The smartest decisions in The Walking Dead: Part II
By Liam O'Leary
Season 10: Alpha sends Dante in to spy on Alexandria.
I hate doing it. I hate applauding a villain for something so sinister, but, I simply can not ignore how shrewd it was for Alpha to send one of her minions into Alexandria to spy on, sabotage, and sow discord within the community.
At the beginning of season 10, we were introduced to a new addition to Alexandria, a former army doctor named Dante. While he was kind of cavalier, and seemed to annoy Siddiq a bit, he seemed okay. Little did anyone know that behind his cocky smile was a duplicitous spy, feeding intel back to the Whisperers and committing acts of sabotage whenever possible, to leave the community confused and at each other’s throats.
What I like about this so much is, well, despite the fact it’s an idea that should be obvious…no one else had really done this in The Walking Dead before. Yeah, Dwight was feeding Rick’s group info on the Saviors, but, they didn’t send him into the Saviors to do that. Same with Eugene. Alpha, on the other hand, selected Dante and sent him into Alexandria (And, by extension, Hilltop) for the express purpose of spying on them.
How did nobody come upon this idea before? It’s so obvious of a strategy to employ, I’m honestly surprised no one, not even another hostile group, used it before this point.
On top of how obvious espionage is as a tactic, just look at how effective it was: Dante spent months entrenched in Alexandria, helped to turn the Alexandrians against Lydia, got people killing each other (Granted, it was Negan accidentally killing Margo trying to protect Lydia, but, you get my point), poisoned a decent chunk of the community with fouled water, murdered another Whisperer who could have provided Carol and Daryl with useful information about the location of Alpha’s horde, and generally just sowed chaos as much as possible. It was only by bad luck that Siddiq figured out Dante’s true identity and blew his cover, if that hadn’t happened…who knows how long Dante could have kept going?
The whole reason espionage is used is because it provides you with information about how strong you enemy is and what your enemy is doing that they don’t want you to know, because it can help you strategize ways to defeat them, to utilize it (And to do so so effectively) shows just how devious, intelligent, and how geared towards survival she really was. She was thinking of things that, apparently, nobody else was thinking of, and using them to find ways to defeat enemies and keep herself and her group alive as long as possible.
What’s “smart” in a zombie apocalypse depends on how you look at things: Sometimes, it’s thinking outside the box, sometimes, it doing the most obvious thing imaginable, and sometimes, those two things are one and the same.
dark. Next. The smartest decisions in The Walking Dead: Part I
With that, we’ve found the smartest decisions of seasons 6 through10 of The Walking Dead. They may not have been the most standout things in the show or the most exciting, but, in terms of cleverness, long-term thinking, and sheer survival strategy, I think these do standout. What makes a decision a smart one in a zombie apocalypse isn’t necessarily something that has a huge immediate impact, but rather, something that keeps you going the longest. Hopefully, you learned how to employ these lessons if you ever find yourself in a zombie apocalypse.
If you want to learn how to make more smart decisions in a zombie apocalypse, why not pick up a copy of my book, The Rules: A Guide To Surviving The Zombie Apocalypse! You can also get it at Amazon here, on iTunes here!