Can ‘The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live’ Ever Redeem Jadis?
(Warning: This post contains spoilers for The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live Episode 2.)
It’s hard to think of a more infuriating The Walking Dead character than Jadis. In the original series, she was a shifty artist and a horrible ally with a bad haircut who repeatedly screwed over Rick Grimes and his crew. In the spinoff The World Beyond, she was a full-fledged villain with an even worse haircut who (once again) sold out her friends whenever it suited her. From her brief appearance at the end of this week’s The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live, it looks like not much has changed: She’s still a self-interested mercenary with a penchant for very short bangs. But will she at least be compelling this time around?
AMC’s latest Walking Dead spinoff finally reveals what Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) has been up to for the past seven-odd years, and as it turns out, he’s been trying to escape the Civic Republic ever since Jadis swept him up into that helicopter. She saved his life by labeling him a “B” instead of an “A”—the latter of which, as we learned in World Beyond, automatically become lab rats. But by bringing him into the CRM’s clutches, she also doomed Rick to a life in captivity. If there’s one thing we know about this sheriff, it’s that all he ever wants to do is roam free with his loved ones, so this arrangement was never gonna work. It also doesn’t help that he and his love Michonne (Danai Gurira) are extremely stubborn and hellbent on finding one another.