Spoilers for The Walking Dead Season 6 below.
For many months now, The Walking Dead fans have been watching the slow progression of the storyline centered on the anarchy-driven Wolves. Things came to a head earlier this season when the group attacked Alexandria and left a huge body count, and it seemed like we might see their arc get wrapped up somehow during last night’s midseason finale. But no, it all just branched out a little more and kept things open-ended. So what the hell is really going on there?
We know that there are at least a handful of Wolves still out there in the world, but we were mainly concerned with the one that Morgan was holding hostage, as he was hoping the guy could be changed into someone more moral. That clearly wasn’t the case, as he ended up escaping with Denise as his hostage, taking advantage of a pretty heavy spat between Morgan and Carol that seemed like it might end in someone’s death. I like the fact that his existence got this battle of ideals to occur, since Morgan Vs. Carol is worthy of posters, but it’s not enough.
Is this the extent of what the Wolves represent? They’re just a group of asshats that introduce random chaos for the Alexandrians and others, similar to those bastard Barbarians in the Civilization games? In the comics, the comparable group was the DC Scavengers, who basically just arrived in a flash, made a big mess of things, and then disappeared. The fact that The Walking Dead took weeks to build up the Wolves through forehead carvings implied that their story would be bigger than that of the Scavengers, and it technically has been, since that one guy is still wreaking havoc. Perhaps it’s due to this half-season’s erratic use of time-shifting, but the Wolves story feels like water being treaded until we get more of the Saviors on the show.
Undoubtedly, people are out there that are just fine with the Wolves injecting unpredictable threats into The Walking Dead, but it still feels a little too uninformed and tacked on to me. This could all change in the future if it’s revealed their story goes deeper than previously hinted at, and there are some interesting ways to make that happen. When we were still guessing what the “W”s meant in Season 5, speculations ran toward the haunting Whisperers group from the comics, and although they don’t come until later in the story, it would be kind of awesome if the Wolves ended up morphing and taking on the latter group’s tactics of wearing walker skin. Alternately, I’d also accept finding out that someone within Alexandria is secretly a member of the Wolves.
But none of that is going to happen anytime soon, and we’re going to have to wait until the show comes back next year to see what happens to Denise. (She better not die, since actress Merritt Wever has barely been utilized.) The Walking Dead will return to AMC on Sunday, February 14, for what is being called a heartbreaking midseason premiere. Let us know what you think of the Wolves below.
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