“I get it now,” Beth Greene told Officer Dawn Lerner in the final minutes of the midseason finale of The Walking Dead. In that moment, as Beth jammed a pair of scissors into Dawn’s chest, Beth had finally shed her naivete once and for all and come to understand that people are not to be trusted. That they are only in it for themselves. That their nature cannot change.
“I get it now.”
Dawn was never protecting Beth. She was protecting herself. Dawn used Beth as a pawn to take care of the men threatening her control over Grady Memorial. It may have peripherally helped to serve the best interests of those in the hospital, but as soon as Dawn insisted on keeping Noah, it became apparent that the best interests were not the root of Dawn’s motivations. Keeping control was, just as it was for The Governor.
That realization completed Beth’s arc from a sweet, gullible weak character into a mature, cynical woman willing to murder, not out of necessity, but selflessly. That selfless act, unfortunately, cost Beth her life, though it also cost Dawn her own. Daryl put a bullet in Dawn’s skull, just as Dawn had put one in Beth’s. In doing so, Beth’s last act saved an entire group of people from their dictatorial, self-serving leader. Thanks to Beth, the people still living in Grady can begin to fight for themselves, instead of against fear.
She martyred herself for Noah in what may have been the most quietly shocking moment of the series. One by one, the faces of those around Beth took on expressions of horror until Daryl put a bullet in Dawn’s skull.
The real, overpowering devastation, however, came when Maggie arrived and recognized the limp body of her sister in the arms of Daryl.
If that didn’t absolutely destroy you, then I might question the existence of your soul. We are all Daryl quietly weeping on an apple cart this morning. The Walking Dead has lost its little bright light, and to rob Maggie of her reunion with her sister before Beth died was cruel, but it was certainly effective in amplifying the devastation.
It also salvaged an otherwise mediocre episode that spent too much time dawdling in the church so that it could bring Father Gabriel’s story full circle. Saddled with the guilt over locking his flock out of his church when the zombie outbreak occurred, Gabriel almost got his karmic justice when the very people he locked out nearly ravaged him to zombie death after he got shut out of his own church. Thanks to the katana handiwork of Michonne, Gabriel managed to survive, although they lost the church in the process.
Losing the church, however, once again illustrated the show’s major weakness: The Walking Dead has only gotten better with the character drama under the guide of showrunner Scott Gimple, but in a way, the series is still walking around the forest in circles, just as it had under Frank Darabont. It’s infinitely more thrilling. It’s exponentially more heartbreaking. But at the same time, the survivors haven’t really made any progress over the last eight episodes: They lost two characters, they picked up another (assuming Noah sticks with them), and they found out that Eugene — their one source of hope — was a fraud. Now that they’re all back in Atlanta where the series began, they’re essentially back in square one. It’s a different, wiser, more ruthless composition of characters, but they are no closer to the end.
But as they say, it’s about the journey and not the destination, and The Walking Dead is taking us on a bleak, chest-pounding, heartbreaking journey, and when the series returns in February, there’s going to be a lot of grief to process, grief that could further transform both Maggie and Daryl.
Morgan is also close behind. Whether he’s a friend or foe, however, remains to be seen.
