"The Walking Dead" Breakdown: Staring Down the Darkness

Written by John Edward Betancourt

THIS IS THE EMERGENCY SPOILER ALERT SYSTEM...YOU ARE ADVISED TO READ AT YOUR OWN RISK...

We've seen a lot of horrible things happen to our intrepid band of heroes on The Walking Dead over the past couple of years and none of it has been easy to watch. We saw the prison fall, we were witness to the horrors at Terminus, the loss of Beth in Atlanta, Tyreese in Virginia, the list simply keeps going on and on and last night an important piece of dialogue caught my attention revolving around just that and it came from the most unlikely of sources, Abraham.

In fact this week's story turned out to be incredibly important for Abraham and well the overreaching story arc of the season as we went on one incredible journey with the man and he summed up how his night would go with his musings upon the fact that he acknowledged that a lot of tough things had happened recently and there had not been enough time to heal from all the trauma. Granted I'm paraphrasing pretty heavily, but that was the jist of his message and those words and everything that happened to Abraham after spoke once again to the underlying theme of hope that season six seems to be carrying.

Yes, at long last Abraham was able to stare down into the darkness of his soul and face the demons that waited there for him after all this time. He's been one of the show's more troubled individuals as of late, clearly not the same man after what happened with Eugene but he's always been troubled. We saw how bad things were for the man after he lost his family, he was mere minutes from death and that's where Eugene came into play but it seemed as though ever since he beat the tar out of Eugene, he was giving in to that darkness. Week after week he has been slipping away from us, only seeming to come alive when there's danger around or the chance to tease and kill some walkers.  

But last night that all changed for Abraham, and the reason for his change of heart was simple...Alexandria. The city truly has become something more for our characters than a place to catch their breath and survive another day, it's becoming a symbol of hope, a beacon for a life that they thought could never exist again. Sure it isn't perfect, there's still living death everywhere they go, but this city has become a tie back to the life they once knew and a chance to begin again and that's what made Abraham's transformation so amazing last night, he finally saw something beyond the death that surrounded him. 

The end result of his revelation was nothing short of amazing. For the first time ever we saw Abraham smiling and laughing, a bounce now in his step and a sense of satisfaction at the end of the episode as they drove back toward...home. Home, a word that now holds meaning once again since it has given Abraham, Sasha and everyone else suffering from the horrors they have seen in this world a sense of purpose, a place to belong and most importantly...a reason to live. It's these beautiful moments I don't expect to find in a show about the end of the world, but I'm glad to be seeing it more often as the season and the show progress.

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