The smartest decisions in The Walking Dead: Part II

Season 9: Carol bribes the Highwaymen with movies.

I said at the beginning of this that my selections weren’t necessarily going to be the biggest or most action-packed events in the show, and this is a perfect example of what I was talking about, because this won out over Rick blowing up the bridge to protect the communities from a herd of walkers.

In season 9, as Carol and Ezekiel were preparing for a festival to be held in The Kingdom (In the hopes of reestablishing trade between the communities), they found The Kingdom was being extorted by a new group of hostiles, who beat up Jerry to show they meant business. Initially, the plan was for knights of The Kingdom to attack them, but, Carol decided it would be better to try negotiating with them, instead.

Those negotiations, at first, don’t go so well, as the Highwaymen balked at offers of access to the festival (And the opportunities for trade therein), despite their desperate need for supplies. That all changed when Carol informed them that The Kingdom would be showing movies at the festival. The chance to see something none of them had likely seen in a decade caused the Highwaymen to do a complete 180, and immediately decide to agree to terms, where they would clear the roads leading to the Kingdom of walkers, in exchange for getting to watch movies.

This is…brilliant. Now, I know that this didn’t save hundreds of lives the way Rick’s sacrifice did, but, in terms of a simple risk/reward equation, Carol knocked it out of the park. Think about it: She got a hostile group to incorporate itself into The Kingdom without firing a single shot, and without a single drop of blood spilled, in exchange for something The Kingdom was going to do, anyways. It shows how, sometimes, you can avoid conflict (And even make new friends) in the zombie apocalypse, simply by offering some of the amenities that the world loses when society crumbles.

Like I said: Brilliant.