The Walking Dead, Survival Rule Of The Week: The Leaders We Follow

The Walking Dead

4) In A Zombie Apocalypse, If Your Leader Doesn’t Care…Why Follow Them?

I hate piling on Maggie, but, she was bad in this week’s episode, guys, she just was. If you’d like evidence, I direct your attention to Negan, who, after having to save Gage from a walker inside the tunnels, raised the question of whether or not Maggie cared if anyone in the group (Most especially himself) lived or died.

While I don’t think he was right, he did bring up a good point: If your leader doesn’t give a damn about you…why are you following them?

I ask this because, when a leader doesn’t care about you, it means they see you as expendable; in other words, they can throw you into the proverbial meat grinder and not lose a wink of sleep. Follow a person like that long enough, and it will kill you because they’ll eventually see you as just another pawn in their quest, and throw you under the bus, too.

Remember how I said earlier that I’d get to why Maggie was a terrible leader in this week’s Walking Dead? Yeah, I figured here was as good a place as any to tackle that.

The reason Maggie was such a bad leader was pointed out by (Once again) Negan, who explained to everyone that he “lived, rent-free” in her head, and that caused her to ignore his advice because he was the one giving it, and even be willing to risk the group’s lives in the hopes of getting him in a position where she could kill him, away from Alexandria, where no one would ask questions.

Even if Maggie isn’t out to kill Negan, he wasn’t wrong about her constantly having him on her mind, and that that clouded her judgment. If it didn’t, she would have been willing to listen to his warnings about the tunnel, or his suggestions to wait out the storm, and maybe, might have even avoided the herd, who might have simply passed by them on the tracks while they stayed safely above them on the platform.

If you’re going to lead people, you can’t let your old grudges or beefs cloud your judgment because it’s not just your life that could be screwed up, but your entire groups’ lives.