The smartest decisions in The Walking Dead: Part II

Season 8: The alliance takes out the Saviors’ outposts.

This was another tough season to pick a smartest idea from. I was sitting here, thinking back over everything that happened in season 8 — Rick’s plan to trap the Saviors inside the Sanctuary, Gabriel and Negan having to sneak through the herd to make their way back inside the Sanctuary, Rick snapping pictures of the results of his attack(s) to convince the Scavengers to join him, Eugene sabotaging the Saviors ammunition (That one almost won out) — but then, it hit me: Rick, Ezekiel, and Jesus taking out the Saviors’ outposts.

As season 8 began, along with attacking the Sanctuary (And surrounding it with walkers), part of Rick’s strategy to defeat the Saviors was to go around to all of their outposts and either wipe out everyone manning them, or to capture them. Rick and Daryl led a team of Alexandrians to take out one outpost, while Ezekiel, Carol, and Jerry take out a second (Though taking heavy losses from a Gatling gun), and Jesus, Morgan, and Dianne take out the satellite outpost, with all but the satellite outpost appearing to lose all of their defenders. For the most part, it was a thorough smackdown of the Saviors’ peripheral forces, and something whose absence would have made the alliance’s eventual victory over the Saviors impossible.

I know I wanted to shy away from big plans, but, at the same time, I feel like this was such an important part of Rick’s overall strategy, that I can’t ignore it.

Think of it this way: The outposts (And the large number of reinforcements they provided to Negan) were crucial for their domination of the communities, as they each had a pool of several dozen armed troops to call upon, and, had the alliance not taken them out, they could have either attacked the communities in retaliation, holding them down until Negan and his forces could escape the Sanctuary, or, they could have gone to the Sanctuary and helped disperse the herd Rick left behind, an accelerated Negan’s eventual counterattack. By wiping them out, it left Negan with a much smaller force, leaving the Saviors’ numbers (Apparently) about even with the combined ranks of the alliance, a battle that was…winnable.

What I like about this, is that the alliance saw a clear advantage Negan had over them and devised a strategy to deprive him of that advantage. If you want to win a war, you have to take out the enemy’s strongest weapon.