on its hands with at least a portion of The Saviors. We could see Rick and company possibly forge alliances with communities previously under Negan’s thumb in order to take the fight to the Negan loyalists. Again, at this point, it’s difficult to tell.

But, in all of these scenarios you can see that, if just one thing changes, the whole world of The Walking Dead changes with it.

What do you guys think? Do you think I’m pretty close? Or, do you think that I’m talking total nonsense and pulling these scenarios completely out of thin air? Let me know what you think in the comments and share this around!

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