Why Henry wants to help out Lydia on The Walking Dead

In the latest episode of The Walking Dead titled ‘Omega’, Henry grows a lot closer to the Hilltop’s latest captive prisoner Lydia, but for good reason.

Henry has definitely found a lot of interest in Lydia, who we now know is Alpha’s daughter. Lydia was captured and brought to the Hilltop when Daryl, Michonne and the others caught her with some of the other Whisperers.

In an attempt to try to get Lydia to talk more about her group and her past, Daryl leaves Henry and Lydia alone in their cells to communicate with one another. Henry gets a little too open with Lydia and shares the location of the Kingdom. This obviously was not a smart move on Henry’s part, but after all, he is just a young teen who has had to grow up in the complicated world of the zombie apocalypse so you can’t be too hard on him there.

There seems to be a more meaningful reason as to why Henry wants to help and defend Lydia so much. At one point in this episode, Henry shares with Daryl that his mom, Carol, used to keep her hair long before. He then tells Daryl that she had to cut it after her abusive ex-husband would pull it and harm her. Henry does seem to know a bit about abuse since his own mother shared some stories about her personal experience with it. When Henry hears about how Lydia has been going through her own abusive situation, this instantly reminds him of his mother, and his natural reaction is to help in any way he can.

Was Henry being completely smart in some of the ways he tried to help Lydia? For example by letting her out of her cell? No. However, it does show that he is a caring and compassionate individual which is always needed in the world of the apocalypse.

Henry in a sense also reminds me of Glenn. Glenn always told the others about how much they needed to help people, and to see them as human beings. That is exactly what Henry is doing here. He may not be the best at it, but he is definitely trying to be and you have to give him some credit for that.

It will be interesting to see where Henry and Lydia’s potential friendship goes next. Be sure to tune in to new episodes of The Walking Dead on Sunday nights on AMC.