The line between good and evil in television and movies has gotten blurred over the years, and no one is more evident of that than Jadis fromThe Walking Dead. I’ve been watchingTWDsince the original show premiered in 2010 and have followed every spinoff, from the West Coast outbreak story onFear the Walking Deadto the prequels, including the Rick and Michonne-centricThe Walking Dead: Ones Who Live. It was that show that finished Jadis' tragic story and showed she was more complex than many gave her credit for.
What is important to understand aboutThe Walking Deadis that everyone is doing what they are doing for their own justified reasons.The most despicable characters have room for redemption. Negan bashed in the beloved Glenn’s skull with Lucille, and now he is a hero in his own spinoff series. Characters like Jadis, the Governor, Merle Dixon, the leaders of the Commonwealth, and eventhe heads ofTWD’s the Civic Republic Military(CRM) have moments where they believed they were the heroes of their own stories.
Jadis Walked A Fine Line Between Good & Evil In The Walking Dead
Jadis Did What She Could To Survive OnThe Walking Dead
When Jadis first appears inThe Walking Dead, the show presents her as a villain. However, that is really up for interpretation.What did Jadis do that heroes like Rick Grimes and Daryl Dixon didn’tdo in their time throughout the series? While Rick started outTWDas a purebred hero, wanting to do the right thing, that changed quickly when he realized that law and order no longer worked in the post-apocalyptic zombie landscape.When Rick forcibly took over the peaceful Alexandria Safe Zone, he showed he would do anything to run things his way.
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Jadis did no differently as the leader of the Scavengers. Rick took the role as leader of his group of survivors and soon expanded that to leading the Alexandria Safe-Zone and Hilltop. Negan did the same when he tried to keep his people alive with the Saviors.Jadis did the same with the Scavengers in their junkyard home. When Rick showed up, Jadis had every reason to remain cautious. Rick proved throughoutTWDthat he would take whatever he wanted, and Jadis had a duty to protect her people from outsiders.
When we learned that she had been engaging in human trafficking for this group, it really began to push her into villain territory.
However, things got a little blurry as time went on. Jadis ended up betraying her own people and joined Rick and began a relationship with Gabriel, using the name Anne. That all ends when Gabriel learns that Anne has been working with some other group all along. There were hints that this was happening with helicopters seemingly coming to her junkyard, and when we learned that she had been engaging in human trafficking for this group, it really began to push her into villain territory for good. That changed somewhat inThe Ones Who Live.
Jadis Proved She Was Evil As She Betrayed Everyone Who Trusted Her
Jadis Betrayed Her Friends & Committed Human Trafficking
When Jadis joined the Alexandria community and changed her name to Anne, we thought she was finally giving up her life in the junkyard and starting to come around as a hero. She was even dating Father Gabriel. She could be forgiven for taking Rick hostage and even locking up Father Gabriel before they started dating. However,her true downfall was never more apparent than when she inadvertently killed the Scavengers, the people she had sworn to protect as their leader.
Rick had made mistakes that got his people killed. He ordered the mass execution at Negan’s camp, which is the reason Negan later killed Glenn and Abraham. However, Jadis was reckless. She refuses to give in to Simon and the Saviors, so he kills her two lieutenants, Tamiel and Brion, in front of her. Instead of protectoing the rest, as Rick did after Glenn and Abraham’s deaths, she fought back and every Scavenger was massacred in front of her. When she led the Scavenger walkers into the shredders, it was a horrific moment.
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It was also seemingly where Jadis finally became jaded. However, there is something important to understand. She was never an altruistic leader like Rick Grimes — Jadis always had a secret. She worked for CRM all along. She was involved in human trafficking, sending people to the group to be experimented on. As their appearance inWorld Beyondshowed,the CRM had no problem massacring entire communities of innocent people to keep control, and Jadis was part of that, making her a legitimate villain inTWD.
But Jadis Tragically Fought For Her Own Survival
Jadis Didn’t Do Anything Worse Than Many Heroes InTWD
It can be argued that Jadis was only doing what she needed to do to survive. The CRM proved they would kill anyone who double-crossed them, so once she got involved with the group, she had no choice but to keep playing along. If she suddenly stopped helping them, they likely would have just sent in a team to massacre the Scavengers before the Saviors ever had a chance. Jadis kept her people alive for longer than they could have been by continuing her human trafficking operations with CRM.
IfThe Walking Deadstarted out by following Negan or Jadis, they would be the heroes of the story.
Rick did similar things in his time as a leader, and no one questioned his morality. He killed countless people and was just as brutal as anyone else. He banished Carol to the wilderness and made decisions that would have painted him as a villain if he were not the main character. It could be argued that ifThe Walking Deadstarted out by following Negan or Jadis, they would be the heroes of the story, and Rick would be seen by viewers as a merciless villain.
However, this isn’t how the show is structured, and instead, we see Jadis as someone who does morally reprehensible things. This was put into question, though, whenJadis began to talk about “A” and “B” people. The CRM tested on the people that Jadis brought in, and if they were an “A” person, they were reserved for their prototype reanimation-slowing drug. When she brought Rick to the CRM, she labeled him a “B” to save his life — this showed she had bigger plans than maybeTWDfans might have known.
Jadis Tried To Redeem Herself In Her Own Way At The End
Jadis Believed Rick Grimes Could Be The Leader Of The Future World
It was never really revealed in detail, but between her appearances onWorld BeyondandThe Ones Who Lived, it seems that Jadis wanted something better for the CRM.She believed this group could protect the future of the world,but she also knew that it needed a different leader— one who actually cared about the people and wasn’t just blindly looking for a way to control everything. She believed, it seemed, that Rick Grimes could be that leader and do something no one else could.
The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live
Season 1
After she saved Rick’s life inThe Walking Deadand took him away in a helicopter, Jadis' next appearance was inThe Walking Dead: World Beyond. This was the series that showed that CRM was the deadliest threat on the show — especially when they massacred an entire community of students to cover up their work. It was here that she admitted to her mentor Huck thatshe lied about Rick being an “A” and said he was a “B” because she owed him more than that.
This leads to her final moments inThe Walking Deadfranchise when we finally see what happened to Rick Grimes inThe Ones Who Live. This is where Jadis/Anne finally showed that she was only doing what she could to save everything she cared about. She believed in the CRM and felt they were the world’s last hope to survive. She loved Alexandria and the people there and wanted them to live.The CRM had said they would destroy Alexandriaif she didn’t help them, so she continued to play the role of a villain.
As Jadis died after a walker bite, she thought back to her time in Alexandria. She had kept meeting Gabriel every year since she left. She wanted Rick Grimes to go to the Echelon briefing and get all the information he needed to lead the CRM into a better future. Her dreams died with her, though, as Rick never wanted this responsibility and sought a rebellion against the CRM instead. Jadis died onThe Walking Deadbelieving she was a hero, but after a life of misdeeds, she was more of a tragic villain.
