In this week’s episode of The Walking Dead, “The Bridge,” we learned that someone appears to be picking off Saviors. Maggie is informed by Michonne early in the episode that an ethanol shipment didn’t make it from the Sanctuary to The Hilltop because the Saviors delivering it disappeared; Eugene tells Rick that six Saviors have disappeared in the last month; Alden tells Rick of a number of other Savior disappearances that don’t sound like desertion; and at the end of the episode, someone approaches — and likely kills — Justin.
Who keeps picking off these Saviors? The only real clue that we have is that it is someone that Justin seems to know. When Justin saw this person, he lowered his weapon, which allowed this person to attack Justin with ease. So, we can basically rule out a new character.
We can, however, assume that it is someone who has it in for the Saviors, which could be any number of people. Daryl seems to hate them the most, but obviously, this is not how Daryl handles things — he’s more out in the open about his hatred. That thought actually gave me pause, because after Daryl’s fight with Justin earlier in the episode, Carol told him, “We’ll deal with him, but not like this.” Maybe Carol has been dealing with the Saviors in other ways? Maybe that’s why she asked to be posted up in The Sanctuary in the first place, because she wanted to be closer to the Saviors so that she could kill them one-by-one, as revenge perhaps for all the members of The Kingdom they took out?
But that doesn’t make sense, because Carol was with Ezekiel (who had just proposed) when Justin was attacked.
Maybe Maggie? That seems unlikely because she is trying to work with the Saviors, begrudgingly, and besides, she doesn’t have time to pick off Saviors in the night. Her lieutenant, Jesus, on the other hand, could be the killer. This could go all the way back to Maggie and Jesus’ agreement at the end of last season to get their revenge on Negan. On the other hand, Jesus is stationed at The Hilltop, and I suspect people would notice if he went missing for very long.
Could it be Dwight? Has he secretly come back and started killing off Saviors? It’s possible, but unlikely. Dwight’s issues were with Negan, and not really the rank-and-file Saviors, plus Justin would’ve reacted to the appearance of Dwight with more shock. Instead of saying, “Christ, you almost got yourself killed,” he might have said, “Christ! What are you doing here?”
However, on the second watch of this week’s episode, the identity of the killer became clear. I think I know exactly who has been picking off Saviors. Someone with a huge axe to grind against the Saviors for killing off all the men in her community. Someone so terrified of The Saviors that her and her people fled their community and started a new one. Someone who — in last week’s episode — was feeling sad about her dead brother and talked with Daryl about it.
Someone like Cyndie:
It makes perfect sense. Not only was she grieving over her brother in last week’s episode, but this week she was getting her hand stitched up by Enid because she cut it “peeling potatoes” and was too embarrassed to tell anyone. I don’t think she cut her hand peeling potatoes. I think she cut her hand picking off Saviors, and she was too afraid to tell others about that. From a storytelling perspective, she’s also perfect: Recognizable, but not too obvious, and someone with an obvious motive.
