Just saw the season finale of The Walking Dead.
Spoilers below. If you haven’t seen it yet, run away.
What did I take away from this episode? Well, Carl’s turning into a nice little sociopath. Eh…maybe sociopath isn’t the right word. I don’t know what psychiatric term I’m looking for. But his actions in the forest, along with the little lecture he gave his father, made my eyebrows go way, way up, and not just because I was a good kid who never talked back to my parents.
I’m sure some will look at it as him “Well, he’s doing what needs to be done.” This argument works if doing what needs to be done entails becoming an entirely closed off group, completely hostile to outsiders and viewing everyone as an enemy.
Except in a situation like you have in Walking Dead, with countless known enemies (in this case the zombies), you really can’t afford to be a tiny, isolated group that treats every other living being as the enemy. There’s too few of you to go around already.
I probably could have forgiven Carl one or the other. The thing in the forest – hey, they were in a scary situation, adrenaline was high, he pulled the trigger. The situation with his father…he’s in a bad place, they’ve just barely avoided losing their home, and I think there’s still some part of Carl who wants to see his father the way a lot of kids see their fathers (or mothers – but we’re talking about Rick here), as a sort of hero and as a leader. Shit went screwy, people died, that means Rick failed. So I do think there’s some anger there…that Carl thinks Rick has let him/them down.
But both? This ain’t just teenage rebellion. The show is planting the seeds for some future strife between father and son.
Hooboy. That little shit is gonna be trouble in the coming seasons.
As an aside, where the hell did the Gov go off to? With all his “you kill or you die” chatter, I half-expect him to wind up hanging out in Westeros, helping Cersei in her plot to seize power once and for all.
Actually…if I was still into fanfic…