'The Walking Dead' Season 10 Episode 10: The biggest threat isn't the Whisperers, it's the need for vengeance
Spoiler alert for Season 10 Episode 10 'Stalker'
'The Walking Dead' has rarely ever actually been about zombies. Even the title, as Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) memorably pointed out, refers not to the walkers but the apocalypse's survivors. 'The Walking Dead' is a show that follows just what becomes of humanity when all hope and the need for civilization is violently ripped away.
Now, however, the survivors are clawing their way back to a semblance of the world that came before. Living in Alexandria, building up a community, working towards an actual future instead of just surviving — until the Whisperers come along.
The Whisperers represent a fraction of the population that has given up on the future. Their way of life is not sustainable, truly, but it makes them dangerous survivors. They wear the masks of the apocalypse, clothe themselves in the scenes of the walkers all around them, giving the world's biggest threat both intelligence and malice. What we have seen, time and again, is that what's hurting the survivors isn't the Whisperers themselves so much as their need to strike out at the Whisperers for what they have done.
We have seen it most prominently in Carol Peletier (Melissa McBride), as her increasingly reckless attempts to get revenge on Alpha (Samantha Morton) have put not just her but the lives of those around her in jeopardy. This episode, we see it in Daryl Dixon (Norman Reedus), whose single-minded pursuit of Alpa nearly kills him.
Like the walkers themselves, the Whisperers are definitely a threat, one that none of the survivors asked for. What's tearing the survivors apart is their inability to let go of the hurt from the past and see rationally. The survivors have a lot of trauma to process and the apocalypse seems to have devoured all licensed therapists. The Whisperers are the most current face of a past that has hurt the survivors, again and again, and are currently their biggest barrier towards a peaceful future.
The question of the survivor's future lies in them being able to process and move on from the way the world has unfairly hurt them. If they can move past their trauma and the darkness that is pulling them down. Fans of the comics already know that there's a possibility of a bright future ahead but that might not be the case for the survivors if all they can do is focus on the pain they want to cause and lose their way.
The next episode of 'The Walking Dead' airs on March 8, on AMC.