Well done, Mr. Kirkman. You're a sick, sick man. Read Full Review

RIP Tyreese

There are moments in life when death becomes an inevitable consequence of choices rendered. Once an often indefinite threshold is crossed, there is no going back from the grim reality of Death’s imminent arrival. That threshold was crossed when Michonne and Tyreese set out on their doomed mission. Driven more by vengeance and rage rather than by any degree of strategic relevance, such rash actions in the zombie apocalypse leave little room for error. It might be easy to blame Michonne for Tyreese’s untimely demise considering the whole ill affair was her idea. Or we could blame Rick because he chose to unflinchingly let Tyreese’s murder play out rather than yield to the Governor’s demands. But to blame others (besides the psychopath who held the sword) for Tyreese’s death is to insult his memory.

He CHOSE to go along with Michonne on that mission, and he CHOSE to die for his friends rather than encourage them to yield to a madman’s demands in order to save his own skin. He was a fighter in life, and he remained so right up to the moment the Governor had so much trouble slicing his head off. There was a resilient spark in Tyreese that made him very hard to kill. Just ask those walkers in the prison’s gym! That was nearly impossible odds, but Tyreese survived.

However, the thing about survival is that sometimes it is a rather fickle friend. Sometimes luck simply runs out. Sometimes the sum total of a man’s choices and circumstances fall in such a way that death is the only outcome. It doesn’t matter how strong he is or how many times he has beaten the odds before. When that time comes, there is no escape. Kneeling before the Governor with a companion’s blade turned against him, Tyreese’s final moment had come. Sapped of his strength and held captive like Samson from the Bible, Tyreese (who had been a fighter his entire life) died while in no position to fight to better his circumstances. Perhaps that was the greatest tragedy of his death. The strongman fighter was rendered completely incapacitated and could only watch as a much weaker man callously decapitated him.

Tyreese’s shocking death only serves to illustrate just how potentially short everyone’s life span in their prison fortress could be. Make no mistake, the Governor’s blade looms over them all. They react to this unsettling truth in different ways. Dale and company’s first instinct is to run as far away from that looming blade as possible. Rick goes to extremes to fortify and booby trap the prison despite the bitter truth that no such precautions guarantee safety. Axel and Patricia have sex to try and distract themselves. Hershel and Billy lean more on their faith than ever before in what was one of the more poignant moments amidst all the carnage. Some of these coping strategies are more useful than others, but they are all resorted to as a way to cling to their collective mortality for just a little bit longer (or perhaps even look to the possibility of something better beyond the mortal horizon). But sometimes despite one’s best efforts to preserve life, death often comes crashing in anyway. Like a wrecking ball, there is little chance of arresting its fatal momentum once it starts swinging. One only hopes that when that time comes (and it will come for us all at some point), he or she can face that moment with the same quiet strength and dignity that Tyreese faced his with. He died preferring that he should pass on while his friends yet lived. As physically strong as the former NFL player was, his strength of character was where his most potent strength originated. Such strength like that will truly be missed by Rick’s group going forward. Something tells me they could have dearly used it. more