(Warning: The Walking Dead spoilers will obviously be found below.)
In the ninth season episode of The Walking Dead, “The Calm Before,” Alpha, Beta, and The Whisperers decapitate multiple Alexandrians, including Tara and Henry. However, they leave behind one person, Siddiq, to tell the story to the rest of the Alexandrians, which is exactly what Siddiq does during the fair late in that episode, informing the communities that he was kept alive to tell their story and encouraging them to honor the fallen as heroes.
In the months since the incident, Siddiq has suffered from extreme PTSD. Whenever the incident is raised, Siddiq has panic attacks. It has not gone unnoticed. In this week’s episode, the new doctor, Dante, shares his own PTSD experiences with Siddiq in order to provide him with comfort. Meanwhile, Siddiq’s PTSD is so bad that he is unable to remove a shard of glass from Carol’s body and properly stitch her up after she has a run-in with a Whisperer.
The question is this: What if Siddiq is suffering from something more than PTSD stemming from having witnesses the decapitation of his friends by Alpha and The Whisperers? What if Siddiq actually participated in the decapitations? I am by no means suggesting that Siddiq willingly did so — Siddiq is good people — but knowing Alpha as we do, she’s sadistic enough to force Siddiq to perform one or more of the decapitations himself in exchange for his life.
It would explain a couple of things, specifically why — while Siddiq was trying to use a scalpel when operating on Carol — he had a very specific flashback vision of a bloody sword blade and Alpha saying, “Good,” as though to Siddiq. As though telling Siddiq he did a “good” job in decapitating one of his friends.
That particular flashback strengthens the theory, but what may seal it is the fact that Alpha knew that the Alexandrians crossed into Whisperer territory three times, only one of which was witnessed by The Whisperers. The Whisperers were potentially hundreds of miles away during another boundary-crossing incident, during the snowstorm last winter. How did Alpha know about that?
The only way she’d know is if she had an informant on the inside. It could be a couple of people. It could be Dante — we don’t know his past, and it’s possible he was a Whisperer with medical experience sent in to spy on the Alexandrians. Or, it could be Siddiq, who is informing on his own people to prevent Alpha from telling everyone that he decapitated Henry or Tara or both.
It’s too early to say for sure that the storyline is heading in that direction, but it sure is beginning to look like it.
