#merle who has ALWAYS doubted his place in the group and is actively losing his powers

[thatgirlonstage]

Thinks about arms outstretched and has to lie facedown on the ground for nine hours again

[thegloriouscollectorlady]

First thoughts on 9X1

I have lots of thoughts about the season 9 premiere but I had one quick thought I wanted to share before trying to put together my other thoughts. The thing that I always try to note when watching season premieres are the threads of story they are going to develop for each character over the upcoming season. For example for Maggie she is still struggling with losing Glenn and with what it means to be a leader. For Rick and Michonne the upcoming season is going to be about the struggle of unifying all the different communities into one group and in doing so with how to recreate the rules and morays of a civilized society (an extension for both Rick and Michonne of what Deanna was trying to teach them and the hope she was trying to instill into them).

So given all that I paid close attention to Daryl and the conflicts they appear to be setting up for him and it became clear that Daryl is going to struggle with several important things this season. The first is that Daryl (like many good leaders) is a reluctant leader. He does not want to be leading the Sanctuary and he does not want to be responsible for other people. He doubts Rick’s vision and he very much longs for the time when it was just “us”. The interesting thing about Daryl using that context is that there was actually an episode in season 4 entitled “Us” which was about Daryl attempting to fit in with the Claimers before reuniting with Rick in episode 15’s “A”. So it would appear that Daryl struggles with the Claimers (many of which were related to the things he learned and felt from his time with Beth) are influencing his current story line with the Saviors/Sanctuary. The other very interesting thing to remember about TWD is that they set up a paradox between “Us” and “Them” within the context of the show and the writers then gave us an episode entitled “Them” which was season 5’s episode 10.

It is in episode 5X10’s “Them “ that we actively see Daryl mourning Beth for the first time but it’s also important in other ways that continue to affect the plot and story moving forward such as this is the episode where we begin to see a fracture in Daryl and Rick’s relationship (something that’s continued to affect he story ever since) and this is also the episode where Rick talks about being the walking dead and Daryl contradicts him and says “we ain’t them”. In 4x15 Daryl solidifies in his own mind after his time with Beth what it means to be “Us” or what it means to him to be one of the “good guys”. She helped him to understand that he could be one of those people that he was worthy of that and her trust and faith in him and her goodness helped to inspire him and to heal him. Season 4 is where Daryl begins to identify with what it means to be “us”. In season 5 Daryl contradicts Rick because he knows who team family is. He knows what it means to be “us” and he knows it isn’t to be “them” as Rick is suggesting. Rick is suggesting that they have to turn everything off, they have to accept that they are dead, in order to survive and Daryl says no we don’t. We aren’t “them” because we feel and we love and that’s what makes us strong. Where did Daryl get that idea? The man who literally turned everything off after the fall of the prison. . . well that would be Beth. Beth is the one that taught him that loving was a strength and feeling that love was good and inspirational. So when Daryl tells Rick in 5X10 that he’s wrong he’s saying that he believes Beth. That what Beth taught him about loving and feeling and hoping was right and that what Rick is trying to say about surviving and turning everything off and basically becoming the walking dead is wrong. It is here that we truly see Daryl understanding where Beth’s strength really came from. He tells Maggie that Beth was strong but that she didn’t know it because he recognizes that Beth’s strength came not from her physical abilities(which she also had) but from her hope and her emotional strength. In that statement he is validating that there are different kinds of strength and that while Beth might not have been the best fighter in the group (in her mind because they show us at Grady that she was very good at certain survival skills) her emotional strength and hope in the world gave her a strength that few others in the group possessed and that while she might not have seen that he finally did.

So in the premiere we see Daryl talking about being “Us” again and it’s very interesting because of what “Us” means to Daryl. To Daryl being “Us” means understanding strength in a different way and it means adhering to the idea that there is more to life than simply surviving. There is family and love and hope and in this moment Daryl is expressing his fatigue at the idea of just continuing to survive ( which Daryl has been doing and not doing well since losing Beth in season 4).  In the midst of this we get another very interesting hint about where Daryl’s story is headed through his conversation with Cindie. He talks about Merle but then he also talks about missing the people who they’ve lost along the way who he knows would have wanted to be here. Of course there is no doubt that Glenn is one of the people in Daryl’s mind as he says this and that there are other people as well but it’s significant to note that Daryl was exceptionally close to one particular character whose story became very much about surviving. For most of her time on the show Beth was a supporting character and it wasn’t until season 4 that she began to get her own story and her own trajectory and it’s import to note that it was really all about one thing. Beth’s story when boiled down to its simplest plot points was about survival and the notion that conventional thought would say someone like her could not survive but that she was determined to do so. From the fall of the prison onward Beth’s entire story became about survival and two of Beth’s most influential lines “ you don’t get it” from “Still”  and “I get it now”  from “Coda” were repeated by Daryl in the premiere and I don’t believe this was accidental as both of these lines tie into Daryl’s story of “us” and “them”. In “Still” Beth even goes so far as to say “I know you look at me and you just see another dead girl. I'm not Michonne. I'm not Carol. I'm not Maggie. I've survived and you don't get it 'cause I'm not like you or them. But I made it and you don't get to treat me like crap just because you're afraid.”

Beth is acknowledging in this quote that she isn’t like “Them” or like Rick’s interpretation of “Them” in 5x10 and she isn’t with the group when “Them” occurs in season 5 even though Maggie and Daryl are actively mourning her at the time. Beth is instead “Us” or the person at least that helps Daryl to define what “Us” means to him. To him she is the best of what their group could become because even in the face of shattering loss after the fall of the prison she maintained her humanity and her hope and she doggedly believed that there was more to life than simply surviving. I believe that these are key themes that we will see developed throughout season 9 or they would not have been introduced as part of Daryl’s story in the premiere. I also believe that Beth’s story became what it did because of what it would mean to Daryl’s story in the future. I also think that the fact that her entire story became about survival is significant and it’s something that I will explore in another post because I believe that her survival story might actually be a key part of understanding her place in the overall narrative. At the time her story made little sense within the greater story but as time passes and the greater story evolves it begins to make more and more sense and it appears to fit much better into the overall context of the story and particularly into Daryl’s story and where his story is headed.