The Walking Dead Villains: Who’s The Worst? Part 10C

4) The Commonwealth

What we’ve seen of The Commonwealth thus far in The Walking Dead does not paint a pretty picture.

We didn’t see much of them in their first appearance, but in “Splinter,” we got a tiny peek into this very organized, very coordinated, and dangerous group.

Now, I’m not going to talk about what they “did” to Yumiko in that episode because, in reality, that never happened. It was all in Princess’s head, her imagining a worst-case scenario.

What I will talk about is their very effective but very duplicitous method of interrogating people.

After having Princess locked inside a boxcar for several hours, the Commonwealth soldiers leader that had captured Eugene, Yumiko, Ezekiel, and Princess, after cleaning Princess, and inspecting her for bites or scratches, began interrogating her.

The questions were rather basic — “What’s your name?” “Where are you from?” “Where were you when the outbreak happened?” “How old are you?” “What are your friend’s names?” “Where are they from?” — but, they were asked like Princess was a prisoner of war or member of the mafia. When she refused to answer the questions she didn’t know about her new friends to a total stranger, the interrogator resorted to backhanding Princess, which yielded even less cooperation, and led to him sending Princess back to her boxcar.

Sometime later, Princess was met by a second Commonwealth soldier, bringing her some food. Under the guidance of “Ezekiel” (Really just a manifestation of Princess’s more…irrational impulses), Princess jumped the guard, stole his weapon, and escaped, but not before the guard complained about being little more than a probationary officer and likely to get booted off the squad for this lapse in judgment.

Princess began trying to escape but thought better of it and returned, hoping to smooth things over with the guard. While realizing Princess had come to her senses, the guard told her that whatever chance she, Eugene, Yumiko, and Ezekiel had at being in his superiors’ good books had been blown and that they would simply be sent back to wherever they came from. This prompted Princess to agree to answer the interrogator’s questions over the radio. As soon as she did that, the guard’s demeanor changed, sounding far less like a rookie soldier and more like a seasoned interrogator.

The miserable bastards pulled the old “Good cop, bad cop” routine on Princess and did so quite effectively.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as the Commonwealth, if they can afford to have so large of a military force, must have a large population, and thus, can’t afford to bring in anyone who might pose any threat to that population, so, their interrogation methods are warranted.

However, it’s the deception that bothers me. They were able to lie so easily and seemed to have the routine down so well; it was like lying was second nature to them.

This would be one thing in a normal world, but let’s not kid ourselves, we saw several instances of hostiles not being entirely forthright about themselves — Dave and Tony, The Governor, Terminus, Officer Lerner, Alpha — and, in each case, it was because something terrible was going down. Either being done by their underlings or by themselves. Whatever the case may be, a group that lies so well makes one wonder what else they could be lying about.

Are the Commonwealth (Or, at least, their soldiers) that bad in the grand scheme of things? No, but what they are is underhanded. That suggests that while they may not be bad now, the further along we go, we may come to learn that that underhandedness was to hide how bad they truly are.