The Walking Dead: The Rube-Goldberg Machine

The first face we see in Season 6 Episode 3 and the recipient of the titular “Thank (but also fuck) You” is Glenn. He’s running away from half of the herd: the half that heard the siren call of the eighteen-wheeler that plowed into Alexandria’s walls. He’s running towards his own death. What could go wrong? [divider type=”space_thin”]The thing is: I don’t care if Glenn dies or if he miraculously lives in some weird Misery-esque bait-and-switch revisionism as the whole of the Internet and a world full of wishful thinkers hope. That’s only partially because of my inability to feel. It’s mostly because I’m thinking about time, relationship, and redemption. What fans should do if Glenn is alive next episode. We are three episodes into this season and only about two hours have passed. “JSS,” the second episode of the season, starts about halfway through “First Time Again,” the first episode. And in “Thank You,” we have the horn and the appearance of the Wolves to orient us in time. This kind of magnification highlights the interdependence of the group. It’s easy to say that the survivors depend on each other or that Nicholas caused Noah’s death. Those things are obviously true. But what do second chances depend on? I’ve already said that Glenn should have left Nicholas’ still warm corpse in the woods when [and I’m shaking my head as I write this] the coward tried to kill him. But Glenn didn’t. Just like Michonne didn’t let Andrea die when she could have, because as ruthless as thi…