Help, I Accidentally Started Caring About All These Broken People (and Also Michonne Is So Fine)!!!
I FINALLY MET MICHONNE! and she is everything I expected her to be and like… 10 TIMES BETTER THAN THAT. I LIVE!!! 😭😭🤌🤌🤌
BODY COFFEE CAUSE TEA ISN’T STRONG ENOUGH!!!!
I have no other choice but to stan. Seriously contemplating changing my username to "Michonne's abs" or "Michonne's-bootlicker" or something because I am unwell.
Also… not me catching Rick checking out Michonne in literally every scene they’re in together 👀, he's just like me FR 😂😂
Live pic of me and Rick catching each other staring at Michonne’s ass every time she walks into frame:
I am SO violently jealous of the Richonne shippers who were here from DAY ✨ONE✨. Like y’all saw the vision so early, did you astral project into the writers’ room?? Are you psychic?? PLEASE drop the lottery numbers. PLEASE. I’m BEGGING. 🙏
You clocked the soulmate energy and the big "fuck me" eyes Rick was giving Michonne from their first meeting, the sexual tension, the chemistry long before the rest of the fandom even noticed, and you held your ground against the racist, toxic cesspool that was 2012 stan culture. Y’all were in the trenches, fighting for your lives, and still came out on top.
COME GET YOUR BADDIE CHAINS 😌🤏🤏🤏 IKTR!!!
Honestly, I wish I had been there with you. I would’ve been in every TWD YouTube comment section, subreddit, and Facebook group, guns blazing like:
“RICHONNE IN FIVE OR I BURN THIS WHOLE FRANCHISE TO THE GROUND.”
And when they finally got together?? I KNOW some of y’all levitated. I KNOW you ascended. The spiritual VINDICATION you must’ve felt?? The SMUGNESS??? Went to bed that day like
AND AM I THE ONLY ONE who clocked Rick’s tiny little flicker of disappointment when Merle was all, “Michonne and Andrea was all cuddled up during the winter👀” and lowkey hinted there was something there?? And then like TWO episodes later, Michonne casually drops the “I talk to my dead boyfriend sometimes” line and Rick lights up like a damn Christmas tree 😭😭 Like sir… was that RELIEF I detected?? Was he thinking, “oh wait... I might actually have a shot”??? Bc SAME, hot boy Rick, same!!! I see you!!! I am onto you, cowboy!!! 🫵🏾😤
Anyway, Michonne is bi in this house. That’s a personal headcanon argue with yo mama!
Now SPEAKING of chances… Andrea. Girl. You had like. So many. TOO MANY. And what did you do?? You had a whole opportunity to send the Governor to hell's ashy gates, and you FUMBLED. For WHAT?? Just for him to absolutely humiliate you during the negotiation talks later like it was his full-time job?? I got violent secondhand embarrassment from that whole scene. Like girl... GRIMY, EYEPATCHED, CULT LEADER vs. MICHONNE??? HOT GIRL SURVIVOR WHO KEPT YOU ALIVE IN THE WILDERNESS FOR 8 MONTHS STRAIGHT???
I'm sorry but if a stunning sword-wielding woman took care of me while I was fever-dreaming in the woods for nearly a year, the moment I recovered I’d be like, “Yes ma’am 😩 what do you need? Firewood? Fresh water? A new life in the woods where we live off berries and trauma bonding? Say less, I’m on it.” Like literally I’d be her emotional support simp.
Some of y’all don’t know how to recognize divine favor when it’s handed to you on a plate and that’s why Andrea got what she got. 🤷♀️
Also, me realizing a ton of TikTok sounds come from TWD and I’ve just been unknowingly quoting them for years??? Every time I hear one, I’m like:
And then I rewatch the scene like 50 times just to laugh again 💀💀
Anyways...Now for the trauma portion of this post…
Ok down to business, I’ve finished Season 3 and I’m five episodes from the end of Season 4 and I have a lot of things to say about some people so, buckle up and as usual ⚠️spoilers ahead ⚠️:
First of all, I Can’t Stand Behind Carol’s Choice During the Flu Outbreak
I've been turning this over in my head since it happened, and here it is:
Carol was wrong. Killing Karen and David wasn’t brave. It wasn’t tactical. It wasn’t necessary. It was fear disguised as leadership.
And ultimately, it was pointless.
Why? because the virus still spread, people still died and the group was only saved because of Hershel’s compassion, Daryl, Tyresse and Michonne’s courage, and the strength of the sick fighting to live. (Notice how I didn't mention Bob? yeah fuck him)
Karen and David were already quarantined. Hershel later used that same strategy, but with empathy. He risked his life to comfort the infected, not kill them. And it worked.
Carol didn’t even try. She didn’t warn them. Didn’t comfort them. Didn’t talk to Rick. She just… decided their lives weren’t worth the risk. That’s cold-blooded.
And the question I keep asking myself:
If it had been Carl or Daryl who got sick… would she have done the same thing? I THINK NOT! She didn’t see Karen and David as her people.
But Hershel did...And that's the problem.
Hershel pookie bear 😭😭, He was the heart of the prison group. While others were spiraling, shutting down, or making fear-based decisions (looking at you Carol), Hershel walked straight into the fire.
He chose to enter the infected cell block, not because anyone made him, but because no one else would.
He didn’t kill the sick to stop the spread and He didn’t run from them.
He sat with them, held their hands and prayed over them, He tried to heal them, even knowing he could die.
“You step outside; you risk your life. You take a drink of water; you risk your life. And now you breathe, and you risk your life. Every moment now... you don’t have a choice. The only thing you can choose is what you're risking it for.”
That quote hit me like a train. Because Hershel didn’t just say that he lived it. Carol acted in secret, Hershel led by example, Carol chose fear, Hershel chose compassion. Thats why his death hit me hard
He was good, in a world that desperately needed good people.
And I think the Governor's scene added the missing piece that tied it all together:
The moment where the Governor captures Michonne and Hershel, and Hershel, in pure Hershel fashion, tries to appeal to his humanity:
“If you understand what it’s like to have a daughter… then how can you threaten to kill someone else’s?”
And the Governor just… looks at him and says:
“Because they are not mine.”
And in that moment, I swear, everything from Seasons 1–4 snapped into focus.
That’s the whole thesis of the show so far.
Because that’s the answer we keep getting to the moral questions Dale, Hershel, and even I have been asking since day one: In a world where the outside threat are the walkers/zombies, why do humans fight among each other? Why don’t we help each other survive? Why do people steal, kill, betray, or destroy instead of cooperating?
The answer is always the same:
“Because they are not mine.”
Not my family. Not my responsibility. Not my people.
That mindset, the tribalism, the conditional empathy, the “us vs. them” logic, that’s the real apocalypse. Not the walkers, not the virus.
It’s the loss of humanity. That’s why Carol and Shane felt so comfortable killing Karen, David, and Otis, because they didn’t see them as their people. Their lives were treated as expendable.
Dale warned us. Hershel lived it. Rick is struggling with it.
And men like the Governor, carol and Shane? They’ve fully embraced it.
Secondly, the mirroring between Michonne and Carl
The destruction of the prison scatters the group, and emotionally, it breaks them too. In Season 4, Episode 9 (“After”), we follow two characters in parallel: Michonne and Carl. Each is isolated, traumatized, and trying to figure out who they are without the group, but they move in opposite emotional directions.
When Michonne cuts the arms and jaws off two walkers and ties them up, she’s going back to what kept her alive before she met the prison group: camouflage, silence and detachment. The world has fallen apart again, and her response is to revert: to survive alone.
But something’s different this time, the walker herd becomes a mirror.
As she walks among them, the camera slows down. She’s not just hiding, she’s studying them. Observing. Is she one of them now?
They're dead. Silent. Numb. And so is she, emotionally.
She’s lost her found family. She’s alone again. She’s not living, just drifting.
And worst of all? It feels too comfortable. The flashback confirms what I suspected, her first walker “pets” were her boyfriend and his friend. What starts as a peaceful domestic scene slowly decays into horror: they’re armed, unstable, and already becoming monsters in her memory.
It’s her mind processing grief, guilt, and trauma. She turned people she loved into tools for survival. Now she’s doing it again.
When she snaps and kills the walkers, even the ones she chained up it’s more than a survival choice.
It’s symbolic. It’s a rejection.
“I’m done walking with the dead. I want to find the living again.”
She’s choosing life over numbness. Choosing emotion over detachment. This to me is an episode were a lot of characters come to realize a lot of important things. I find it so fitting that her scene parallels Carl's:
All through season 3 and even season 4, Carl has been battling with what doing the "right thing" meant.
After the prison falls, he’s furious. Not just because of the death of Judith or Hershel (RIP) but because he’s finally seeing his father’s limits.
He berates Rick, “I don’t need you anymore.” Tries to survive alone, kills walkers and then self-soothes by eating pudding... after nearly dyeing, twice.
He’s trying to prove he’s an adult, but when Rick appears to be turning into a walker, Carl can’t pull the trigger.
That’s the breaking point: He realizes he can’t be cold and detached like Shane. He does need his father. He wants to survive, but not at the cost of his humanity.
Here’s the genius of this episode:
Michonne is opening back up. She’s saying, “I want to feel again.”
Carl is shutting down. He’s saying, “Feelings are dangerous.”
They’re on the same emotional path but headed in opposite directions. And that’s what makes their reunion at the end so powerful.
It’s not just “Yay, we found each other 😀.” It’s: “We need each other to stay human 🥹🥹.”
Carl’s emotional arc echoes Shane’s influence. He believes if Rick had just killed the Governor when he had the chance, none of this would’ve happened. It’s a black-and-white view; the kind Shane would have approved of:
“Mercy is weakness. Morality gets people killed.”
But the show keeps challenging that idea. Yes, Rick showed mercy, but was that wrong? Or was it a refusal to abandon civilization completely?
Carl isn’t ready to grapple with moral nuance, not really. He’s still a kid, after all. A kid who deeply loves and respects his father, but is being forced to confront death, violence, and impossible choices at an age when he should be learning algebra and playing videogames, not battlefield ethics.
Most of the talking points he clings to in Seasons 3 and 4 are just words he parrots from Rick and Shane. Carl wants so badly to prove he’s mature, that he’s strong enough to carry the same burden Rick does. But the truth is… he can’t. Not yet.
“Should’ve shot him” isn’t a thoughtful moral stance, it’s emotional shorthand. A way to avoid the complicated grief of what might have been. That kind of black-and-white thinking is exactly what a grieving child would cling to, because it feels safer than facing the gray.
I’m honestly so curious to see how the other character arcs unfold, and whether more of them mirror or invert each other the way Michonne and Carl’s do.
I obviously have other thoughts about other people, but this is getting too long so I will end with Rick.
That’s a whole other beast I haven’t even begun to fully unpack. But it’s clear he’s going through a metamorphosis. You can feel it building all season, from officer friendly to farmer Rick to… whatever comes next.
When he wakes up from this "deep slumber"… I wonder what kind of man he’ll be. One thing’s for sure though, he and Michonne are still gonna be hot as hell. 😌😌🤏🤏🤏
