Some villains in The Walking Dead have come and gone, and I have really loved them. One is Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), a fan favorite who now has his own spinoff alongside Maggie (Lauren Cohan).
I don't feel that way about all the villains. There are some Walking Dead villains are a waste of space, and the ones I can’t stand are the Reapers.
If you don’t know who they are — or you've forgotten they exist — you’re in good company. They were the main villain for the first part of The Walking Dead season 11, and they were not great. Really, at all. In addition, they were pretty forgettable, if we’re being frank. Now, years later, I’m here to explain why the Reapers were the worst of the bunch.
There are literally no memorable characters from them
The best thing about The Walking Dead's villains was that many of them were memorable. Aside from Negan, who is a different entity from the others, many other villains are ones fans remember fondly because they were so terrifying and did such a great job testing the survivors we all knew and loved.
The Governor (David Morrissey) was a fantastic first real villain the group faced. Shane (Jon Bernthal) was an awesome example of someone’s mentality slowly declining in a world like this. Even Dwight (Austin Amelio) had his moments with the Saviors. And one of my all-time favorites, Alpha (Samantha Morton), came years later and became something utterly terrifying.
Those are the villains we remember. But the Reapers? I genuinely can’t remember a single person without googling, except for Leah (Lynn Collins).
The Reapers were essentially a militarized group of former soldiers who all served in Afghanistan. Of course, that meant they were all easily capable of surviving in this world, and after they survived a napalm bombing, their leader basically convinced them all that they were chosen by God, leading them to cult status.
But in reality, they’re just forgettable. The only real connection they had to the group was that they hunted and basically destroyed Maggie’s old group before she came back to Alexandria, and Daryl (Norman Reedus) had a connection with Leah. That’s it. They’re just normal survivors with a God complex.
The connections feel fake
This is my biggest issue — why are we supposed to care what Daryl and Maggie went through with these people if we never really saw it?
One of my biggest issues with Daryl and Leah’s storyline in The Walking Dead is that we were given one episode where they had a connection that turned romantic but ultimately fizzled into nothing when Daryl wouldn’t leave with her. We see some feelings between them from the past when she came back as a villain. Beyond that, we don't really care. She’s just some woman he was with, but we don’t really know her. So, when she dies, why should we even bother caring? He’s the one who kills her!
The same thing goes for Maggie and what her former community went through. We never saw this community. We don’t know the people. I’m sure they were nice folk who didn’t deserve what they got, but at the end of the day, a television show's point is to make the audience feel connected to the characters. And when we have a villain who killed people that we don’t know, why are we supposed to care?
Watching them take down the Reapers felt like watching them take down walkers because the audience had no real connection to latch onto. As a result, it becomes an erasable part of the franchise. We could have cut this whole arc, and nothing about the ending would change.
They’re inconsistent with the stories
A big thing about the Reapers is that they only attack at night, but later, we see them kicking open doors and hurting people in the middle of the day. We were supposed to get a complex storyline with Daryl and Leah, but she’s essentially completely devoted to her “family” despite being on her own for ages, and that creates tension where there shouldn’t be any.
There’s supposed to be this background with Pope (the leader, played by Ritchie Coster) and Maggie, but we never dig deeper into that. Like, what is the point of all this?
It feels like these episodes were made solely to keep the group occupied until Commonwealth — a decent arc in the show — really began. And that’s just sad.
The Reapers really were the worst villains of the franchise. If you’re rewatching the show, I’d suggest skipping these episodes altogether. It won’t change anything.
You can stream all 11 seasons of The Walking Dead on Netflix.
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