Wait. Did they just make us care about a character we totally hated?!
One of the most interesting things about “The Walking Dead” is that even the villains, like our heroes, are incredibly complex and, dare I say, often somewhat likeable. Rather than bringing to the screen villains who are purely, unrealistically evil, the show often digs into their humanity in a way that at least lets you know why they’re doing what they’re doing and how they’ve become who they’ve become. Mind you, new villain Negan is unquestionably the most irredeemable one we’ve yet seen on the show, but within his group is a character who is perhaps not quite as evil as he once seemed.
I’m of course talking about Dwight, who last night’s brand new episode primarily centered on; “The Cell” was as much about Dwight, a man already broken by Negan, as it was about Daryl, a man in the process of being broken. We first met Dwight back in Season 6, and though he initially seemed like a halfway decent guy, he quickly became perhaps the most hated character on the show: after stealing Daryl’s bike and crossbow, he ensured he was enemy number one to Daryl himself, and you don’t need me to tell you how much the show’s viewers hate anyone and everyone who threatens the life and safety of the unkillable Daryl Dixon. As if that wasn’t bad enough, the viewer hatred for Dwight became downright volatile when he killed the kind Doctor Denise at the tail end of last season… with Daryl’s crossbow.
But last night, we learned many new things about Dwight – things that have, as the show has always been good at doing, made us understand why he is who he is. To make a long story short, Dwight is more of a prisoner to Negan than an ally, and as we suspected, that nasty burn on half of his face was the handiwork of Negan himself: after Dwight stole medical supplies in an effort to save the life of his diabetic sister-in-law, he was caught by Negan, who branded him with a molten hot iron. We also learned that Dwight was spared when Sherry, his wife, agreed to marry Negan in exchange for her husband’s life. In other words, they’re both slaves: doomed to a life of servitude to Negan.
One of the episode’s side plots saw Dwight heading out to retrieve another reluctant Savior who had fled the compound. After begging for Dwight to just kill him, the bootleg Daryl seemed to give in, shooting the unnamed man dead. At the end of the episode, however, we saw that he only shot the man in the back, and then subsequently brought him back to the camp to be one of Negan’s zombies. So much for putting the poor guy out of his Negan-induced misery, huh?
So here’s what we know. Dwight is Negan’s right-hand man. Dwight killed Denise. He totally shot that dude. And Dwight is also, at this point in the show, beloved character Daryl Dixon’s main adversary. And yet, with all those odds stacked against him, I’m pretty sure “The Walking Dead” just turned Dwight into a character worth rooting for. As evidenced by the leather vest he wears and the motorcycle he rides around, Dwight is essentially Daryl if Daryl is successfully broken by Negan, and he’s also clearly trying to ensure that Daryl, who he seems to respect and see himself in, doesn’t ever go on a date with Lucille. Good guy? Bad guy? Those lines are blurry. But one thing is for certain: the Dwight we know isn’t Dwight. Dwight, not by his own choice, is Negan.
And when you’re Negan, everything you do is orchestrated by Negan.
I’m not saying I want to eat sandwiches with Dwight and I’m not sure that it’d be a wise choice to hang out at his pad and watch “Who’s the Boss?” VHS tapes, but in just one hour last night, “The Walking Dead” fleshed out a character who is, at the very least, an interesting new addition to everything else going on right now. And with two major character deaths just a couple weeks ago, the smartest thing the show can possibly do right now is generate new ones worth caring about. And again, the smartest thing the series has ALWAYS done is to show that the characters we love are one bad – or perhaps one forced – decision away from becoming the villains we hate. To reference “Stranger Things,” characters like The Governor and now Dwight are essentially “Upside Down” versions of heroes like Rick Grimes and Daryl Dixon, and that has made them some of the most compelling bad guys on television.
Because maybe we’re all just one bad day away from being them.
