The Walking Dead, Survival Rule of the Week: People can surprise you
By Liam O'Leary
The Walking Dead season 11 episode 22
The Apocalypse Makes Strange Bedfellows.
I briefly mentioned in the last entry that part of Negan’s story in this week’s episode was that Ezekiel was getting on Negan for losing the map that he, Magna, and Kelly had put together, then ripping on him, owing to still being angry at Negan for the loss of Benjamin and so many others at the Kingdom. Well, I think I undersold the magnitude of the relationship between the two. Ezekiel didn’t simply tell Negan that he didn’t like him, but, in fact, told him that he believed that Negan didn’t deserve to be a father. If there were any illusions about how much Ezekiel cared for Negan, that dispelled them.
It’s what made the climax of the Alexandria half of the episode so perfect. Seeing Negan and Annie (And their unborn child) about to be executed by the Commonwealth firing squad, Ezekiel stepped forward to defend a man he vehemently hated for reasons even he couldn’t explain, which eventually led to several more members of the group stepping up to defend Negan and convincing the firing squad to stand down. In spite of his feelings, Ezekiel chose to stand with Negan, to risk his life to save him.
A zombie apocalypse is such a dangerous situation, and one that pits people against such indiscriminate threats, that it can often put people who may not and realistically should not be on the same side together, either through making potential enemies realize they’re not so different or through sheer necessity.
Either way, in such situations, people will come to realize that people they might see or do see as enemies may not be as bad as they once thought and cause them to begin sowing the seeds for at least a mutual understanding, if not actual friendship.
This is why it’s important not to be too quick to judge other people in the apocalypse, because you never know if, under the right circumstances, that person could become not just an ally but a friend, and that is something that’s worth its weight in gold.