For sixty something hours, The Walking Dead has struggled to define the concept of hell on earth. In Episode 512, “Remember,” Scott Gimple and Friends explore the flip side of that question. What would a terrestrial heaven look like now that the dead roam the earth? A lot like the Pottery Barn catalog, actually, but more about that in a moment.
Let’s talk for a second about hell, Walking Dead style. Rick Grimes’s nightmare began when he woke up in a hospital only to find the world literally gone to hell. The halls are filled with flesh-eating zombies. Even little girl flesh-eating zombies. His family is gone. His friends are gone. And with cable television a thing of the past, it’s now impossible to keep up with the Kardashians.
But, of course, we realize now that he’ll soon look back on that as the good old days.
There’ll be herds of zombies. Friends and family eaten by zombies. Friends and family shot through the head so they don’t become zombies. And limbs hacked off for all sorts of reasons.
But it gets worse from there. The whole zombie thing doesn’t bring out the best in most of the people encountered by Rick and his friends. He kills Shane, his best friend, and it just kind of spirals downhill from there.
In the pre-apocalypse, that kind of body count would have made him either Public Enemy number one or Rick Grimes, American Sniper. Instead, it just makes him a guy doing what he has to do. (Let it be noted that Rick, who created the Three Questions, doesn’t remember how many people he’s killed. And neither do we. )
And that’s where Walking Dead morphed from Terror (an external threat that’s a danger to one’s physical being) to Horror (a more insidious evil that works from within.)
Back in the day, every one of our merry band had a list of things that they absolutely, positively, under no circumstances would never ever do, no matter what. And we watched them cringe and do that very thing in order to survive. It’s hard to escape monsters, but harder to fight against becoming one.
Are you looking forward to the Alexandria arc? Share your thoughts about Episode 512, but please avoid comic-based spoilers for those who haven’t read ahead.