REVIEW: The Walking Dead, S10 Ep4 – Silence the Whisperers

A fallen tree causes all sorts of chaos in this week’s chapter of. The Walking Dead while Lydia receives unwelcome attention in the communtiies that have still not fully accepted her. While things go wrong in Hilltop and aid from Alexandria is sought, more people suspect that Lydia is conspiring with her mother to destroy everything. 

It’s interesting to note that halfway through the first half of the season and we still don’t have a major Whisperer conflict on The Walking Dead. Instead, we have small-scale incidents like this fallen tree that seems like sabotage and the waves of walkers last time. But the show has been coy about the Whisperers’ involvement in these problems. It’s very possible that they really are simply biding their time and watching with perverted glee as their enemies grow more and more paranoid and exhausted. If the Whisperers really have nothing to do with these hardships and it’s a case of bad luck for the characters, then, that’s strangely brilliant.

But anti-Whisperer sentiment grows and this manifests in several ways in this episode. There’s the graffiti “Silence the Whispers” that appears first on Daryl’s house and then on other buildings in Alexandria. Then, more destructively, there’s the unfair treatment of Lydia, one that escalates to violence and that somehow drags Negan into the fray.

Negan has always been protective of children (Carl, Judith, and now Lydia) so despite any suspicions one might have about his trustworthiness in battle, one can easily rely on him to protect innocent children. So it is believable that, in his attempt to help Lydia, he may have accidentally murdered an Alexandrian. And it makes sense that Lydia would defend him. But then he escapes.

For a moment, it seems that all hope for redeeming Negan is gone and yet it doesn’t seem like a fully closed chapter. There’s still so much potential for Negan on The Walking Dead and now that he’s out and about, he might actually have a more dynamic role this season.

There were also a few scenes with Ezekiel, who is so devastated by losing his Kingdom, Carol, and Henry, that he has become suicidal. Michonne finds him and pulls him from the brink, literally and figuratively. This is followed by the moment from the trailer that caused some controversy because fans believed that the relationship from the comics would be done on the show. But it turns out to be a red herring, not unusual on The Walking Dead at this point, because the kiss shared between the two had no chemistry, no passion. They even laugh about it afterwards and remain friends. 

So, that was a relatively light moment in a very dark episode. With more trouble brewing on the horizon, there might be fewer and fewer of these in The Walking Dead this season.