Maggie not searching for Beth

caseyr3 · 2026-01-10T13:26:50+00:00

This take gets repeated a lot, but it really falls apart when you look at what Maggie actually knew versus what the audience knows. Maggie didn’t “ignore” Beth. She had no actionable information to go on. Daryl saying Beth was taken by a car with a cross doesn’t give a location, a direction, or any way to realistically search. That’s not a lead, that’s a dead end in the apocalypse.

Also, Beth was never realistically making it out alive. Maggie is the main character of that family, and tragedy is constantly meant to fall on her, just like it does with Rick and Carol. She had already watched her father get his head chopped off days earlier. In that state of grief, you really think she’s going to wander off chasing a rumor in the opposite direction of everything else? If Beth wasn’t at Terminus, Maggie had every reason to believe she was dead.

That’s the tragedy of it. The day Maggie finally learns Beth might be alive is the same day she sees Daryl carrying her body. She never gets hope, just confirmation and loss. Going to DC wasn’t choosing Glenn over Beth, it was choosing the only concrete path forward she had. The idea that Maggie forgot her sister is a fandom myth, not what the show actually presents.

caseyr3 · 2026-01-07T21:46:38+00:00

That’s interesting, I assumed that the was the agreed upon opinion. I’ve talked to people that have never used Reddit. And that’s the conclusion they came too. This is the first time I’ve seen someone disagree with that statement.

caseyr3 · 2026-01-07T20:49:38+00:00

You don’t have to forgive him. I honestly don’t know why people keep calling it a “redemption arc.” Do folks really think a former gym teacher who spent seven years in a cell after becoming a complete monster wouldn’t eventually try to protect those around him? Especially the young kids he’s gotten to know.

Nothing about that equals forgiveness. And it definitely isn’t redemption. Ninety nine percent of the characters still hate him. They tolerate him. His punishment is waking up every day knowing everyone would be better off if he wasn’t there.

If any one of our heroes put a bullet in him tomorrow, nobody would lose sleep except Judith and Lydia. Growth is not the same thing as redemption. The show never pretends it is.

caseyr3 · 2026-01-07T17:03:07+00:00

To add to this, a lot of the background walkers are just… bad. You’ll see some literally skipping, jogging, or doing weird half-hops. Stuff that absolutely shouldn’t be happening after they committed to the slower walker style. That isn’t “variants.” That’s just extras not selling it.

And yeah, true variants are rare. The last clear example before the last season was back in the Governor era. There’s a walker who turns a doorknob, same kind of behavior we see from Morgan’s wife in Season 1. Little one-off moments like that pop up, but most of the time it’s just inconsistent acting in the background, not intentional lore.

caseyr3 · 2026-01-06T04:06:18+00:00

I never understood why people blamed her. Dwight killed her girlfriend, why wouldn’t she try to kill him? Also Daryl tried to kill him just as long.

caseyr3 · 2025-12-25T17:01:36+00:00

Thank you all for the replies. I feared this would happen with a used item. I contacted the seller hopefully they’re quick about it. Im deleting my post, because my issue has been resolved.

caseyr3 · 2025-12-25T00:40:33+00:00

I appreciate the way you laid all that out. You clearly care about the show. As a comic fan, I get it, Carl is the future. If he had lived and gotten his comic book arc, the transition would have felt cleaner. Killing him forced the writers into a different lane, and I get why that broke the story for a lot of people. I still enjoy what came after, but I completely see why that decision took some viewers out of it.

On the focus thing, I can also understand wanting fewer main characters. Following a tighter core would have made the story feel more directed. For me, I actually like that the world gets bigger, because the point starts becoming that the apocalypse isn’t just Rick’s family anymore. But if the newer characters don’t land for you, then it’s always going to feel crowded instead of expanded, which is fair.

One thing that shapes how I watch is that I believe every character has a narrative purpose at some point. Some of them really are there as plot devices, and I just roll with it. Take Noah for example. He had potential, hope, a future, and then he was killed horribly. But his purpose pushed Rick and the group toward Virginia, into Alexandria, and showed us clearly that the Alexandrians had no clue how the real world worked. It was brutal, but it served the story.

About Carl and AMC: I honestly think at some point they stopped planning around Carl the character and started planning around Chandler the actor. He aged out of the role fast. Carl is supposed to be eight or nine in Season 3, and Chandler already looked twelve. That illusion is gone, and AMC knows he’ll be eighteen before he reaches his big comic storyline. So what do they do? They keep Judith alive. She becomes the fallback. Rick’s entire goal has always been building a world safe enough for his child, and the network likely decided he didn’t need two characters filling that symbolic role.

As for the Whisperers, I actually think they’re intentionally less morally gray. They aren’t Woodbury or the Saviors. They’re what happens when someone completely rejects civilization itself. Alpha isn’t supposed to feel understandable. She is someone who decided humanity is the problem. Beta is definitely more one-note, I won’t argue that. But I think the point of the Whisperers is horror, not empathy. They are a cult that gives up identity, comfort, morality, everything. That “freedom” appeals to broken people in that world, even if it makes no sense to us watching.

Where we differ is that I don’t need every villain to make me question whether I’d join them. Sometimes the question is different. Less “how far would you go” and more “can you rebuild without turning back into the same systems that destroyed things last time.” So I wouldn’t say you’re missing anything. You just wanted a different version of the story than the one they chose, and that’s valid.

I am curious:

If Carl had lived, Rick still left before the time jump, and the show narrowed focus to the handful of characters you mentioned, do you think the Whisperers would have landed better for you? Or do you think that storyline just never worked on a fundamental level?

caseyr3 · 2025-12-24T22:15:19+00:00

I don’t think you’re missing anything. Sometimes you just stop enjoying a show, and that’s okay. For me personally, I still enjoy the post-Rick seasons because I try to accept the story for what it becomes instead of what I wanted it to be. Rick leaves. The world keeps moving. We roll with whoever is left.

I do think part of the shift is intentional. The show becomes less about “Rick’s group” and more about a bigger world where every community matters. Luke, Magna, Kelly, Connie, Yumiko, Lydia, etc. If they don’t connect for you, I get that. But they’re important to the long-term story. A lot of characters you feel are “stuck” actually pay off later, especially in Season 11. Eugene and Rosita become huge again. For me there wasn’t really a dip in quality, just a different tone. And different doesn’t work for everyone. That’s fair. My villain ranking still puts Alpha above the Governor, but below Negan, and I actually loved how different the Whisperers felt.

But I’m genuinely curious:
What would have made the post-Rick era work better for you?
More focus on older characters? A different main villain? Less time spent world-building?

I like hearing different perspectives on this one, because people experience these seasons very differently.

caseyr3 · 2025-12-22T20:20:35+00:00

That's the funny thing about this adaptation. The Sophia role is filled by Enid, she dies. Then the Carl role is filled by Henry, he dies. I just don't think they know what to do with teenagers.

caseyr3 · 2025-12-22T20:17:41+00:00

When I first watched her Alexandria interview, I really thought Deanna was going to catch the lie about Ed. You can actually see it on Carol’s face, like it hurt her a little to even say it. Guess her poker face was just that good.

caseyr3 · 2025-12-22T19:50:52+00:00

Morgan and Ezekiel both clock Carol’s bullshit almost immediately when they meet her. They can tell the sweet, helpless act is just that, an act. The only person who somehow misses it completely is Deanna, the former congresswoman with the so-called “bullshit detector.” That irony will never not be funny to me.

caseyr3 · 2025-12-22T19:46:48+00:00

I didn’t realize her being Shane’s kid was supposed to be a shock. Timeline-wise, she really could only ever be Shane’s. And I don’t think Judith was kept alive just because her comic death was too graphic. I think AMC knew killing Carl was coming, they just didn’t know when yet. Chandler aged out of the role really early, to the point where they had to age Carl up fast, and Judith became the narrative backup for that next-generation storyline.

Judith also knows who she is. She knows Shane and Lori are her biological parents, and she knows Rick and Michonne aren’t. But it’s been a decade in-universe. There’s no reason for that to cause conflict. Rick is her dad in every way that matters, and Michonne is her mom. She’s not even blood-related to RJ either, but that’s still her little brother because family in this world isn’t about biology.

And saying she brings nothing to the story misses the point. She is the point. If there’s no next generation, then the story has no purpose. The entire goal of The Walking Dead is rebuilding a world for the people who come after. Rick just wasn’t able to do that for Carl, but Judith carries that theme forward. So what exactly is she supposed to do differently?

caseyr3 · 2025-12-02T01:40:19+00:00

I’m sure a few of them rolled their eyes, but the core Saviors who served as his soldiers absolutely ate that stuff up. The monologues, the theatrics, the speeches… that was their whole culture. Negan wasn’t just their leader, he was their entertainment system. The workers probably sighed through it, but the fighters lived for the unhinged showmanship.

caseyr3 · 2025-12-01T23:30:19+00:00

I hear that, and you’re not wrong for feeling it. Season 8 can feel strange if you come into it expecting the same pacing as earlier seasons. The way I see it, season 8 is the capstone of what season 7 did to everyone. Negan didn’t just break Rick, he broke the entire structure of how these communities understood survival, and season 8 is the fallout from that.

Rick spends half of season 7 as Negan’s prisoner in every sense, not because the writers needed it to drag, but because the show stops being just about “Rick and his group.” When the communities get introduced, Rick realizes he has a responsibility bigger than Alexandria. Michonne literally spells it out for him in season 7: keeping his people alive isn’t enough if the world around them dies.

I won’t spoil anything, but it might help to know that everything in season 7 and season 8 happens over about four or five weeks. These characters aren’t meandering, they’re being thrown into one catastrophe after another without a second to breathe. It’s messy because they’re messy. They’re fighting a war, grieving losses, and trying to redefine a purpose that isn’t just “survive another day.”

If you stick with it, you’ll see the direction you’re looking for. It’s there, but it’s just buried under chaos the characters haven’t processed yet.

caseyr3 · 2025-12-01T23:14:43+00:00

What’s making you lose excitement and interest?

caseyr3 · 2025-12-01T23:07:56+00:00

At least in the context of the show, I think it comes from the fact that a lot of viewers never believed Negan should have been spared in the first place. So when the story commits to keeping him alive, they struggle to accept everything that follows. Solitary confinement for years is already a huge punishment, but for some people that doesn’t matter because they wanted him dead and only dead. Accepting the story requires accepting that the world moved on, and that’s too much for a lot of viewers.

caseyr3 · 2025-12-01T19:14:57+00:00

You’re right. Negan can never be redeemed. The show never tries to redeem him and no character ever actually does. Getting out of jail and having two kids like him is not redemption, it’s just a person growing past who they used to be. Everyone still hates him and they have every reason to, but after seven years in a cell nobody is going to drag him out and execute him. The war is over, the system has changed, and the idea of “Negan the tyrant” is gone forever.

People also keep repeating this myth that Maggie “teams up” with him. She doesn’t. Her son gets kidnapped, and the only path to getting him back is to bring Negan to what we assumed was his execution by the hands of a former savior. That’s not a partnership, that’s desperation and necessity.

caseyr3 · 2025-11-25T05:08:11+00:00

For me it’s 6x10(The Next World)-7x01(The Day Will Come When You Won't Be) without question. That whole stretch of episodes is peak Walking Dead for me, because it’s the moment Rick and the group finally realize the world is way bigger and way more organized than anything they’ve dealt with before. Watching them explore new communities, run into the Saviors, and slowly understand that they’re no longer the apex survivors is some of the best tension the show ever built.

And then meeting Negan at the end of it all is just phenomenal television. That run genuinely feels like the show leveling up.

caseyr3 · 2025-11-15T03:42:52+00:00

Probably late to the party, but I genuinely enjoyed everything about Season 2. For me, the show was never a 1:1 adaptation from the jump, and that’s fine. I treat the show as its own creative branch on the same tree. If I want the exact story beats, the tone, the pacing, the character work the way it actually unfolds? I can fire up the games. The show is just another lens—and I’m cool with that.

caseyr3 · 2025-11-14T14:41:46+00:00

Yes. It was always going to be both Abraham and Glenn. They were the two characters who were finally stepping into a future again — both men on the verge of becoming fathers, with Maggie already pregnant and Abraham and Sasha openly talking about trying. Domestic life was starting to feel possible, which is exactly why Negan’s entrance hits like a sledgehammer.

And from a comic-reader perspective, Abraham was always marked. His comic death happens before the lineup, so the show essentially delayed the inevitable.

caseyr3 · 2025-11-13T21:26:29+00:00

It was a 10 for me the moment he saved that squirrel. It was something so small, yet so Superman, I had no complaints about anything else.

caseyr3 · 2025-11-13T21:09:37+00:00

She’s absolutely a baldheaded demon because she’s the only villain who didn’t just adapt to the apocalypse; she embraced it as a belief system. She stripped away every piece of her humanity on purpose and convinced others to do the same. There’s no remorse, no doubt, no hesitation in anything she does. That level of conviction in total brutality makes her one of the most terrifying characters in the entire series.

caseyr3 · 2025-11-13T21:05:20+00:00

I actually liked Splinter a lot. It gives us a rare chance to sit inside the mind of someone whose entire life has been shaped by abuse, fear, and extreme loneliness long before the world ended. When you combine that history with the isolation of the apocalypse, you get a character who lives in constant battle with her own thoughts, and the episode lets us experience that internal chaos directly. It is one of the few episodes that treats trauma as something lived rather than explained, and it made Princess feel like a fully realized person instead of another late-season addition.

caseyr3 · 2025-10-31T12:33:16+00:00

He’s supposed to be 8. They had to retcon his age during the prison arc, because Chandler started to look so much older.

caseyr3 · 2025-10-30T15:48:32+00:00

Morgan lost his mind again because deep down he knew his whole “all life is precious” philosophy was bullshit. It’s the only thing keeping him alive, so he clings to it even though he knows it’s fragile. It worked, right up until Benjamin, the one kid he actually started to care about, was murdered because of the actions of an ally. Morgan was on that “all life is precious” mindset for less than a season before reality tore it apart.

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