Characters / The Walking Dead (2010): The Commonwealth

The Walking Dead Main Character Index
Rick's Group | The Grimes Family (Rick Grimes) | Georgia (Morgan Jones, Gabriel Stokes) | Atlanta | Atlanta Survivor Camp (Daryl Dixon, Carol Peletier) | Greene Family & Friends (Maggie Greene) | Prison Newcomers (Michonne Hawthorne) | Woodbury (The Governor) | Tyreese's Group | The Chambler Family | Abraham's Group | Terminus | The Coalition & Other Allies | Alexandria Safe-Zone | The Hilltop Colony (Gregory) | The Kingdom | Oceanside | The Saviors (Negan Smith, Savior Outposts, Former Saviors) | Magna's Group | The Whisperers (Alpha) | The Commonwealth | The Reapers | Other Antagonists | Other Survivors

Due to the Anyone Can Die nature of the show and quickly moving plots, only spoilers from the current/most recent season will be spoiled out to prevent entire pages of whited out text. These spoiler tags will be removed upon the debut of the following season, and the character bios will be updated then as well. Additionally, character portraits will be updated each half-season with the release of an official, complete set from AMC. If you have not seen the first ten seasons read at your own risk!

The Commonwealth

In General

The future starts here.

"Under the leadership of Governor Pamela Milton, we are over 50,000 strong, with every person specially assigned and curated to the job best suited to their skill set to keep this community thriving."

— Lance Hornsby

A vast community located in Ohio. Eugene, Ezekiel, Yumiko, and Princess are abducted by the community while trying to make contact with a woman Eugene had been speaking with over the radio. Founded by Pamela Milton, the Commonwealth has swelled to house over 50,000 citizens, has a dedicated military, a restart of the USD-based economy of the old world, and a strict class system dividing the have’s from the have-not’s.

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• Ambiguously Evil:
  • In Season 10 and the first part of Season 11. The soldiers are rather rough and callous but haven't done anything overtly villainous. Meanwhile, the promotional videos advertising life at the Commonwealth are overly bright and cheery, like something out of an 1980s commercial.
  • By the end of Part 2, it’s complicated: the Commonwealth suffers from a strict class system between have’s and have-not’s, its' Governor is well-meaning but naïve to the suffering of her lower class citizens, but for the most part, many of the middle class citizens, including our group members, seem well-adjusted enough. However, Director of Operations Lance Hornsby turns out to be a power-hungry schemer who seems to be intent on building his own power base or overthrowing Pamela, and is willing to resort to genocide or subjugation by force if it gets him what he wants. Pamela herself turns out to be just as dangerous as Lance once her hold on power is threatened for the first time. While the Commonwealth itself is flawed, major figures in its infrastructure is evil.
• Crapsaccharine World: The Commonwealth is certainly a well-kept place with countless luxuries and comforts and appears to be genuinely safe from the outside world. As Season 11 goes on, however, it starts exposing an uglier underbelly due to having a strict class system and questionable decisions by its armed forces and government. Part 3 even reveals that they have secret slave labor camps. It’s finally reformed by the time of the epilogue of the Grand Finale under the leadership of Ezekiel, Mercer, and Carol.
• False Flag Operation: Pamela has a protocol she uses to disperse any protests against her rule in which a walker horde is lured to the gates, in order to scare protesters into dispersing or giving her the excuse to arrest the protestors, or both.
• Informed Attribute: The Commonwealth consists of over 50,000 people, the single largest settlement seen in the show to date. One wouldn't really get this impression, however, since the town never looks to be much more populated than Alexandria. This is an unfortunate consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic, which scaled back how many people could be in a shot for the cast and crew's own safety. It's not until Part 3, produced after a prolonged amount of availability of the COVID-19 vaccines, that more and more citizens begin to appear in a single scene, let alone a large wide shot of the true size of the Commonwealth is shown. To make up for this Informed Attribute, more attention is paid towards the luxuries the Commonwealth enjoys, particularly in Part 1 when there are piles of donuts going to waste whereas Alexandria is on the brink of starvation.
• A Nazi by Any Other Name: As Season 11 ends, the Commonwealth proves to have some uncomfortable parallels to fascist regimes like the Third Reich.
  • Their Governor doesn’t seem to have any sort of term limit, nor are there mentions of any sort of elections. Pamela fully expects her son Sebastian to take over from her once she dies or steps down herself.
  • The citizens are divided into have’s and have-not’s, and this proves beneficial when Pamela’s special forces are easily able to round up the Coalition residents due to them living and working separately. Carol points out that the Coalition was only brought down due to being separated, similar to how Hitler encouraged hostility between his inner circle to ensure they could never rise up against him together.
  • The Coalition residents are rounded up after being deemed enemies of the state under bullshit pretenses and forced into prison camps, with any attempted escapees quickly executed on the spot. Cooperation is not rewarded and the sadistic warden is happy to murder anybody who defies him.
• Non-Action Guy: The majority of the residents are not even remotely combat-capable. In "A New Deal", the citizens are completely helpless when a small pack of walkers attacks. Revoltingly, Pamela knows and counts on this in the finale, as she orders the horde get lured to the lower class neighborhoods so they can slow down the horde while the rich are protected by the military.
• Rigged Contest: Sebastian mentions that Pamela hand-picks the lottery winners. Pamela introducing Connie to the previous year's lottery winner suggests that the lottery is a way for Pamela to reward citizens she deems sufficiently loyal to her and who become walking PR devices.
• Trademark Favorite Food: A lot of citizens we see are especially fond of ice cream, perhaps to show the disparity between the Commonwealth and the rest of the world; their favorite treat is something most outsiders haven’t had since the Fall.

Leadership

Milton Family

Pamela

Governor Pamela Milton

"A leader has to give her people something to look up to."

Portrayed By: Laila Robins

Appearances: The Walking Dead (Season 11)

Debut: "New Haunts"

"Thanks to my father's sacrifices, we are all here. Brick by brick, and block by block, we're putting the world back together the way it was."

The leader of the Commonwealth, Pamela comes from a political dynasty and is the daughter of a former United States president.

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• Adaptational Angst Upgrade: Her comic counterpart did not have to outlive Sebastian, who also caused her far more grief than her comic counterpart well before his demise.
• Adaptational Badass: She doesn't show any fear about walkers and has no problems blowing a zombie's head off with her hunting rifle. By contrast, her comic counterpart never got involved in combat. In "Family", she joins the ambush on the Coalition members and picks up a gun, though she only gets off one shot before being forced to flee due to the recipient of said shot being Judith.
• Adaptational Villainy: Her comic counterpart only became a hostile, active threat to the group in a bout of desperation when she believed Rick was leading a coup against her, and was able to be convinced to stand down shortly afterwards. This Pamela much more easily slips into the role of a brutal dictator and becomes a more direct antagonist than her comic counterpart and outright becomes murderous, threatening people openly and holding hundreds of people, including children, hostage. In "Family", she takes this trope up to eleven by abandoning all but the city's elite to the walker horde that's inside the walls in part due to her own actions. In the series finale, she orders her troopers to shoot anyone trying to climb the gate into her Estates and cowardly tries to take the easy way out when Mercer and the Coalition finally have her dead to rights.
• Age Lift: Laila Robins is in her sixties compared to Pamela's comic counterpart who was in her forties.
• Antagonistic Governor: She's the governor of the community who ends up becoming a villain and the Big Bad of the series finale.
• Benevolent Boss: She is respectful and friendly to Max, her personal assistant, insisting she can tell her what’s wrong when she seems to be having a bad day. Once Max turns on her, however, she’s happy to execute her for treason should she not comply with a fabricated statement.
• Big Bad: With Lance's death partway through 11C, she's the Final Boss the heroes must face going into the series finale.
• Big Bad Ensemble:
  • By Part 3, she settles into more of an antagonistic role, competing with Lance as independent threats to the Coalition in their own right. However, Lance dies in “What’s Been Lost”, leaving her as the sole antagonist.
  • As of "Family", she forms one with the variant walkers who are responsible for the walker herd invading the city.
• Big Bad Slippage: While Pamela was never a paragon of morality, she starts out decent enough, even able to have a normal conversation with Maggie, and generally seems wary of Lance's ideas for expansion and plans to seize control of the rebuilt Coalition. When the expose about Sebastian's misdeeds drops, she slowly starts to unravel and only gets worse when Sebastian himself dies. From that point on she becomes a full-fledged Judge, Jury, and Executioner with a petty grudge against the Coalition and especially Eugene and Connie.
• Big Good: As the leader of the Commonwealth, at least at first.
• Blatant Lies:
  • In “The Lucky Ones” she denies Maggie’s accusing her of being an autocrat, but later episodes show she has no intention of anyone ruling the Commownealth who’s not a Milton, and no mention of any elections are made.
  • In "Faith", she tries to claim that the recording of Sebastian criticizing the Commonwealth was altered by Eugene and is not actually her son's voice. Yumiko lampshades how ridiculous this sounds.
• Broken Pedestal: Pamela is regarded by most of the Commonwealth as a benevolent, loving leader helping lead the way for civilization’s recovery. Carol even notes that she seemed like a classy lady before the Fall. The end of Part 2 of Season 11 has Pamela’s public image shattered when Connie publishes a story about Sebastian’s schemes for money at the cost of dozens of lives. Despite accepting a deal with Carol to smooth over the backlash by having Lance as the scapegoat, her image is broken once again when Sebastian is caught on a hot mic accurately calling out the Commonwealth's system of inequality and her part in it. Her image is completely destroyed by the finale when she has any civilian trying to climb into the fortified estates shot on sight, and Vickers and the military turn on her.
• Celebrity Survivor: She is the daughter of a former president and the niece of a Congressman who was forced to resign from politics thanks to Connie's reporting.
• Climax Boss: Though she is finally removed from power, the variant-led walker horde is still the final antagonistic threat the heroes have to defeat before the end of the Grand Finale.
• Connected All Along: Connie interviewed her once before the world fell, and also got her uncle kicked out of Congress. She also was familiar with Deanna Monroe due to her father’s political connections.
• Decomposite Character:
  • Takes Sebastian's place as the member of the Milton family to accidentally gun down a Grimes. Though in Pamela's case, Judith survives the attack. And she ends up taking his place as the Milton who presumably suffers life in prison for her crimes.
  • She takes Douglas Monroe's place as the community leader who accidentally shoots one of the Grimes children in a misfired attempt to help. In Douglas' case, he was actually trying to save Rick and Carl from walkers, whereas Pamela was attempting to shoot Maggie in cold blood.
• Didn't Think This Through: Pamela’s final gambit in the endgame of the series proves that she is not qualified in the slightest to be the leader of the Commonwealth, because her decision to sacrifice the lower classes to the horde would have had disastrous consequences that would’ve brought her down even if the plan worked.
  • If the lower classes are wiped out, then the class divide is forced to restart in the surviving upper class, meaning she’s just going to create a new, even more potent class struggle between the members of the elite who would quickly fight each other over who becomes the new lower class. The entire system is built on exploiting the lower classes, and if they are all gone, the top of the pyramid falls to the bottom with no one to support them. Like Yumiko said, psychiatrists are hardly worth more than people who can work hard labor and survive in a zombie apocalypse.
  • The group at the Estates numbered around a hundred people, but the Commonwealth contains thousands of other citizens who could’ve easily been taking shelter. Even survivors of the group at the Estates could’ve spread the word about Pamela’s choices, risking a larger, more dangerous uprising than the Coalition’s small party. Furthermore, most of the military was recruited from the lower classes, meaning they could easily be inspired to turn on Pamela once they realize their families were in danger or later learned that their families had been killed.
• Dirty Coward:
  • While she'd already shown her true colors beforehand, she finally proves just how vile she really is by ordering a walker swarm to be led in the direction of the Commonwealth's poor neighborhoods, just to save her own ass and buy the rich people enough time to get to safety.
  • After being arrested and removed from power with the poor finally being rescued, Pamela nearly allows herself to get eaten by Lance’s walker to end it all. Maggie stops it so she can face justice at the hands of the living instead.
• Driven to Suicide: When Mercer and the Coalition successfully remove her from power and have saved the poor from the fate she originally left them to, she tries to feed herself to Lance’s walker. But Maggie puts a stop to it to ensure Pamela pays for her actions.
• Easily Forgiven: Despite having nearly died at her hands, Judith begs for Pamela to not commit suicide in the Grand Finale, bless her young heart. The other characters, as expected, don't show such forgiveness, with Carol even stating they're biting the bullet by choosing to keep Pamela alive.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: She did dearly love her late son, Sebastian, so much that it becomes personal when he dies during the Founder's Day parade. Although it's downplayed in that Pamela is also acting out of petty revenge for Connie's news article and using the situation to win back some of her credibility as a leader by pinning the whole thing on Eugene and making an example out of him.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Subverted. She's horrified when she accidentally shoots Judith, a child, in the middle of an intense firefight with the Coalition. But then she orders Vickers to lead the walker herd in the direction of the city's lower class districts, an act which will almost certainly result in the deaths of countless children who have been part of the community for years. Pamela's OK with kids dying as long as she isn't the one pulling the trigger.
• Evil All Along: She initially appears to be a somewhat ignorant but decent enough leader and nothing compared to the more active threat Lance poised. But Part 3 of Season 11 unveils her dark side as she becomes the main antagonist, showing she was always a terrible piece of work.
• Evil Counterpart:
  • To Maggie Rhee. Both are the proud, strong-willed daughters of deceased men who used to be in a position of power, with both women following in their fathers' footsteps and becoming celebrated leaders themselves. Both women also happen to be single mothers raising their sons (who, coincidentally, became mirrors of each other in the comics). Pamela's reluctance to grant the Coalition the resources they need to rebuild after the Whisperer War also calls to mind Maggie's own apathy towards the similarly floundering Sanctuary after the Saviors' defeat. The big difference is that Pamela comes from a family of lies and deception whereas the Greenes were nothing if not honorable people. Pamela also believes in placing herself above everyone to give her people something to look up to; Maggie wants to lead by example and prove herself through her actions rather than by what she has. Finally, Pamela ends up shooting Judith, in direct contrast to Maggie being the one to literally bring Judith into the world when she helped deliver her at the prison. Dead City draws another parallel by showing that Maggie is not above making underhanded deals and throwing someone under the bus if it means saving the life of her son.
  • To Deanna Monroe. Both elderly but tough political leaders who provide aid to the main characters in their time of need. They're also more down-to-earth compared to their bratty sons who didn't turn out so well and who they end up outliving. Again, the difference is that Deanna believed in everyone working together to rebuild the world regardless of their background, even praising Rick's group for proving that people who come from different walks of life and have nothing in common can become a family; Pamela runs the Commonwealth with a strict class system that divides the members of the Coalition into the places they were in before the apocalypse (such as making Yumiko a lawyer and putting her at odds with her blue collar ex-girlfriend, Magna). Deanna's response to the death of her son Aiden and Rick threatening people at gunpoint was to have a diplomatic meeting where she gave everyone in the community (Rick's group included) the chance to speak on his behalf to decide whether they wanted Rick to stay or be exiled; Pamela's response to Sebastian's death and the news of her family's misdeeds being leaked is to have almost everyone from the Coalition shipped off to a labor camp, children included, and give Eugene (Sebastian's accidental killer) a smokescreen trial that is clearly rigged against him. Pamela also had to be forcibly removed from power after trying to leave thousands of her citizens to die, whereas Deanna humbly stood down once she recognized Rick needed to take over for the good of the people.
  • To Ezekiel Sutton. Both are celebrated leaders who enjoy hosting events to distract the populace from the horrors of the outside world (Pamela hosts Founder's Day; Ezekiel hosts the inter-community reunion fair). However, Pamela does this to celebrate her family's legacy, whereas Ezekiel did it to genuinely bring all the communities closer together again. Both admit to wanting to give their people something to look up to, but Ezekiel only does it to make everyone feel safer whereas Pamela only does it to keep up appearances. Ezekiel readily mingles with his people on an intimate level whereas Pamela only connects with her people on a superficial level so they can become walking PR stunts to boost her communal image. Whereas Pamela was born into money, attended Harvard, and inherited leadership of the Commonwealth from her late father, Ezekiel was a humble zookeeper who was forced to drop out of college and built his own community himself. Whereas Ezekiel stepped down when he felt he was no longer the leader his people needed, Pamela will do anything to hold on to her power and has to be forcibly removed from office. Whereas Pamela abandons her people in their time of need, Ezekiel is the one who rallies everyone to take action despite how the Commonwealth treated them. Fittingly, Ezekiel becomes Pamela's successor as the leader of the community.
• Evil Is Petty:
  • Tyler Davis, the man who disrupted her ball and called her out in front of the Commonwealth's elite for the community's inequalities, is shipped by her to a prison camp without Mercer's knowledge.
  • She arranges for Connie is to be sent to an off-the-books location known as "Designation Two", a location from which no one who has been sent has ever returned. Note that Connie is the only one of the Coalition residents Pamela does this for, meaning it's clearly out of bitterness for what Connie's reporting has done to her and her family's reputation.
  • There is no good reason at all to deny the lower classes entry into the Estates before the horde arrives, as the hundred or so people could’ve easily been saved well before the horde got to the gates. It’s purely out of spite and her classism at this point as to why she refuses to let them in.
• Evil Old Folks: Pamela is in her sixties and, as 11C reveals, quite an unpleasant piece of work.
• Fate Worse than Death: She is sentenced to what is presumably life in prison so she can rot behind bars while the Commonwealth and the Coalition rebuild themselves and thrive without the corrupt legacy of the Milton family and their system of haves versus have-nots. For someone so obsessed with their public image, it's a fitting end. Negan lampshades it, having been on the receiving end of this punishment himself.
• Final Boss: With Lance’s death, she’s left as the last major villain of the series.
• The Ghost: She does not appear in Part 1 of Season 11 but is frequently mentioned.
• Good Counterpart: For a given definition of "good" anyway, Pamela is this to the other notable "Governor" of the series, Philip Blake. Unlike him, who sent Merle to kill Michonne after she left Woodbury, Pamela has no problem letting the Coalition residents come and go as they please. She crosses into villainy that would make him proud, however, removing the “good” part.
• Hannibal Lecture: After being imprisoned, she chides Daryl, Carol and Mercer that they’re not prepared for leading the Commonwealth. But Carol scoffs at her, assuring her if they had the stones to simply imprison her rather than kill her, they’ll figure it out.
• Hate Sink: Not at first, but she becomes one over the course of Season 11C thanks to Big Bad Slippage. Pamela is an abusive parent whose neglect of Sebastian contributed to her son being the entitled brat he is; a Smug Snake who threatens the members of the Coalition to their loved ones' faces; a Dirty Coward who's willing to let thousands die just to save the lives of the Commonwealth elite; and finally, the would-be killer of Maggie Rhee who ends up shooting Judith Grimes in the middle of a firefight with the Coalition.
• Hero Killer: While she never directly kills anyone herself, her actions cause the deaths of Jules, Luke, and Rosita in the series finale.
• Hidden Depths: Initially comes off as an Upper-Class Twit who is conceited and dismissive to everybody around her. However, "The Lucky Ones" shows that she has a perfectly reasonable, down-to-earth side, and she does come to respect Maggie for choosing to lead through actions rather than materialism. Any respect Pamela may have had for Maggie soon goes out the window when Sebastian dies. In "Family", she attempts to shoot Maggie with zero hesitation.
• History Repeats: She's another Milton in a place of political power who suffers a devastating blow to her public image. In Part 3, she fully recognizes it and is not happy about it in the slightest. And like her uncle, she is forced out of power by her own corrupt actions.
• Hypocrite:
  • She idolizes her father William for being a great president, but is an autocrat who refuses to consider anyone else but her son ruling the Commonwealth after her, when William presumably followed the peaceful transition of power and stepped down at the end of his term. No mention of elections in the Commonwealth have been made either.
  • She talks down to Lance when he's caught in his schemes for power, criticizing him for his crimes that got him caught - but she's accepting a deal that will cover up Sebastian's crimes in the process that will help pave the way for him to one day take control.
  • Frequently chides people for supposedly being selfish but in Part 3 she becomes an outright villain all to retain her control over her city and avenge her son.
• Interrupted Suicide: In the finale, she attempts to let a zombified Lance bite her to avoid facing consequences for her actions, but Maggie puts him down before she can get bitten.
• It's All About Me: Probably her defining character trait.
  • In the first sign of what an egotistical blowhard she is, in “Acts of God” she scoffs at the idea of a scholarship fund for the less fortunate citizens, insisting that all surplus has to go right back into Founder’s Day, which is a glorified celebration of her and her father’s achievements.
  • In “Lockdown”, after hugging Sebastian after reuniting with him, she slaps him and chews him out for humiliating her.
  • In “A New Deal” she criticizes Mercer for going to protect Commonwealth citizens from the walkers invading the square, demanding he’s supposed to protect her.
  • In "Family", when she hears of a variant-led walker invasion of the Commonwealth, she orders her property and the rich estates be fortified while leaving the middle and lower classes to slow down the walkers.
• It's Personal:
  • She hates Connie for her work that got her uncle kicked out of office. In "Lockdown" she curses her for her past work while voicing her suspicions that she's behind the manifesto that destroyed her public reputation. In "What's Been Lost", she gleefully informs Yumiko that Connie has been captured and sent to parts unknown with the rest of the Coalition residents. The following episode reveals that Pamela arranged for Connie to be sent to a top-secret location known as "Designation Two", a place from where, as Trooper Nelson explains it, no one is ever seen or heard from again.
  • She wants Eugene made an example of for killing her son. When he goes missing after his trial, Pamela orders him shot on sight if he is found.
• Ivy League for Everyone: Mentioned by one of her lawyers to be a Harvard graduate like Yumiko.
• Jumping Off the Slippery Slope: After Sebastian’s death she slips into full-on autocracy, fully prepared to murder the man who unintentionally caused his death and anybody who supports him, as well as threatening people in her community to keep them in line. She ultimately reaches a new low in "Family", first shooting Judith in a botched attempt to kill Maggie, and then instructing Vickers to lead a walker swarm into the city's poor neighborhoods to keep the dead occupied while the upper class citizens can get to safety.
• Lack of Empathy: Has little to no regard for the citizens below the elite class. When told how the walker horde is slaughtering their way through citizens, Pamela responds by asking Vickers to make sure more die by having the horde lured to the poorer neighborhoods to buy time for the elite's homes to be fortified. When desperate citizens try to climb the gates of the estates, Pamela coldly watches as her troops shoot them.
• The Leader: Of the Commonwealth.
• Mama Didn't Raise No Criminal: Played With. In “Lockdown” she vehemently promises to the Commonwealth that Sebastian is a good man and didn’t do the things he was accused of, but in private, she eventually concedes that Sebastian is a renegade and is just as pissed at him as anyone… mostly for her sake, however. And then the trope is subverted when, disturbingly, she is still dead-set on Sebastian taking over one day to govern the Commonwealth after he is credibly accused of getting dozens of people killed, despite the atrocities he committed.
• Mirror Character: As Season 11 progresses, she becomes one to fellow "Governor" Philip Blake, another autocratic ruler with good publicity who favored Bread and Circuses to keep the population distracted, and also started to slip after the death of their child to a walker bite. Pamela even keeps her walker son chained up, unwilling to part with him, much like Philip did with his daughter, Penny. Eugene even calls Pamela "the Governor" at one point, further calling to mind the deceased Woodbury tyrant.
• My God, What Have I Done?: In "Family", she immediately stops firing when she realizes that she shot Judith and slowly backs away while screaming it was the Coalition's fault for making her do it. When Vickers comes into Pamela's office a short while later, she's still in shock.
• Never My Fault:
  • She can’t fathom the idea of her or a Milton not being in power despite their ill deeds, and as time goes on refuses to take responsibility for any suffering her constituents endure. Her response to Sebastian’s hot mic accurately pegging the inequalities of the Commonwealth is to try to murder Eugene and Max for exposing him and inadvertently causing his death. She frames the Founder’s Day incident as a riot perpetrated by ne’er do wells, all but ignoring how the crowd only became hostile due to Sebastian’s words.
  • When she accidentally shoots Judith she blames it on the Coalition, screaming at them, "You did this!"
  • When the group demands the gates be opened so the lower classes can take refuge inside and escape the approaching horde, she insists that if the gates are opened, everyone will fall to the horde. This flies in the face of the fact that there was a perfectly large amount of time before the horde even showed up that the people could’ve been brought in with no consequences.
• Old Money: Due to her family coming from a political dynasty.
• Outliving One's Offspring: “A New Deal” reveals that Sebastian has a now-dead brother. By the end of the episode, Sebastian also dies when he is killed by a walker.
• Parental Neglect: Sebastian accuses her of being more worried about running the Commonwealth than paying attention to him. Her slapping Sebastian and lambasting him for humiliating her in "Lockdown" suggests he's not lying and in “Variant” she finally admits to this, to his corpse no less.
• Pay Evil unto Evil:
  • In "Lockdown", she slaps Sebastian in the face, which is the least he deserves after his actions got dozens of people killed.
  • In "Variant", she is revealed to have had Roman Calhoun, a villainous thug who also got several innocent people killed, shot in the head.
  • She also forces Lance to cut up Calhoun's corpse and feed it to a zombified Sebastian which, will disgusting, is a fitting punishment after Hornsby was the one who ordered Calhoun to kill all those people and is directly responsible for the deaths of countless others.
• Pet the Dog:
  • Shows respect for the fallen Deanna Monroe, calling her a true politician and a born leader.
  • She accidentally refers to her new assistant as Max and looks sad about it, showing remorse for having to use her former secretary as leverage and attempting to prosecute her for her part in Sebastian's death.
• Power Hair: Shorter than most, but she has the classic "stern woman in politics" look down pat.
• Promotion to Opening Titles: She gets added to the main credits for the last eight episodes of Season 11.
• Properly Paranoid: In “Lockdown”, she becomes suspicious of Yumiko and Connie due to the paper put out about her, and as we know, she’s right to suspect the latter since she was a major leader of the operation.
• Put on a Prison Bus: She is thrown in jail for her actions and isn’t seen again in the show’s epilogue.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Despite the Commonwealth’s class divide and corruption, she is shown to have some reasonable tendencies. She is clearly disturbed when Tyler says there are thousands of suffering citizens in her nation, and later is shown to know her son is a worthless asshole, even cutting off his money to try to get him in line.
• Revenge: Everything she does in 11C is to get back at the Coalition for ruining her reputation and causing the death of Sebastian.
• Revenge by Proxy: While it's understandable why she would hold Eugene and Max accountable for her son's death, having the rest of the Coalition sent to a labor camp to be used as leverage is just plain petty, no two ways about it.
• Rich Bitch: What she really is, though it takes awhile for some of the nastier aspects of her personality to emerge. Once they do... oh boy.
• Royals Who Actually Do Something: Give her credit, she was at least willing to get her hands dirty in the ambush against the Coalition in "Family", and almost kills Maggie during the firefight.
• Self-Serving Memory: She always talks up the Milton family legacy of being great, beloved leaders. However, her uncle was forced out of politics by a scandal Connie reported, and Sebastian... is Sebastian. Add Lance's faux gold-plated coin of William, and it's strongly implied Pamela has been deluding herself and others into the hoax of the Miltons.
• Shame If Something Happened: This is how she begins threatening the lives of Max, Tomi, and the Coalition residents; she tells Mercer that she hopes Max can be saved after turning on her, and asks Yumiko to think about what would happen to her brother and her friends and family should she not comply with her Kangaroo Court.
• Ship Tease: Some... select interactions between her and Lance in “A New Deal” and “Variant” suggest there’s something more to their relationship than previously thought. Laila Robins weighed in on Talking Dead and said that while she believed there was nothing romantic between the two, Lance probably had a bit of a crush on Pamela, which she would sometimes take advantage of to manipulate him.
• Significant Wardrobe Shift: In "What's Been Lost", she begins wearing black to mark her full descent into villainy.
• Skewed Priorities: Even before going off the deep end, her protocol ordering a horde of walkers to be lured near the Commonwealth to scare dissenters into returning to their homes is incredibly risky. The variant walkers in the finale help her realize what a bad idea this was.
• Smug Snake: Becomes this in Part 3 of Season 11. She brags about how Connie and all of Yumiko's friends are being hold hostage, casually threatens the life of Yumiko's brother to her face, and spells out that Eugene's so-called fair trial is a smokescreen while Pamela exacts her own justice on him for the murder of Sebastian. She doesn't even bother hiding her smirk when Eugene is found guilty of Sebastian's demise and sentenced to public execution within the hour.
• Sole Survivor: After Sebastian’s death she is the last surviving member of her family. It only makes her more dangerous as she becomes more aggressive in trying to preserve the Milton family’s hold on power.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: In Part 2 she's rather conceited and up her own ass, but affable enough to have an honest conversation with Maggie, seems to genuinely care for Max, and in general comes off as small potatoes compared to the genocidal and power-hungry Lance. After Sebastian's death, however, Pamela starts to rival Lance in terms of what she'll do when her power is threatened. She holds the lives of the Coalition residents, including children, hostage, while bragging to Yumiko about what she'll do to them and her brother if she refuses to prosecute Eugene in a pre-arranged trial that will likely result in his death.
• Villainous Breakdown: Part 3 of Season 11 shows what she’s like when she’s blindsided and it’s not pretty. She gives futile addresses to a populace that is obviously not listening, desperately swears that Sebastian is a good young man, and quickly grows paranoid of her staff. In "A New Deal" she grows more aggressive and abusive towards Sebastian when they're in private, and during the walker invasion, she rants at Mercer for not personally protecting her during the chaos. She devolves into an outright dictator once Sebastian is killed. When she learns of Mercer's revolt, contends with the Coalition's strike, and that a large swarm is attacking, she begins to break down under the pressure immediately.
• We Have Reserves:
  • In a show of just how vile she is, she not only feels this way towards her troops, but her own citizens. When Vickers points out that the army fortifying the wealthy estates will mean that the thousands of lower-class citizens will never make it with the horde coming, Pamela insists they'll slow down the predators.
  • Her False Flag Operation protocol that is used to quell protests against her seems to regularly cost the lives of several soldiers since Mercer and Rosita notice several checkpoints getting overrun in "Lockdown".
• Would Hurt a Child: Subverted. In "Family", she shoots Judith in the shoulder while trying to kill Maggie, and seems pretty shaken up about it afterwards. But then she issues an order to lead a walker swarm into some of the lower-class neighborhoods that would put children at risk, so she ultimately doesn't care about kids dying if it means saving her own skin.

Sebastian

Sebastian Milton

"Alright, look, my bitch mother has cut off my line of credit, so I need to come up with creative ways to support my lifestyle."

Portrayed By: Teo Rapp-Olsson

Appearances: The Walking Dead (Season 11)

Debut: "Promises Broken"

"The Commonwealth is built on buying into bullshit. The desperate need to believe the old American dream is still real. You know, 'Anything is possible!' 'We... we could rise above our station!' It's a friggin' joke. The reality is that the poor stay poor so that the rich can do whatever the hell we want."

Pamela's entitled son.

---

• Action Survivor: To his credit, he does manage to kill one walker on his own, but that's as far as he gets before being overwhelmed and having to be saved by Daryl. It's also not enough to save him when he gets thrown to the ground with a walker on top of him and he's unable to wrestle it off before it bites into his neck.
• Adaptation Dye-Job: He's blonde in the comics.
• Adaptational Karma: While he certainly got a comeuppance in the comics that genuinely hurt him (suffering consequences at all after years of getting away with anything, and as Carl pointed out, he wasn't sorry for killing Rick but was sorry that he had to face said consequences), many fans lamented that he didn't suffer an agonizing death for killing The Hero Rick Grimes. In the show, despite not actually killing anyone of importance, he does suffer a brutal end for causing the mostly offscreen deaths of dozens of innocent people.
• Adaptational Nice Guy: His comic counterpart never once indicated that he truly could bring himself to love his mother due to how self-absorbed he was. His show counterpart eventually breaks and shows he does long for his mother’s attention.
• Adaptational Sympathy: The show gives him a bit more depth and a Freudian Excuse to show why he is the way he is, even if it doesn't justify any of his actions.
• Adaptational Villainy: While his comic counterpart was certainly a nasty piece of work, his one kill was an Accidental Murder. “The Rotten Core” establishes that he is completely fine with sending dozens of people to their deaths just to get money for his exorbitant lifestyle. Later episodes also display a genuinely sadistic streak in him.
• Adaptational Wimp: Downplayed. While his TV counterpart is responsible for the deaths of far more people, he never succeeds in directly killing anyone himself. This is unlike the comics, where he kills Rick Grimes (albeit in an extremely cowardly and pathetic way).
• Alas, Poor Villain: A minor example. He certainly deserves his fate, but his Freudian Excuse and additional depth compared to his comic counterpart can cause a small amount of pity; particularly how he knows the Commonwealth is flawed but is too much of a broken soul to care to do something about it, and how he ends up losing the last chance at redemption he had.
• Always Someone Better: “A New Deal” reveals that he had a more politically inclined brother who died at some point, and Sebastian claims that Pamela wants him back over him.
• And Then John Was a Zombie: Unwilling to part with her son, Pamela lets him turn and keeps him chained inside Lance's cell like a pet, even ordering Lance to dismember one of his former cohorts (Calhoun) to keep Sebastian fed.
• Asshole Victim: Despite his humanizing traits, no one lifts a finger to save him. The Commonwealth citizens, who just had their last faith in him destroyed, only watch with some pity as he writhes and screams for help. Judith is the only one who tries to help him, and that’s only by putting down the walker that kills him.
• Believing Their Own Lies: Crows about how he’s an amazing, badass fighter and seems to really believe it, despite being an Action Survivor at best.
• Beneath the Mask: Despite everything that makes him a Hate Sink, “Lockdown” all but confirms that deep down he’s an attention-starved, spoiled child who longs for his mother’s love.
• Blatant Lies: He tells Lance and Mercer that the incident with Eugene started solely because Eugene attacked him out of nowhere, ignorant of how Eugene and Stephanie saved his life. He also tells his mother he's innocent of the crimes Connie's news report accused him of, something even Pamela doesn't buy.
• Blood from the Mouth: The walker that kills him bites a generous amount out of his neck, causing him to spew blood from the mouth until he dies.
• Boisterous Weakling: He babbles on about what an awesome fighter he is and constantly runs his mouth at Mercer and Daryl despite the fact that they would pummel his ass if his mother wasn't the leader of the Commonwealth. When he gets punched in the face by the much less imposing Eugene, he's quickly cowed and does nothing except scream and whine instead of throwing a punch back. Eugene even calls him a "tiny little man".
• Break the Haughty: It finally seems to have gotten through to him that he can’t weasel his way out of trouble using his position as Pamela’s son when Connie’s bombshell report drops. He’s reduced to hiding in a safe room like a rat, peeing in jars and drinking himself silly while he waits for it to blow over, and nearly cries about how his mother doesn’t care about him.
• Brilliant, but Lazy: He is sufficiently cunning, a decent orator, and most importantly, recognizes the community for the hive of corruption and classist bullshit it really is. If Sebastian really wanted to put his mind to it and cast aside his Royal Brat status, he could actually be a force for positive change in the Commonwealth. Sadly, he squanders this potential tenfold.
• Bullying a Dragon: Shoving the intimidating Mercer around as if you own him is certainly not a healthy idea. The only thing saving Sebastian is that Mercer is loyal to the Commonwealth. He also pushes around Daryl, who we have eleven seasons of evidence as to why that’s not a good idea. He later tries to use his position in the community's hierarchy to intimidate Negan, furiously asking, "Do you know who I am?" when Negan steps on his foot.
• Bystander Syndrome: His Motive Rant reveals that he knows exactly what inequalities the Commonwealth indulges in, and it’s lightly implied he actually does pity the lower classes for being stuck in their places. That said, he decides he enjoys his status and privilege too much to actually do anything about it, nor does he have any faith he actually could do anything about it.
• Card-Carrying Jerkass: He fully embraces being an insufferable asshole.
• Casanova Wannabe: Shamelessly hits on an annoyed Rosita despite having his own girlfriend who’s dumb enough to stay with him.
• The Cynic: "A New Deal" shows him to a rather bleak outlook on the Commonwealth and life in general, believing it's simply human nature for the rich to come out on top while the poor suffer. Max coaxes him into talking shit about the populace while secretly recording it, hoping to expose Sebastian for the uncaring and opportunistic monster he really is.
• Death by Adaptation: He is killed by a walker in “A New Deal”, when his comic counterpart survived the series specifically because he was sentenced to life in prison for murdering Rick, and was seen as an old man in the final issue. With Rick not around for him to kill (and Carl not being able to arrest him due to being dead), it was to be expected.
• Decomposite Character: In a rare cross-show manner, as Dakota from Fear the Walking Dead inherits some of his comic plotline. While he dies before he can commit his infamous murder of an unarmed main character, Dakota murders John Dorie, Jr. and it causes the downfall of her mother much like how comic Pamela was forced out of politics by her son's actions.
• A Death in the Limelight: ”Lockdown” and “A New Deal” reveal more of his backstory and personality outside of being a selfish prick, and show that deep down he’s always going to be a selfish prick despite it.
• Dirty Coward:
  • When his crimes are exposed, he barricades himself in a safe room instead of facing the music.
  • He’s reduced to crying like a baby for help when a walker is on him.
• Drugs Are Bad: Downplayed. “Acts of God” strongly implies he’s a rabid drug user, and he just so happens to be a vile human being who doesn’t care if people die to make his life more fun.
• Et Tu, Brute?: He loses his shit when he learns that Max secretly recorded him criticizing the Commonwealth when he thought they were having an honest moment, and launches into a full-on murderous rage intending to kill her for it.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Later episodes prove that he truly does love his mother and acts out due to a sense of neglect from her.
• Expy:
  • He's the Jerkass son of a political leader much like Aiden and Spencer were. "A New Deal" reveals Sebastian also had a brother who was killed.
  • He also behaves like a younger, more spoiled version of Gregory. Both are self-centered, over-the-top whiners who do nothing but boss other characters around and run underhanded schemes while also being totally incompetent when it comes to survival. They also both end up losing the respect of the populace, none of whom object at all while they watch them die begging for undeserved mercy.
  • His Freudian Excuse makes him similar to the adult Hershel Rhee as introduced in the final issue of the comic book.
• Foil: To Mercer. Both are willing to let the Commonwealth suffer under an oppressed system due to feeling that there is no way to change it. However, Sebastian is a sadistic twerp who delights in the advantages granted to him by being a rich kid, which includes abusing said privilege and flaunting it to the lower classes. Mercer is a Knight in Sour Armor who cares deeply for the people and worries that upsetting the order of things will lead to the loss of even more lives. Fittingly, Sebastian is Hated by All while Mercer is Loved by All.
• Freudian Excuse:
  • It's implied he's the way he is due to his upbringing as well as his mother's neglect. In "Acts of God", he mentions to Max how he keeps trying to contact his mother but she won't respond. In "Lockdown", he bitterly muses how his mother is too busy running the Commonwealth to pay him any mind, and seems to have a point as shown when she chews him out for making her look bad in front of the populace.
  • "A New Deal" implies he's terrified of never living up to the standards of his family and intentionally plays up his image of a Card-Carrying Jerkass so that no one will ever expect anything more from him. He also mentions his deceased brother who was, according to him, more politically inclined and a "perfect" son, and resents that he got stuck with Pamela's dreams for a Milton dynasty instead once he died.
  Max: I mean, if everyone else expects it, who's left to disappoint?
• Hate Sink: He's definitely in the running for the most hateable character in the entire series. In a show filled with skin-wearing psychopaths, cannibals, and warlords with delusions of godhood, that's really saying something. Sebastian makes it clear from his first scene that he's an entitled, spoiled, unlikable ass, and proceeds to only get worse from there. His Freudian Excuse gives him the teensiest bit of sympathy, even if it excuses absolutely none of his actions.
• Hated by All: No one is fond of this guy, except maybe his girlfriend. Even Pamela recognizes what an insufferable piece of shit her son is. No one lifts a finger to help him when he’s about to be killed by a walker.
• Heel–Face Door-Slam: ”A New Deal” sees him take Max’s advice to heart to actually try and apply himself to be more than a spoiled brat, or at least hide it better. But Max’s leaking of his remarks on Commonwealth society make him realize his reputation is completely shot in the foot and he goes on a rampage to try to kill her for it, resulting in his death.
• Hidden Depths: For such a self-absorbed brat, he also shows a surprising amount of self-awareness in his last two episodes. And, to his credit, he has some untapped leader potential that ends up going to waste when Max exposes him to the public and he attempts to have her murdered shortly afterwards.
• Insistent Terminology: He refers to Eugene’s group as “plebeians” and “nasties” to show how spoiled and prejudiced he is against anyone not of Commonwealth upper class.
• It's All About Me: Nothing matters to him besides his own personal pleasures.
• Jerkass: This guy makes Aiden and Spencer Monroe (who were also rotten pricks for the most part and the sons of a political leader) look like stand-up gents.
• Karma Houdini Warranty: After getting away with causing the deaths of forty people while Lance is thrown under the bus as a scapegoat, Sebastian gets his just desserts when he has his throat ripped out by a walker while trying to kill Max. He's also this on a meta-level, as his comic counterpart managed to survive the series despite killing Rick Grimes (due to being sentenced to life in prison), making his death finally being realized on television all the more satisfying.
• Karmic Death: He is killed by a walker that he tried to have kill Max, his mother’s often downtrodden secretary who he just tried to feed to the very same walker. Said walker happens to be one of the working class "plebeians" that Sebastian was so frequently dismissive of. Eugene also directly contributes to his demise, when Sebastian had him thrown in jail for a completely ridiculous offense. Finally, Sebastian perishes during Founder’s Day, a day meant to glorify the achievements of his corrupt family.
• Lack of Empathy: He doesn't feel any remorse for sending forty people to die for a cache of money and drugs.
• Large Ham: His actor is clearly having a blast playing such an over-the-top, slimy douchebag.
• Laughably Evil: Downplayed due to his Hate Sink qualities, but his snobbishness, lack of tact, and Teo Rapp-Olsson's hammy performance do make him rather easy to laugh at.
• A Lighter Shade of Black: If ever so slightly compared to his mother. You could argue that up until his attempt on Max's life, he never deliberately tried to have people killed (and in fact rewards Daryl and Rosita for their trouble when they succeed), and was able to recognize the flaws of the Commonwealth even if he chose to do nothing about them. Pamela turns out to be an even nastier piece of work, dismissing the lives of thousands of lower-class people so that she and the elites of the Commonwealth can be protected from a walker invasion. Sebastian also has Adaptational Sympathy given his added depth and Freudian Excuse, while Pamela goes in the opposite direction with a hell of a lot of Adaptational Villainy.
• The Load: As a sign of how pampered he’s been, he appeared to be completely helpless when walkers attacked him. He later is able to kill one walker, but needs to be saved right afterwards and ends up failing to hold off a single walker that finally kills him.
• Manchild: He frequently throws tantrums like a bratty child, highlighting how sheltered he's been that he's never had to mature past his teen years at most.
• Manipulative Bastard: He smugly coerces Daryl and Rosita into retrieving a cache of money for him by implying he could make their children's lives at the Commonwealth very difficult.
• Mirror Character:
  • Like Aiden, Sebastian suffers a Heel–Face Door-Slam right as he begins making strides to better himself. He also gets deservedly punched in the face in his first major scene by an Alexandrian.
  • Like Spencer, Sebastian dies as he makes an attempt to honor his family legacy in a way that backfires by exposing to the public what a cowardly snake he really is. Both are also Brilliant, but Lazy as Spencer shows some skill in scavenging and could read Latin while Sebastian is a decent orator and quite cunning when he wants to be. Although, while Spencer was overall more proficient in combat and killing walkers, Sebastian ultimately proved more willing to get his hands dirty, since he threw Max directly into the path of a walker while Spencer didn't have the nerve to try to kill Rick himself and tried to smooth talk Negan into doing it instead. And as much of a shit as Spencer was, he was still on the good side of most of Alexandria's populace, who reacted in horror when Negan brutally gutted him in the street despite hearing Spencer attempting to arrange to have Rick killed. Sebastian had fallen out of favor so much that nobody bothers to help him when he's struggling with a walker and is about to get his throat ripped out, with only Judith and his mother expressing any sympathy for him.
  • He's also one to Eugene in Seasons 7-8. Both are cowards who acknowledge that the system they are apart of is flawed, but prioritize their own self-interest over the suffering of others. They receive a scathing "The Reason You Suck" Speech in which a character calls them out for their Bystander Syndrome (Rosita for Eugene, Max for Sebastian). Eugene ultimately finds the courage to do the right thing in the end, while Sebastian says fuck all and tries to kill Max.
• Mythology Gag: Doubling as Irony. The walker that kills him is put down by Judith using her father Rick's Colt Python. In the comics, it was Sebastian who killed Rick.
• Never My Fault: He somehow thinks walkers nearly killing him and his girlfriend is Eugene and Stephanie’s fault despite the fact they just saved their lives.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Throwing Max to a walker results in his death when Eugene retaliates by throwing the walker right back at him. His death not only deprives the Commonwealth of another corrupt Milton destined to inherit the kingdom, but it also sets into motion a chain of events that results in Pamela starting a war with the Coalition that leads to her downfall.
• Non-Action Guy: Downplayed. He's trying to grow out of this by scheduling sessions of what he calls "Advanced Military Training" with Mercer. However, it's clear his default mode is still not as a fighter, and he's almost useless against walkers and requires saving from the more competent survivors. Ultimately, his training does nothing to save him when he's unable to wrestle a single walker off, which then tears his throat out as Sebastian screams in agony.
• Not-So-Harmless Villain: While he’s clearly an incompetent fool in regards to physical combat, “The Rotten Core” reveals that he actually is more cunning than given credit for. He’s managed to strong-arm 30-40 people into going to collect money for him by threatening their loved ones and places in society, and thanks to his comfy place as the governor’s son and being able to pay off armed forces to serve him, he’s able to get away with pretty much anything he wants. Notably, Max is clearly terrified of being in the same room as him in “Acts of God” after learning the lows he will sink to. It's later revealed just how far Pamela is willing to go to keep her crimes covered up, meaning that he also had his mother's considerable resources as a serious threat on his side.
• Overlord Jr.: Pamela's son who has been set up to one day take over the family empire.
• Pet the Dog:
  • He owns up and pays Daryl and Rosita a cut of the money after they successfully retrieve it for him.
  • In "A New Deal" he genuinely thanks Max for providing him a drink when he's stressed over having to give a speech the following day. Even during his Motive Rant about the Commonwealth's inequalities and after having previously talked down to her, he actually never insults her and seems to genuinely appreciate her words.
  • During Founder's Day he goes off-script but with a heartfelt speech having taken Max's words to heart, and seems to genuinely realize he has a chance to be better. Making it all the more compelling when Max rips the chance away from him.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: He derisively refers to Rosita as "sweetie", indicating Sebastian doesn't have the most enlightened view of women despite his mother being the leader of the Commonwealth.
• Privilege Makes You Evil: He's basically gotten to live like a king during the apocalypse, and almost never has to face the repercussions because of who his mother is.
• Psychotic Smirk: He has one as he tries to feed Max to a walker for exposing him.
• Rich Bastard: He comes from an upper-class family and treats everyone as beneath him.
• Royal Brat: The youngest member of a political dynasty who is being groomed to lead the Commonwealth one day. He's also a spoiled and thoroughly unlikable brat with almost no redeeming qualities.
• Sadist: He enjoys causing people distress because he can get away with it due to his position. He outright grins as he tosses a helpless Max to a walker and watches her squirm with it.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Money!: How he rationalizes his behavior. Since the system will always be rigged to have the rich come out on top, why shouldn't he take advantage of his privilege and use it to get what he wants?
• Shame If Something Happened: He uses this when coercing Daryl and Rosita into going for his money stash, as he starts bringing up their children. He cleverly doesn’t explicitly say something will happen to them, but the pair know exactly what he’s saying and threaten to kill him on the spot for it. It’s easy to imagine he’s done this to all the other people who died for him.
• Sir Not-Appearing-in-This-Trailer: Despite being notorious in the comics for being Rick Grimes' killer, no official indication was given he would appear in the series prior to his debut.
• Smug Snake: Is completely smug and conniving due to his wealth, high position in Commonwealth society, and protection from soldiers. But when surrounded by walkers he’s completely helpless - not that he recognizes it.
• Spoiled Brat: A young man who spent his formative years as the pampered son of the leader of the best-off community seen in the entire show, and he is purely rotten and selfish. He even refers to his mother as a bitch for cutting off his credit line.
• Suddenly Shouting: When Davis escapes after taking Max hostage, Sebastian yells a sharp, "GO AFTER HIM!" at Mercer, despite not being in any danger himself and being fully aware that Mercer is recovering from his sister being in harm's way.
• Too Dumb to Live: Read the very flagrant examples below, and then think about how these are all just from his first major scene in his first episode.
  • For some reason he decides to have a picnic with his girlfriend on the outskirts of a zone that Eugene’s group is clearing of the dead, when the Commonwealth is a massive place big enough to support 50,000 people and he could’ve had his picnic anywhere.
  • He doesn’t process that Eugene and Stephanie saved his and his girlfriend’s life when they were about to become a free meal for the walkers. In fact, he outright berates them for supposedly ruining their date.
  • When the authorities arrive, he begins blaming the whole situation on Mercer, pushing and shoving the general of the Commonwealth’s military who is about twice his size and could break him like a toy. If Mercer wasn’t sworn to protect him, he likely would’ve had his ass kicked at best.
  • Blaming Mercer for everything is pretty stupid considering it’s strongly implied he ordered Mercer and his troops to stay as far away from his date as possible to give them privacy - in a walker-infested zone.
• Ungrateful Bastard:
  • His head is so far up his ass he doesn’t process that Eugene and Stephanie saved his and his girlfriend’s lives. He also shows no respect to Mercer whose whole job is to keep him safe.
  • He once again goes after Daryl (and Mercer) when Daryl saves him during training.
• Upper-Class Twit: Quickly proves to be an idiot whose only protection is his status as Pamela’s son.
• Villainous Breakdown: After Max humiliates him in front of the populace and Founder's Day is interrupted by a walker attack orchestrated by Lance, a furious Sebastian takes advantage of the chaos and tries to kill Max directly.
• Villains Want Mercy: In "A New Deal", he screams for help as he wrestles with a walker, to no avail. This was after his rant about how the Commonwealth's lower class citizens will never truly get anything better in their society was leaked, and after he threw Max to a walker and sadistically watched her nearly get killed.

William

President William Milton

Portrayed By: Tom Luse

Appearances: The Walking Dead

Debut: "New Haunts" (portrait)

Pamela's late father and a former president of the United States. When the Fall took place, he founded the Commonwealth, with his daughter taking over as governor after his passing.

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• Alternate History: His likeness appears on a quarter dated 1982, when Ronald Reagan was president.
• Corrupt Politician: Pamela describes William and his brothers as renegades who mellowed over time and became respected leaders. Considering Connie had Pamela's uncle booted from office it's likely this is a case of Self-Serving Memory and the entire lot of them were always bad news. Lance’s gold-plated coin of William, meant to represent how the Commonwealth has a rotten underbelly despite a nice exterior, is likely meant to confirm this.
• Creator Cameo: His appearance was based off the show's executive producer, Tom Luse.
• A Lighter Shade of Black: Even if we take the hints that he was just as corrupt as his other family members as true, thanks to being president in pre-Fall society, he presumably didn’t get away with anything like the crimes his daughter and son would commit. He also presumably followed the peaceful transition of power (something that has been observed for most of American history), something Pamela refused to follow given she was grooming Sebastian to take over from her directly and could get away with since she wasn’t in a functioning American democracy anymore like William was.
• Mirror Character: From what we hear of him, he appears to be one to Hershel Greene. Both men were hell-raisers in their youth before later cleaning up their act and becoming celebrated leaders who were loved by the people. Although in William's case, it's debatable how adored he was given that the individual singing his praises is his corrupt daughter, Pamela. Both William and Hershel also have paintings created of them to honor their memory, calling to attention the rather uncanny physical resemblance between the two men.
• No Party Given: His political party is not mentioned. Given that he seems to have taken Reagan's place as president in the show's Alternate History, it's possible he could have been a Republican.
• Posthumous Character: He's long dead by the time the Coalition residents arrive to live at the Commonwealth.

Other Leaders

Lance

Lance Hornsby

"Someday I might need a favor, and you might be favorably inclined."

Portrayed By: Josh Hamilton

Appearances: The Walking Dead (Season 11)

Debut: "Out of the Ashes"

"It’s not my fault you people are too stupid to know a good thing when it landed in your laps."

The Director of Operations at the Commonwealth.

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• Aborted Arc: Part 2 of Season 11 slowly builds up what seems to be a coup attempt as he tries to build his own power base, but it’s all for naught as he’s quickly captured and soon killed for his actions in Part 3, his apparent coup never being explained in full or realized.
• Adaptation Expansion: Zigzagged. He does not play a role in the auditing and on-boarding of Eugene’s group, meaning he doesn’t get quite as much screentime as his comic counterpart got early on. However, Part 2 of Season 11 beefs up his presence significantly, to the point where he's the only character to appear in all eight episodes of the season's run. His comic counterpart remained a minor supporting character, while this Lance ends up as one of the final villains of the series.
• Adaptational Badass: He's shown to be a crack shot who can take down walkers from a distance with a snub-nose pistol. His comic counterpart was a Non-Action Guy who never got involved in combat.
• Adaptational Nice Guy: He’s less smug and condescending than his comic counterpart was when he was first introduced, though he still retains some shady vibes nonetheless at first.
• Adaptational Villainy: He becomes more of a direct antagonist than his comic counterpart who largely just complained about Rick’s group.
• Ambiguously Evil: Like the rest of the Commonwealth, it’s not quite clear if he’s friend or foe. As Part 2 of Season 11 goes on, he slowly settles into a foe.
• Ambition Is Evil: Pamela tells him to his face she knows he’s very ambitious and has surmised he wants to rule the Coalition on his own.
• And Then John Was a Zombie: After his death, he turns up as a walker in the series finale. Maggie puts him down.
• Arc Villain: As of "Warlords", he's taken the reins as the main antagonist of the Commonwealth arc. With his defeat and death, he's ultimately left as the Arc Villain of Part 2 of Season 11.
  • Big Bad Ensemble: Part 3 of Season 11 sees Pamela emerge as more of a thorn in the group’s side due to her desire to keep things under her control, while Lance still works on his secret agenda…
  • Big Bad Wannabe: But he turns out to be this in the long run, as due to Carol's machinations and without Pamela's resources, he ends up left to his own devices and killed while at the mercy of Carol and Daryl.
• Armor-Piercing Response: When Eugene rips into him for planting Shira as a decoy Stephanie, Lance points out that his group lied about several details during their auditing, and that Alexandria would’ve starved without the Commonwealth.
• Beneath the Mask: When Pamela reluctantly allows him to form a partnership with Alexandria in “The Lucky Ones” after calling him out for his ambition, he keeps smiling all the way to the middle of the woods where he lures in some walkers to kill, suggesting he’s far more unstable than he appears.
• Character Death: Shot through the neck with an arrow by Carol.
• Childhood Friends: Josh Hamilton revealed that Pamela and Lance have known each other since they were kids. This is hinted at when Pamela tells Lance he's been ambitious their whole lives. Lance confirms in "What's Been Lost" that he was the son of the Milton family's chaffeur.
• Contrasting Sequel Antagonist: To both Alpha and her Dragon, Beta.
  • Alpha was a nihilist who wanted to end any attempt at rebuilding society and chose to live in the woods with her followers like a feral animal. Lance lives in the posh Commonwealth and wants to rebuild society, albeit by way of his own grand design.
  • Both Beta and Lance are the Number Two of their respective groups, but Beta would never betray Alpha and is a Submissive Badass, compared to Lance who is heavily implied to be The Starscream and wants to be in a position of power. Lance is also not recognized by the general public for his accomplishments, in contrast to Beta's Celebrity Survivor status and also being feared and respected by the Whisperers. And unlike Beta, Lance ends up being the first between him and his leader to be killed.
• Corrupt Politician: He has a public image of being a stand-up guy and benevolent leader in the Commonwealth. But “Promises Broken” strongly implies he has a dark side since he is very eager to get Yumiko as a lawyer who could get him out of a potential future tight spot. He’s later shown willing to result to extortion and outright genocide if it means benefitting himself.
• Death by Adaptation: His comic counterpart survived the events of the series.
• Death Glare: He has a nasty one when Daryl shoots him in the face from the window of Leah's cabin. He leads the charge into the building himself, fully prepared to take on the party responsible.
• Dies Wide Open: His eyes stare up at the sky as he expires from an arrow to the throat.
• Disc-One Final Boss: He is captured in “A New Deal” and killed two episodes later, with Pamela left as the Big Bad of the final four episodes.
• Even Evil Has Standards: He detests Sebastian just as much as everyone else. He later admits to being thoroughly shaken by Pamela forcing him to feed his former worker Roman Calhoun’s corpse to Sebastian’s walker.
• Evil Chancellor: He's Pamela's second-in-command who wants respect for keeping the city going all these years, and appears to be plotting a coup to overthrow the Commonwealth, or at least seize some sort of power from under Pamela's nose.
• Evil Counterpart: Much like Carol, he can be cunning, ruthless, and a lot more dangerous than they seem at first glance. They're also willing to go behind their leaders' backs to pursue their own agendas to do what they believe is right. Highlighted when he promotes Carol to work his assistant, clearly seeing a lot of himself in the seemingly mild-mannered and benign dessert baker. It's only fitting that Carol ends up being the one to kill Lance. She even takes his job as Deputy Governor one year after Pamela is removed from power in the Grand Finale.
• Evil Is Not a Toy: Hiring Leah, a deranged psychopath driven insane by revenge, to kill Maggie only results in Lance’s loyal men being sacrificed as collateral damage. Leah proves to be too unstable to finish the job right, and only leads to Lance’s exposure as her benefactor to Daryl and Maggie.
• Evil vs. Evil: Two brief examples.
  • When Leah goes rogue, Lance becomes determined to kill her for her treachery at the same time as his efforts to kill Maggie, Daryl, Aaron, and Gabriel.
  • Once Pamela becomes an outright antagonist, he tries to work against her despite being captured and claiming loyalty to her.
• Expy: As of "Acts of God", he's one to, of all characters, Batman's Two-Face. He receives a nasty wound on one side of his face and has a lucky coin given to him by his father which he uses to make decisions.
• Facial Horror: Gets shot in the face by Daryl in "Acts of God". The bullet grazes him across his cheek, leaving behind a massive scar.
• Fall Guy: As of "Lockdown", Carol makes a deal with Pamela to have Hornsby take the fall for all the crimes committed in the past few months if it means her friends and Sebastian can be cleared of all charges.
• False Friend: He's introduced getting Eugene's group off the hook by having them sent to clear houses of walkers instead of be tried for using the Commonwealth's radio equipment without permission, and later helpfully gets Ezekiel medical aid when the dust from their labor aggravates his condition. He looks like he’s being a decent guy, but it’s all so that he can work his way into learning the location of the Coalition and work on his long-term schemes for power.
• Fingore: In "A New Deal", Daryl stabs him in the hand as a bit of Laser-Guided Karma for everything he's pulled these past few episodes.
• Foil: To Mercer. Both are leaders of the Commonwealth, with Mercer handling the community's defensive front as the general of the militia, while Lance is the idea man who keeps the trains moving from a political and sociological standpoint. Mercer is an intimidating guy who later turns out to be quite sensitive and burdened by the weight of having so many lives to look after, and genuinely cares about keeping the people of the Commonwealth safe. Lance seems like a stand-up gent but slowly reveals himself to be a conniving, sadistic, power-hungry snake who is willing to have an entire settlement wiped out if it means keeping his position as Number Two of the Commonwealth intact, and doesn't seem to care much about the lives of other people unless they benefit him. Mercer is a Humble Hero who is loved by the general public but hates the limelight. Lance doesn't get the recognition he rightfully deserves and wants to be applauded for his accomplishments. Mercer shows his softer side by being friendly to the young Hershel. Lance threatens Hershel and tries to extort information about Maggie and her alliance with Riverbend out of him.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: Lance grew up as the son of the chauffeur for the wealthy political dynasty, the Miltons. Though he's managed to elevate himself to a position of authority by becoming Pamela's Number Two, his greater ambition means he's willing to resort to genocide to gain control of the defiant Alexandria, Hilltop, and Oceanside communities.
• Green-Eyed Monster: He’s jealous of Mercer’s status as a beloved war hero of the Commonwealth, as well as how the Milton family remains in power despite being a family mired deep in corruption.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Carol kills him by shooting him in the neck with an arrow.
• I Just Want to Be Special: Lance wants to make a name for himself due to his impoverished background and having to watch the Milton family’s successes from the sidelines. When Pamela sneeringly calls him a child in way over his head, Lance almost tears up on the spot.
• Jerkass Has a Point: As he points out to Eugene, Alexandria was nearly beyond repair when the Commonwealth arrived and they’re being asked for little in return - namely being productive members of Commonwealth society for as long as they wish to live there. He also isn’t wrong that Shira had the right to pull out of her fake relationship with Eugene when he made it clear he wanted to get more serious.
• Karmic Death:
  • For all his ambition to become a powerful, famous leader who can outshine the Milton family, he ultimately ends up dying alone in the woods, impaled through the neck by an arrow as his killer moves on to pay more attention to the bigger threat Pamela poses. Even before he gets himself killed by Carol, Lance recognized that he was probably going to die in the woods without any resources to call upon.
  • He was correct that the Milton dynasty would never truly do anything to save the common people, but promised that he would if he was left in charge, as he knew what it was like to have the privileged life dangled out of reach. His walker is among the horde that encroaches on the gates to the Estates, and while the Coalition and Mercer's forces successfully rescue the crowd of commoners who seek refuge, he is left snapping and snarling at the gates, unable to get in before being shot and put down. Taking Josh Hamilton and Laila Robins' account that he lusted after Pamela, he also fails to get a hold of Pamela even in death.
• Madness Mantra: After cutting up Roman's corpse and feeding it to the undead Sebastian, Carol and Daryl find him sitting in his cell staring at his coin and repeatedly muttering to himself, "Always a way out..."
• Manipulative Bastard: He threatens to have Toby's peaceful life taken away from him if he does not carry out his orders to eliminate the people in the apartment complex. He also preys on Carlson's sympathy by mentioning that a bunch of young troopers lost their lives to the Riverbend group.
• Mirror Character:
  • To Simon. Both are the ruthless second-in-commands to a more revered leader who they start off on good terms with but slowly form a coup against when they start to disapprove of their methods. Both Simon and Lance show just how vile they really are by signing off on the massacre of a community: Simon on the Library and Oceanside, and Lance on Riverbend. Lance himself later returns to Oceanside to threaten them with execution because they refused his offer to form a new coalition, which is disturbingly similar to Simon's petty genocide of the Scavengers when Jadis punched him in the face for being an ass. Lance interrogating Hershel by messing with his baseball cap also calls to mind Simon bullying Carl by flicking his sheriff's hat during their first meeting. Both Lance and Simon are Out-Gambitted when someone they thought they could trust strikes a deal and lets them take the fall for everything. They both die from a neck-related injury after being given a fair chance for survival and failing: Negan lets Simon fight him for leadership and Simon loses, causing Negan to throttle him to death; Lance is given the chance to flee into the woods on his own and instead tries to kill Carol and Daryl, causing Carol to shoot him in the throat with an arrow.
  • To Gregory. Both are smooth-talking politicians who are not subtle about how much they want to be in power, butt heads with Maggie Rhee, and hire someone else to kill her when they decide she's too much of a thorn in their side to be kept alive. The similarities stop there. Gregory was largely ineffectual when it came to manipulation while Lance is good at making deals and getting most people to do what he wants. Gregory also lacked Lance's ambition and never seemed to care too much about trading with the other communities, only preoccupied with keeping Hilltop under his thumb. Like Gregory, Lance dies when the group has finally had enough of his bullshit and realize it's pointless to keep him alive any longer.
• Murder Is the Best Solution: After suspecting that Riverbend is behind the missing shipment of weaponry, he decides the best thing to do is have Carlson wipe out the community to cover his tracks, even though Riverbend is an isolated group with whom you could easily work out a number of peaceful solutions instead.
• Mutilation Conga: Gets shot in the face and shoulder and stabbed through the hand no more than a few hours apart, all three times by Daryl. He also gets an arrow through the throat by Carol in "What's Been Lost", leaving him to slowly choke to death on his own blood.
• Nerves of Steel: Say what you will about Lance, but the man does not cave easily under pressure. First, he doesn't lose his cool when Elijah pins him against a wall for interrogating Hershel. He also has the gall to approach an armed Leah knowing she singlehandedly wiped out a caravan of his trained soldiers. He heads into Leah's cabin armed with a single pistol to take on who he assumes to be Leah herself, and in the next episode, leads the charge against Daryl despite him having just killed three of his men. He does start to shake a little when Daryl and Carol tell him he's outlived his usefulness in "What's Been Lost", and give him a fair chance to either flee into the woods or be shot. He chooses poorly.
• Non-Action Big Bad: He's more of a coordinator than a fighter, and hires Toby and Leah to do his dirty work for him. Though he does get more directly involved in the action in "Acts of God", right down to being willing to gun down the party responsible for shooting him in the face.
• Number Two: Lance is pretty much the second-in-command of the Commonwealth, who runs quite a bit of the day-to-day operations.
• Pet the Dog:
  • Lance is good at providing acts of kindness when it serves his purpose of trying to get something in return. He tries to have Eugene’s group let go without punishment, but eventually agrees to have them assigned to killing walkers as community service. He also later ensures that Ezekiel is provided much-needed medical treatment.
  • Whatever reason he had for having Shira continue her fake relationship with Eugene as long as she did, Lance is completely fine with her finally bailing after Eugene made it clear he wanted to get more serious with her and helps cover her tracks.
• Promotion to Opening Titles: He gets added to the main credits for the last eight episodes of Season 11.
• Psychotic Smirk: Gives one in "Lockdown" when Daryl holds a knife to this throat.
• Rags to Riches: It's heavily implied he wasn't born into money like Pamela was and actually had to work to achieve his upper-class status in the Commonwealth. According to Josh Hamilton, Lance's father was the Miltons' chauffeur and Lance grew up on the outskirts of the privileged lifestyle desperately wishing he could be a part of it.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Delivers one to Eugene at the end of “Rogue Element”, casually shutting down Eugene’s accusations that he’s a villain with carefully-truth-laced counter arguments that despite his duplicity, ultimately the Coalition is benefitting from his actions. To emphasize how he’s taking Eugene down a peg, he slowly makes his way down a staircase the entire time until he’s level with Eugene to make it clear whose house they’re really in. It works devastatingly well and breaks Eugene.
• Sharp-Dressed Man: He's almost always seen wearing flashy and expensive-looking suits.
• Ship Tease: He has some questionable reactions to some of Pamela’s physical interactions with him in “A New Deal” and “Variant”. Their actors came up with a backstory that Lance likely was attracted to Pamela from a young age, which Pamela would use to manipulate him.
• Smug Snake: While he can be pleasant and affable, he also has a smug, condescending side that can come out if he’s not getting his way. He talks down to Aaron and Maggie, particularly the latter when he’s trying to get her to accept a deal with the Commonwealth. He's all smiles when he has the Oceanside people at his mercy and flips a coin to decide their fate, after they'd refused to work with him earlier out of respect for Maggie.
• The Starscream: He hates working under Pamela and wants to establish himself as an equal to her in power, and quite possibly overthrow her. Season 11 shows him slowly putting pieces into place for what very well may be a coup - he quickly seeks to earn an attorney’s favor (Yumiko), he devotes a lot of work into rebuilding the Coalition in order to earn their loyalty to him, and he is very concerned when a caravan’s worth of guns are stolen, suggesting he is building a stockpile of weapons; and he expresses relief at finding out about a deeply destructive scheme by Sebastian.
• Too Dumb to Live: He tries to shoot Carol and Daryl even knowing they're both watching him walk away and are armed. Not surprisingly, it gets him killed by Carol, with her even looking disappointed that Lance had become so predictable.
• Villainous Breakdown: In "Acts of God", he starts to slip a bit when Daryl's group survive their intended execution, Maggie kills several of his assassin team, and Leah goes AWOL trying to pursue her own vendetta against Maggie. He goes even further off the deep end in "Lockdown", ordering all members from Daryl's party to be shot on sight and losing his shit when Daryl fires back and kills two of his soldiers.
• Villainous Crush: Disturbingly, he seems to have some sort of creepy lust for Pamela, as shown when she mockingly strokes Lance's head and he appears downright aroused. Even Talking Dead brought this up.
• Villain Has a Point:
  • He points out to Pamela that his actions were never intended to specifically kill Sebastian, so he’s as indirect of a culprit in his death as Eugene (not that she’s willing to listen).
  • He accurately brings up to Carol how in times of political upheaval, the innocent civilians always get the worst of it, and points out that the Coalition isn’t just going to war with another enemy like Alpha or Pope - they’re going to war with a woman who governs the lives of 50,000 people who could suffer if she is brought down forcibly in a revolution. It’s enough to make Carol pause as she realizes Lance is right about the ramifications of what they’re doing.
• Villain Respect:
  • He actually respects Carol for her keen eye and pragmatism, even elevating her to be his personal assistant and giving her a degree of authority around the Commonwealth as a reward for catching Moto.
  • He respects Max for being adept at fading into the background and encourages her to use it to her advantage.
• Villains Want Mercy: In "What's Been Lost", he tries pleading for Daryl and Carol to spare him despite having done nothing to truly earn it. They respond by giving Lance a choice to run into the woods and never return, with Daryl lampshading that it's more than Lance deserves.
• White Man's Burden: This is how he sees the Coalition, backwards “hick towns” he’s investing a lot in to rebuild to earn their loyalty and dependence only he can take over as their ruler for his own benefit.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Carol and Daryl pull this on him after he tells them about the Commonwealth train that will lead them to their kidnapped friends.

Ezekiel

See The Kingdom

Carol

See Carol Peletier

Mercer

See Michael Mercer below.

Mercer Family

In General

A pair of siblings who play a pivotal role in the Commonwealth.

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• Alliterative Family: Michael and Max.
• Alliterative Name: Their first and last names both start with an M.
• Brains and Brawn: Michael is the general of the Commonwealth army, Max is a Gadgeteer Genius and Pamela Milton's secretary.
• Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling: Max is more bold and willing to stir the pot than Michael is. She breaks the law by creating her own radio and chatting with a stranger from an unknown community, and was even about to sneak out to meet him before the call discussing their planned rendezvous was intercepted. She's also far more willing to challenge the order of things and goes along with the plan to expose Sebastian's crimes in an incriminating news article written by Connie.
• Military Brat: Max mentions that their father was a general.
• Related in the Adaptation: They were not siblings in the comics.

Max (SPOILERS)

Maxxine "Max" Mercer / "Stephanie"

"I'm Max. There is no Stephanie."

Portrayed By: Margot Bingham

Appearances: The Walking Dead (Seasons 9-11 ^note Voice in Seasons 9 and 10)

Debut: "The Storm" (voice), "Out of the Ashes" (in person)

"It was just dumb luck, honestly. I found the radio parts in a dumpster behind the municipal building. They'd never be left there for security reasons, so someone clearly thought it was trash. But it wasn't trash. It just needed some love."

A woman Eugene makes contact with over the radio. They quickly bond over similar interests, experiences, and senses of humor. They spend an extremely large amount of time together over the radio, to the point they become interested in each other despite not being able to see each other. Stephanie remains cautious, however, of a man she's never met, and briefly cuts contact with him when she hears Rosita over the radio in his place. She reconnects when Eugene apologizes and gives him coordinates and a place to meet her near her community in West Virginia.

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• Adaptation Dye-Job: Her comic counterpart was bald and wore wigs, which her TV counterpart does not.
• Adaptational Attractiveness: She is much more of a looker compared to her comic counterpart, thanks to being played by the stunning Margot Bingham.
• Adaptational Late Appearance: An interesting example. Her voice is heard and she's seen in person at around the same point as the comics. However, she isn’t introduced as Stephanie to Eugene until Season 11’s “Rogue Element”.
• Adaptation Name Change: “The Lucky Ones” reveals that her actual name is Max, with “Stephanie” being her mother’s name she used while communicating to Eugene.
• Bespectacled Cutie: She wears a cute pair of black-rimmed glasses.
• Birds of a Feather: She's very much a fellow nerd like Eugene, and they geek out over ice cream, comets and classic rock music.
• Black and Nerdy: She's intelligent enough to make a homemade radio from leftover parts, and is unabashedly a big science nerd like Eugene.
• Composite Character: She is largely based off the character of the same name from the comic, but she also gains the name and role of “Max”, the name of an assistant to Pamela who is otherwise not present in the show.
• Cute Bookworm: Eugene awakens after their first night together to discover Max reading a book on physics.
• Early-Bird Cameo: Her voice is first heard in the final scene of Season 9, but it isn't until "Bonds" that she is properly introduced.
• Gadgeteer Genius: Makes a functioning homemade radio out of leftover scrap parts.
• Give Geeks a Chance: Downplayed. She’s almost as much of a geek as Eugene, and she still becomes interested in him.
• Good Counterpart: More literal than most examples given she's the actual "Stephanie". Unlike Shira, she actually helps Eugene and his friends and proves to be a trustworthy ally, whereas Shira helped lead Eugene's group into trouble as part of Lance's scheme. "Acts of God" also highlights this, as the scene from "Rogue Element" is revisited when Eugene finds her reading something after spending the night together. Whereas Shira was reading Eugene's manuscript to butter him up and shower him with false praises (and self-interest since she actually enjoyed the manuscript), Max is reading a textbook, showing she's her own person with her own interests and not just a character made up to sweet-talk Eugene.
• Happily Married: To Eugene by the time of the show’s epilogue. They’ve had a daughter named Rosie.
• Hero of Another Story: In Season 10. Where her story takes place, we don't know, but she's still survived the last decade of the apocalypse somehow.
• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: Though heartbroken seeing Eugene enjoy his time with Shira using her code name, she stays back due to not wanting to endanger Eugene or disrupt his happiness.
• Kick The Son Of A Bitch: She helps provide the intel that feeds Connie's manifesto on the Milton family's dark side, and later covertly records Sebastian's rant about the inequalities of the Commonwealth, unwilling to let the Miltons get off easy.
• Last Episode, New Character: In the Season 9 finale, making her official debut six episodes later in Season 10.
• Ms. Fanservice: She’s a beautiful woman who often dresses well given her job as a secretary, and has pronounced hips and curves which she displays prominently in a pair of Painted-On Pants in “Trust”.
• Named by the Adaptation: Due to Max being Michael's sister and a Composite Character with Stephanie (which turns out to be an alias), she receives the last name Mercer.
• Nice Girl: She's pleasant and quickly befriends Eugene.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Her plan to expose Sebastian results in a chain of events that leads to Sebastian being killed by a walker. This causes to Pamela to go back on her deal to have the Coalition members cleared of their charges and ordering Eugene to be arrested so he can be made an example of, while having all his friends kidnapped and taken God knows where as leverage.
• Non Action Girl: Seems to be, as she doesn't attempt to fight back when Tyler takes her hostage, and mentions that she's never even been outside the Commonwealth's walls. In “A New Deal” she comes dangerously close to being killed by a walker Sebastian throws at her, and has to be saved by Eugene. The Grand Finale shows her fighting alongside the others against walkers, however, suggesting she was just taken by surprise by Tyler and later the walker Sebastian threw at her.
• "Not So Different" Remark: She points out to Tyler that she’s another innocent civilian who’s on the back foot in the Commonwealth, which causes him to relent and sincerely apologize to her.
• Official Couple: With Eugene as of “Trust”. By the Grand Finale they’re married and have had a daughter, Rosie.
• One-Steve Limit: Averted. She, somewhat ironically, shares a name (or, rather, an alias) with a deceased former member of Abraham's group who is mentioned by Eugene when he rattles off a list of the people who died trying to get him to Washington.
• Pair the Smart Ones: With Eugene, who is the smart guy of the series.
• Plucky Girl: Once she learns of the deep corruption in the Commonwealth, she becomes determined to put a stop to it despite her brother warning her to let it go. Even in "A New Deal" when Lance is put behind bars and the Coalition gets a care package to repair itself, ostensibly a happy ending, Max refuses to accept Sebastian getting away with his crimes and ultimately engineers his downfall.
• Properly Paranoid: Considering the horrors and monsters our cast has faced, it's not unreasonable for her to be as wary and cautious around Eugene as she is. Funnily enough, she’s still considered to not be careful enough by her brother.
• Relationship Upgrade: By the end of Part 2 of Season 11, she and Eugene have become a couple.
• Sexy Secretary: A beautiful woman who serves as a personal assistant to Governor Milton.
• Ship Tease: She and Eugene quickly form a bond, sharing many interests and a similar sense of humor. When Eugene mentions Rosita (who he has recently gotten over), Stephanie sounds a bit disappointed until Eugene clarifies that they are just friends. By Season 11, their prospects take a hit due to the fallout of Shira being revealed to be a fake “Stephanie”, but they seem to be on their way to mend their chances by “The Lucky Ones” as they’re still interested in each other, and they become an item by the end of the second part of the season.
• Single Woman Seeks Good Man: She falls for Eugene despite not even being able to see him due to him being an honest, fun-loving and friendly guy. Even more so once they finally meet and he shows he is sincere, sentimental, and loyal to her and his friends.
• The Smart Girl: She even reads science textbooks for fun.
• Spared by the Adaptation: She survives the events of the series whereas her comic counterpart was mentioned to have died of unknown causes before the Distant Finale.
• Trademark Favorite Food: She loves ice cream like Eugene and many others in the Commonwealth.
• Ugly Guy, Hot Wife: Eugene isn’t the most conventionally attractive looking guy around, but it makes no difference to the well-dressed, attractive Max who fell in love with him before she even saw him (and that doesn’t change once she does see him).
• The Voice: She is only heard so far. Until "Out of the Ashes", where she makes a silent cameo picking up an order of ice cream for Pamela Milton.
• Walking Spoiler: In Season 11, due to the Commonwealth replacing her with another woman posing as Stephanie.
• What the Hell, Hero?: She’s upset with Eugene for not recognizing that Shira wasn’t her given all they talked about and shared with each other. She forgives him when he explains that he has difficulty picking up on social cues and was so desperate for love that he fell for Shira’s charade.
• When She Smiles: Max doesn't have the happiest job in the Commonwealth and spends several months pining for the man she loves only for him to be tricked away from her. But she has a gorgeous smile when she does get to lighten up, whether it's giggling at Eugene's jokes or smiling at the sight of her husband and daughter.

Michael

General Michael Mercer

"If you lie, I'll know."

Portrayed By: Michael James Shaw

Appearances: The Walking Dead (Season 11)

Debut: "Acheron, Part I"

"I spent a long time, all my life, trying to keep it together, safe, solid for everyone else. It's the only thing I know. Only thing I'm good at. And it worked. It got us this far."

The general of the Commonwealth army and a former Marine.

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• Aborted Arc: Much of Season 11 builds up that he’s going to rise up against the leadership of the Commonwealth and take over in his own right, but ultimately even when he does turn on Pamela, he’s quickly arrested and even when he’s freed, Daryl is the one who convinces Pamela’s forces to turn on her. He does, however, end up a political leader of the community in contrast to his comic counterpart who was unable to do so.
• Advertised Extra: The advertising for Part 1 of Season 11 features him alongside the main four characters Daryl, Maggie, Carol, and Negan, suggesting he has just as big a part as them in the final season. This turns out to not be the case; while he is still a prominent supporting character, he’s never as prominent as the aforementioned big four.
• Badass in a Nice Suit: The Commonwealth’s general really rocks the suit he wears for the masquerade ball, as Princess notes.
• Beneath the Mask: "Trust" reveals he's actually quite stressed about the pressure of having so many lives to look after, and he's torn up over letting Sebastian and his cronies lead over forty people to their deaths under his nose. He's also very shaken to have murdered said cronies, elaborating to Princess that he'd sworn never to do such a thing before, regardless of how much they deserved it.
• Big Brother Instinct: He stops to make sure Max is okay after she's taken hostage by Tyler. He's also enraged when he learns she violated Commonwealth protocol by contacting someone outside the community and was going to meet a man she's never met; though he helps cover it up to spare her from Lance and Pamela's wrath.
• Blood Knight: He admits he loves the way his heart gets pumping when fighting the dead.
• The Comically Serious: He's a stalwart, on the level guy, but his composure breaks a little from surprise when Eugene confesses to him and Evans that he's a virgin. Mercer's brief change of expression clearly indicates that was TMI, and it's hilarious. Even more so when it’s later revealed Mercer is Max’s brother, meaning Eugene just admitted to his radio contact’s brother that he was hoping to have sex with his sister.
• Dating What Daddy Hates: Downplayed, but he’s understandably not thrilled when his younger sister nearly goes to meet a man she’s never met, given the state of the world (and it’s generally a risky thing to do even without an apocalypse). He’s particularly hard on Eugene once he recognizes him as Max’s radio contact, though by that point it’s more on principle of being Max’s brother. "Variant" sees Mercer grow out of this entirely when Eugene willingly surrenders to what is likely certain death at Pamela’s hands, and claims he acted alone to save Max despite this not being the case. Mercer’s pleased demeanor shows that he now accepts Eugene as a man worthy to be his sister’s lover.
• A Day in the Limelight: "Trust" shows more of his personality outside the front lines, including his budding relationship with Princess, his fears of upsetting the status quo in the Commonwealth, and his fear of letting his dark side take over.
• Death Glare: An absolute master of it, especially when he's interrogating potential threats like Eugene's group or Negan.
• Defrosting Ice King: He's a no-nonsense poker face while on the job, but Princess finally gets him to open up a bit and smile. He also noticeably stumbles over his words for the first time in “Trust” when he talks about them having sex.
• Drill Sergeant Nasty: Downplayed. He’s stern, but fair and doesn’t lose his temper even when Daryl fails the training exercise.
• Fire-Forged Friends:
  • He comes to form a mutual respect with Daryl despite being his commanding officer, pleased by how down to earth he is and how he devoted himself to his people and family.
  • He also respects Rosita for the same reasons, outright saying the militia could use more people like her. Not only does Mercer appreciate her honesty but he even implies he'd be willing to break protocol to help her and her family should they ever be in danger from the Commonwealth. Of course, this becomes challenged when Max's well-being is threatened due to her role in Sebastian's death.
  • He and Ezekiel are initially at odds, but they grow to respect each other during the final battle of the Commonwealth and ultimately end up leading the community together.
• Gentle Giant: What he really is beneath his hardass exterior. It's especially evident towards his sister and Princess, as well as innocent children like Hershel.
• Good-Looking Privates: Princess certainly thinks so.
• Heroic Build: Compared to the other leaders of the Commonwealth, he has the most moral standards, and as his workout scene in "Trust" shows, he's absolutely shredded.
• Humble Hero: He doesn’t really like the glitz and glamour of the Commonwealth’s upper class, and prefers to remain in the trenches protecting the nation. This also means he’s very awkward when he receives a celebrity’s welcome at the masquerade ball despite having more than earned such love.
• Hunk: He's a tall, handsome, muscular man who gets his fair share of fanservice scenes.
• Iconic Sequel Character: A popular and recognizable character from the comics, he doesn't appear until the final season of the show (since, obviously, the Commonwealth arc was the final arc of the comic series).
• It's Personal: Ezekiel clearly strikes a nerve when he accuses Mercer of using his authority as an excuse to power trip and order people around like shit.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: He can be a stoic hardass to outsiders and even some of his own soldiers. That said, he genuinely cares about keeping the people in the Commonwealth safe, loves his sister Max, and even shows his softer side when he starts dating Princess.
• Large and in Charge: He's built like a tank and is the head of the Commonwealth militia. As of the finale, he's lieutenant governor for the community as well.
• Let's Get Dangerous!: His last line to Eugene at the end of "Faith", which signals that he's finally decided to take a stand against Pamela.
  Mercer: Time to fuck shit up.
• Last-Name Basis: Almost everyone just calls him Mercer. His sister finally reveals his first name in “Trust”.
• Living Legend: He’s so beloved in the Commonwealth that their children dress up as him for Halloween.
• Locked Out of the Loop: Later episodes of Season 11 establish that Pamela has her own special forces who work independently of Mercer's chain of command, including those who kidnap Tyler Davis.
• Loved by All: He is a beloved local hero of the Commonwealth.
• Manly Tears: He’s nearly ready to openly cry once he hears Princess tell him more of her tragic, abusive childhood, and nearly breaks when Princess admits she sees men as monsters on principle due to her trauma, well aware that his inaction may just be earning him the title of “monster”.
• Mirror Character: He's similar to Jesus in that they're both badasses who are by far the most qualified candidates to lead their respective communities despite not thinking much of themselves in a position of such power. However, Jesus is more willing to defy Gregory's orders and quickly supports Maggie once she starts to win the hearts of the people. Mercer takes much longer to come around and only changes his mind once he realizes that Eugene, the love of his sister's life, will be executed.
• Mr. Fanservice: He gets a scene showing how well he rocks a nice suit in “New Haunts”, and “Trust” has him in bed shirtless and working up a sweat in the gym.
• Named by the Adaptation: In the comics, it was unclear if "Mercer" was a first or last name. In the show, he's definitively called Michael.
• Official Couple: With Princess as of "Trust". They break up in "Variant", but get back together in the series finale.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: Mercer’s only solo action scene in the series unfortunately mostly takes place offscreen in "Rogue Element" in which he is shown to have decimated a group of walkers attacking some of his troops offscreen.
• One-Man Army: Dispatches an entire pack of walkers by himself in "Rogue Element".
• Opposites Attract: Compared to his sister's relationship with Eugene, Mercer and Princess are polar opposites in almost every way.
• Pet the Dog:
  • He has the decency to slide Ezekiel a cup of water after he breaks into an intense fit of coughing. Keep in mind this is after Ezekiel called Mercer an "asshole beat cop" who gets his kicks watching newcomers squirm.
  • He also takes the time to make sure Princess's sentimental $2 bill is returned to her after the screening process.
  • He gives Hershel his helmet to wear and playfully pats him on the back.
• Promotion to Opening Titles: He gets added to the main credits for the last eight episodes of Season 11.
• Red Is Heroic: He wears a light orange suit and is a compassionate and honorable man.
• Savvy Guy, Energetic Girl: The cool-headed, pragmatic Savvy Guy to Princess' peppy, upbeat Energetic Girl.
• Scary Black Man: He's very large and intimidating. Eugene's sweating buckets when Mercer confronts him a second time, though he's also terrified at the possibility that his friends may have already been killed.
• Semper Fi: As in the comics, he's a former Marine.
• Ship Tease: He begins to reciprocate some of Princess' interest in him in "Out of the Ashes". He also asks her to be his date to the masquerade ball in “New Haunts”. By “Trust”, they’ve started sleeping together and begin to open up to each other more intimately.
• The Sleepless: Lampshaded by Princess, who mentions always waking up to find him staring at the ceiling and jokes that he's part robot.
• Sour Supporter: As time goes on, he becomes more and more disgruntled with the Commonwealth’s corruption. In “Variant”, he especially hates having to lead the manhunt for Eugene since Pamela not so subtly threatened Max with death for her part in the disgracing of her family.
• The Stoic: He oversees Eugene's group being interrogated for seven hours straight, all without saying a word. He finally speaks when Ezekiel directly asks if he's the man in charge.
• Submissive Badass: He doesn’t think he has what it takes to be a leader despite being more combat capable than anybody in the Commonwealth’s leadership. Even in the Grand Finale, though he takes command of the army from Pamela, by the epilogue he’s become Ezekiel’s lieutenant governor.
• Token Good Teammate: He's the only leader of the Commonwealth who actually cares for the people and isn't a selfish, genocidal Jerkass.
• Uptight Loves Wild: Mercer is a rather reserved Workaholic who finds himself drawn to Princess and her Genki Girl nature.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Gets called out repeatedly for not doing anything to change the Commonwealth despite being fully aware of the corruption behind the scenes.
• You Are in Command Now: Convinces Vickers and the remaining Commonwealth troopers to fall in under him as they arrest and imprison Pamela for her actions. By the ending, he’s become lieutenant governor of the Commonwealth.

SPOILER CHARACTER

Rosie Porter

Portrayed By: Eli Nkrumah Payton

Appearances: The Walking Dead (Season 11)

Debut: "Rest in Peace"

The daughter of Eugene Porter and Max Mercer. Born during a time jump in the final episode of the series.

---

• Canon Foreigner: Eugene never had a daughter in the comics. Rosita was killed by Alpha before she could give birth to the child they would raise together, and his Second Love, Stephanie, died of an undisclosed illness prior to the events of the Distant Finale.
• Cross-Cast Role: A female played by Khary Payton's son, Eli.
• Dead Guy Junior: Named in honor of Eugene's best friend, Rosita Espinosa, who perishes in the series finale.
• Last Episode, New Character: Introduced following a time skip in the last episode.
• Walking Spoiler: Being a Dead Guy Junior spoils the fate of her namesake in the series finale.

Hospital Staff

Tomi

Tomichi "Tomi" Okumura

"I like life the way it is. It's the one gift I got out of the world falling apart."

Portrayed By: Ian Anthony Dale

Appearances: The Walking Dead (Season 11)

Debut: "Out of the Ashes"

"I fled Chicago when things first started going bad. After I left you that voicemail, I got in a car and headed east. Ran out of gas about twenty miles north of here but got lucky enough to link up with some good people. We all wound up here pretty early on when the Miltons made this place a safe haven."

A thoracic surgeon and Yumiko's long-lost brother.

---

• Affectionate Nickname: His sister calls him "Tomi".
• Canon Foreigner: Yumiko doesn't have a brother in the comics.
• Composite Character: Since Michonne doesn't have a daughter in this continuity — and was Put on a Bus in Season 10 anyway — he ends up taking Elodie's place as the long-lost relative of one of the characters who journeys to the Commonwealth (in this case, Yumiko).
• Dramatic Drop: His response when he sees his sister for the first time in over a decade is to drop the cake he's just finished baking.
• Drowning My Sorrows: He hits the booze to cope with losing a patient during surgery.
• 11th-Hour Ranger: In the Grand Finale he is the last heroic character to join the main group before the final confrontation with Pamela, and helps save Judith’s life.
• Fatal Family Photo: He apparently kept a photo of his sister around for years after society collapsed and she was presumed dead. Princess is impressed.
• Former Teen Rebel: Implies himself to have been quite the rule-breaker in his youth.
• Hospital Hottie: He's a handsome surgeon.
• I Just Want to Be Normal: Despite being a qualified surgeon, he just wants to be a low class citizen working a job he loves in a bakery. Unfortunately, Yumiko takes this away from him by unintentionally outing him as a doctor, leading to the Commonwealth reassigning him.
• Masculine Girl, Feminine Boy: His sister is a combat-proficient survivor while he's been completely at ease working as a baker for the last ten years.
• The Needs of the Many: Yumiko gets him reassigned to the medical facilities due to his training as a doctor. He hated his job as a doctor and wanted to remain a baker, but as trained medical professionals are a rare commodity in an apocalypse, he’s forcibly conscripted.
• Nervous Wreck: He quit being a surgeon because he couldn't take the pressure of so many people's lives in his hands. He begins drinking when he's uncomfortable in the first-class masquerade ball. He starts loosing his cool after he and Ezekiel are arrested and mentions he doesn't do well under confrontation.
• Nice Guy: He’s a good-hearted, down to earth man who quickly becomes friends with the rest of Yumiko’s people.
• Non-Action Guy: Compared to his sister, he's not a fighter. Justified since he's been living behind the walls of the Commonwealth for the last ten plus years.
• Rags to Riches: Downplayed, but he’s instantly promoted from low-middle class to high class in the Commonwealth once he’s forcibly conscripted to the hospital thanks to being a rare trained professional.
• Real Men Wear Pink: He’s an avid baker.
• Remember the New Guy?: Yumiko never mentions a brother prior to the revelation about his survival in the Season 11 premiere, due to believing he’s been dead this whole time.
• Shoot the Medic First: Averted! He's the only prominent physician to survive to the end of the series, and even helps save Judith's life.

Theo

Theo

Portrayed By: Nicholas Velez

Appearances: The Walking Dead

Debut: "The Lucky Ones"

A nurse.

---

• Nice Guy: He's friendly and personable to Ezekiel when he's going in for surgery to have his tumor removed. He later assists Ezekiel in running a secret clinic to help the citizens who can't afford proper healthcare. Ezekiel even says Theo is the one who has done most of the hard work.
• Uncertain Doom: It's not known if he survived the Commonwealth walker herd in the series finale.

Commonwealth Admissions Center

Clark

Clark

Portrayed By: Carrie Genzel

Appearances: The Walking Dead (Season 11)

Debut: "Acheron, Part I"

"We are auditors for the Commonwealth. You are under Level 1 assessment. If you pass inspection, you'll move to Level 2."

A former forensic psychologist who is an auditor for the Commonwealth.

---

• Jerkass: She's needlessly rude to Eugene's group.
• Not So Stoic: She gulps when Yumiko accurately pegs her as a former forensic psychologist.
• Pet the Dog: She looks impressed when Yumiko reveals how much she's deduced about the Commonwealth in a short amount of time.
• Sci-Fi Bob Haircut: Her hair is styled this way.
• The Stoic: She doesn't express much emotion, and is almost robotic in her speech.

Evans

Evans

Portrayed By: Matthew Cornwell

Appearances: The Walking Dead (Season 11)

Debut: "Acheron, Part I"

A former researcher who is an auditor for the Commonwealth.

---

• The Comically Serious: He is a bit nonplussed when Eugene admits he’s a virgin and was hoping Stephanie would change that.

Militia

In General

No, they're not Stormtroopers.

The armed guards who make up the Commonwealth's defense, led by General Michael Mercer.

---

• Blatant Lies: As seen above, they advertise "great housing", which is true for the trained soldiers, but not the new recruits.
• Faceless Mooks: Most of them aren't seen without their helmets.
• The Guards Must Be Crazy: Most of them aren't exactly competent.
  • Eugene's group is able to steal armor and escape the Admission Center while two of the guards are apparently distracted hooking up between shifts. Two other guards stop them and ask what they're doing, but thanks to some quick thinking, Yumiko and Princess are able to convince said guards that they were being escorted to another room for reprocessing. They later sneak back inside the compound and return the armor without the guards ever noticing they left.
  • In "Variant", nobody even notices public enemy #1 waltzing into their police headquarters until he is standing right in the middle of them. None of the troopers even think to check Father Gabriel's church despite him being a known friend of Eugene and the significant other of Eugene's known best friend who is already under suspicion.
  • In "Outpost 22", a guard escorting Maggie, Rosita, and Gabriel to a labor camp manages to fall asleep while they are in the middle of being transported. Naturally, the trio are able to escape (since the guards evidently didn't do a good job restraining them either), with only Maggie being caught due to their jeep unexpectedly hitting a bump in the road.
  • Subverted in "Lockdown": despite the city's numerous outposts and checkpoints, the guards fail to report that a herd is nearby until they are less than five miles away from the walls of the Commonwealth. Mercer lampshades this by saying someone wasn't doing their job. "Family" reveals that this is due to B-17 protocol initiated by Pamela, to use the herd as a scare tactic to keep the people in line and only a select group of soldiers are aware of it, hence why Mercer was confused as to what happened.
• Heavily Armored Mook: They wear heavy white armor designed to keep them from falling victim to walker attacks and getting bit.
• Highly-Conspicuous Uniform: It's a bit bizarre seeing people clad in white armor in a zombie apocalypse, in which stealth is often key to survival.
• Horrible Housing: New recruits are required to live in dinghy, run-down apartments until they complete their basic training. When Rosita complains it's like the walls are made of paper, she is in no way exaggerating.
• Light Is Not Good: Downplayed. Most of them are genuinely good people trying to protect what is hands down the most ideal community the apocalypse has to offer. However, some, like the ones working for Lance, are willing to do less than savory things like wiping out an entire community in search of some missing guns.
• Punch-Clock Villain: Almost none of them are malicious and are just doing their jobs because they don't want to lose their comfortable lifestyles and have to face imprisonment, poverty, or being exiled from the community into the wastelands.
• Rule of Symbolism: While their armor is certainly imposing and looks cool, it has key weak points and has not protected several troopers from walkers and hostile survivors. It lends credence to the fact that the Commonwealth, for all its glitz, is far from an impenetrable bastion.
• Shout-Out: Their armor is clearly inspired by the Stormtroopers from Star Wars.

Vickers

Colonel Vickers

Portrayed By: Monique Grant

Appearances: The Walking Dead (Season 11)

Debut: "The Rotten Core"

A colonel in the Commonwealth militia.

---

• Be Careful What You Wish For: Being loyal to Pamela nearly results in Vickers being complicit in sacrificing the lower classes to the walker horde.
• Da Chief: She appears to be something akin to this at the Commonwealth, assigning the soldiers to their duties like a police captain in a precinct.
• The Dragon: Becomes one to Pamela in "Family" when she assigns her to keep tabs on Mercer and gives the direct order to have a walker swarm infest the city's poor neighborhoods as a diversion.
• Everyone Has Standards: She is loyal to Pamela, but she's shocked when Pamela orders her to sacrifice the city's lower class citizens to the invading horde.
• Heel–Face Turn: Already reluctant to obey Pamela's orders, she's inspired by Mercer, Gabriel, and Daryl's words and leads the rest of the militia in turning on Pamela.
• My Country, Right or Wrong: She’s loyal to Pamela and callously ignores Mercer’s valid warnings about the horde. She finally realizes she must turn on Pamela after she tries to sacrifice the lower class citizens to the walkers.
• Not So Stoic: She’s a stoic, cold Da Chief for most of her screentime, especially when she arrests Mercer for turning on Pamela, but when the walker horde invades and begins slaughtering people en masse she’s finally shaken. She struggles to even give Pamela an action plan to defeat the horde, admitting it’s a long shot, and she’s horrified when Pamela declares her intent to have the lower classes wiped out in exchange for the upper classes’ survival.
• Skewed Priorities: Unlike Mercer, who is loyal to the Commonwealth as a whole, she is seemingly only loyal to Pamela. She comes to her senses when she sees how Pamela is willing to let countless people die to protect herself.
• You Are in Command Now: Implied; with Mercer stepping up into the role of the Commonwealth's Lieutenant Governor, Vickers most likely assumed his initial role as the general of its army (unless Mercer is somehow able to manage both, similarly to how Lance was both the Lieutenant Governor and Director of Operations).

Rose

Lieutenant Rose

Portrayed By: Dexter Tillis

Appearances: The Walking Dead (Season 11)

Debut: "Family"

A soldier who is loyal to Mercer.

---

• The Lancer: He becomes Mercer's in the last two episodes, helping get him and the Coalition residents to a safehouse inside the walls of the Estates where they are able to meet with Tomi and save Judith's life.
• Undying Loyalty: He's one of the soldiers who's firmly on Mercer's side, and helps him maintain his cover when Mercer decides to join the rebellion against Pamela. When Mercer is found out, Anton immediately raises his gun at Vickers to protect his leader.

Livits

Livits

Portrayed By: Jason Fernandes (10-11), Chase Anderson ("Family")

Appearances: The Walking Dead (Seasons 10-11)

Debut: "A Certain Doom"

"The rotters are climbing! I repeat, the rotters are climbing the walls!"

A Commonwealth soldier.

---

• All There in the Manual: The credits of "Family" confirm that he's the same character despite the change of actors.
• Character Death: Gets devoured by a walker in "Family", and holds the honor of being the first named character in the series confirmed to die at the hands of a variant.
• Facial Horror: The walker that kills him removes his helmet and bites into his cheek, painfully tearing out the flesh while Livits screams in agony.
• Failed a Spot Check: He's distracted by walkers scaling the walls and fails to hear another one coming up behind him until it's too late.
• The Guards Must Be Crazy:
  • His armor is stolen by Eugene's group while he's busy hooking up with Zell between shifts, nearly allowing the party to escape.
  • On a more monumental scale, he is the one who gets attacked by a variant while manning the gates of the Commonwealth, inadvertently letting in a massive horde of walkers and dooming hundreds of people to a very bloody death.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Gets jumped by a variant walker and accidentally falls against the switch opening the gate, letting in hundreds of walkers that cut a bloody path through the streets of the Commonwealth.

Davis

Tyler Davis

Portrayed By: Cameron Roberts

Appearances: The Walking Dead (Seasons 10-11)

Debut: "Splinter"

"Resist the Commonwealth! Visibility for workers, equality for all!"'

A young soldier.

---

• Anti-Villain: He takes the innocent Max hostage, but he has a legitimate point about the unrest in the Commonwealth and the vast class divide.
• The Atoner: In "Family", he apologizes to Princess and expresses sincere remorse for taking Max hostage. Connie reminds him it's never too late to fix his mistakes, though, unfortunately, Tyler dies before he can truly complete his redemption arc.
• The Bus Came Back: He returns in Season 11’s "New Haunts". After vanishing in "Rogue Element", he's revealed to have been sentenced to several months hard work in a labor camp in "Faith".
• Butt-Monkey: Things don't exactly work out for him. As a soldier, he's beaten up on his first assignment by Princess. He then loses his job and is demoted to working as a waiter with almost no means to support his family. After taking Max hostage and being talked out of a suicide attempt, he's kidnapped by Pamela's special ops team and sent to work at a prison labor camp, where the poor guy's spirit is broken over the course of five months by the sadistic Warden. And just when he rediscovers his courage and is on his way to help put a stop to the Miltons' empire, he's gunned down in an ambush on Pamela's orders, meaning he doesn't get to live to see the source of all his misery taken down once and for all.
• My Greatest Failure: Losing control to Princess was this as it resulted in his firing from the military and his loss of income. He later also admits he is still ashamed of taking Max hostage to get Pamela to listen to him.
• Naïve Newcomer: He's a new and inexperienced recruit to the militia.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: He came clean about getting beat up by Princess, acknowledging it was the right, responsible thing to do, and suffered greatly for it by losing his income and ability to support his family.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: On the receiving end of one from Princess, who catches him off-guard and disarms him.
• No Name Given: He's credited as "Trooper" in his first appearance.
• Redemption Equals Death: Becomes The Atoner and a Sixth Ranger to the Coalition, only to die before he can finally see justice prevail against Pamela.
• Sacrificial Lamb: The group's first casualty on their mission to take down Pamela.
• Sixth Ranger: After the successful uprising at Outpost 22/Alexandria, he joins the group on their mission to defeat Pamela once and for all.
• This Is Gonna Suck: He dreads reporting to his superiors that he was jumped by one of their prisoners, and as Season 11 shows, he had good reason to be afraid.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: He justifies the soldiers' use of force by claiming the Commonwealth has a lot to lose. His actions in Season 11’s “New Haunts” also qualify since he is correct about the disparity in the Commonwealth.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: It's unknown what happened to him after getting abducted from the hospital in "Rogue Element". The Coalition members getting shipped to a labor camp in "Outpost 22" implies he may have been taken there, which is confirmed in "Faith".

Daniels

Jake Daniels

Portrayed By: Michael Hanson

Appearances: The Walking Dead (Season 11)

Debut: "New Haunts"

A soldier who is somewhat incompetent.

---

• Anti-Villain: He's personable to Daryl during basic training at the Commonwealth, but doesn't seem to have an issue with Carlson's genocide of the Riverbend apartment residents.
• Character Death: Negan crushes his skull with a crowbar in "The Rotten Core".
• Too Dumb to Live: He's near-totally clueless when killing walkers and dies when he gets ambushed by Negan armed only with a crowbar.
• Would Hurt a Child: Maybe. He treats Hershel roughly but it's unknown if he would have actually harmed him on Carlson's orders.

Romano

Romano

Portrayed By: Matt Bushell

Appearances: The Walking Dead (Season 11)

Debut: "No Other Way"

A soldier who is loyal to the Commonwealth.

---

• Alas, Poor Villain: He's somewhat pitiable considering he was likely Just Following Orders, and clearly doesn't want to die being ripped apart by walkers.
• Bald of Evil: Downplayed. He knowingly leads Daryl, Aaron, and Gabriel to be murdered on Lance's orders. However, he's not overly malicious, and there's no indication he took any satisfaction in doing so.
• Better to Die than Be Killed: He gives away Lance's whereabouts to Daryl, choosing to die by Daryl's hand rather than at the hands of the undead.
• Boom, Headshot!: How Daryl kills him.
• Defiant to the End: He attempts this, but when Daryl gives him the Sadistic Choice of being shot or eaten he decides to talk.
• Devoured by the Horde: Daryl threatens to do this, and indeed leaves his corpse to be eaten after capping Romano in the head. He at least avoids getting eaten while he’s still alive just as Daryl promised.
• Mercy Kill: Daryl gives him a quick and painless death instead of leaving him to be torn apart by walkers like he was afraid of.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Daryl shoots him after he gets the information he needs.

Alves and Castle

Alves and Castle

Portrayed By: J.R. Adduci (Alves)

Appearances: The Walking Dead (Season 11)

Debut: "The Rotten Core"

Two soldiers who are loyal to Sebastian.

---

• Boom, Headshot!: How Mercer kills them both.
• Corrupt Cop: Loyal to a prick like Sebastian who is getting people killed for his own benefit.
• Jerkass: A pair of condescending and corrupt assholes in uniform.
• Karmic Death: Are killed by Mercer for their part in Sebastian’s scheme.
• Would Hurt a Child: Neither object when Sebastian implicitly threatens Rosita and Daryl’s children.

Nelson

Nelson (Trooper 141)

Portrayed By: Greg Perrow

Appearances: The Walking Dead (Season 11)

Debut: "Outpost 22"

A soldier who is remorseful for his crimes.

---

• Alas, Poor Villain: He's easy to pity given how much remorse he feels for his actions and was only trying to provide for his family. Even Daryl sympathizes with him despite being desperate to get Connie and his kids back.
• Character Death: Dies of blood loss from a stab wound to the armpit from Maggie.
• Churchgoing Villain: Well, anti-villain. Gabriel recognizes him from church services and recalls that he always looked like he had something to confess but could never muster the courage to do so.
• Face Death with Dignity: He accepts his fate with remarkable grace, only asking Gabriel to comfort him with a prayer in his dying moments.
• Good Counterpart: To the Reaper Nicholls. Both men are mortally wounded and ask Gabriel to pray with them before they expire. Unlike Nicholls, who has the gall to ask Gabriel to show him undeserved mercy after hunting and killing several of his people, this soldier expresses sincere remorse for his crimes and gives the group information about where their friends have been taken, so Gabriel obliges him.

Wilson

Wilson

Portrayed By: Bryan McClure

Appearances: The Walking Dead (Season 11)

Debut: "Outpost 22"

The conductor for the Commonwealth train. He is taken prisoner by Maggie while the group is in search of their missing friends and family.

---

• Driven to Suicide: He stabs himself through the neck so that neither he or his family will have to suffer for him being captured and giving up information to the group.
• Punch-Clock Villain: Much like Nelson, it's clear he's only following orders due to him and his family being under threat of the Commonwealth.

Soldier on Radio

Soldier on Radio

Portrayed By: Yvette Nicole Brown (voice)

Appearances: The Walking Dead (Season 11)

Debut: "Outpost 22"

"Word is that most of the processees used to live here before the Commonwealth claimed the territory and turned it into an outpost, back when it was still called Alexandria."

A helpful soldier who gives the group directions to the mysterious Outpost 22.

---

• Affably Evil: Speaks in a cheerful tone of voice and helpful to someone she thinks is one of her fellow soldiers.
• The Cameo: For Yvette Nicole Brown, who is a huge fan of The Walking Dead and has appeared several times as a guest on its after-show, Talking Dead.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Believing Rosita to be Trooper 301, she spills the beans on the location of Outpost 22, namely that it's the recently-conquered Alexandria.
• The Voice: She's only heard, not seen.
• Wham Line: The above quote reveals to the characters (and by extension, the audience) that their fellow Coalition members have been taken for imprisonment at the place they once called home, Alexandria.

Recruits from the Coalition

Dixon

See Daryl Dixon

Espinosa

See Rosita Espinosa

Outpost 22 / (Alexandria Safe-Zone)

The Warden

The Warden

Portrayed By: Michael Weaver

Appearances: The Walking Dead (Season 11)

Debut: "Outpost 22"

A man in charge of the Commonwealth’s slave labor camps who oversees the captured Coalition residents.

---

• Arc Villain: For the midlate episodes of Season 11C.
• Asshole Victim: A man in charge of slave camps who orders the death of a pregnant woman? Yeah, nobody will be mourning this douchebag. It's telling that only one person jumps to his defense when Roberts is about to shoot him, and nobody bothers to avenge him after he's stabbed by Daryl and then fed to his undead trooper by Rosita.
• Bad Boss: He treats his own people like trash, happy to kill them for failures and also refuses to let Roberts transfer somewhere he can be close to his sick brother. When Roberts out of desperation tries to go around him, the Warden catches it and refuses him again, gloating about how he really won't get to see his brother now.
• Big Bad Wannabe: He thinks of himself as a powerful, efficient ruler over the prison camps, but he makes numerous critical errors that result in his downfall. He abuses his people almost as much as his prisoners, inspiring nothing but fear and hate from them. Despite claiming he wouldn’t allow the prisoners to speak to each other, they still get to anyway including at meal times which gives them the opportunity to plot an uprising. He doesn't deign to take care of his own dirty work and instead orders his troopers to commit executions, and he doesn't kill Negan, the supposed leader of the resistance, preferring to kill his wife to spite him. As Negan pointed out earlier in the season, not killing your enemies completely when you have the chance is a poor tactical decision that will likely doom you. And sure enough, the Warden's failure to maintain control during the stand-off results in his defeat and death.
• Death by Irony: The walker that kills him is the only trooper who was actually loyal to him.
• Defiant to the End: In his last moments, even when being threatened with a walker by Rosita, he refuses to tell her where the other children are and instead taunts his enemies with his last words.
• Disc-One Final Boss: Killed in the third-to-last episode of the series, but he’s only acting on Pamela’s orders with her being the group’s next target as the final threat (along with eventually the variant walkers).
• The Dreaded: Commonwealth troopers are just as terrified of him as they would like their prisoners to be. The group, though wary of the threat he poises, aren’t as afraid of him since he’s just the latest asshole they’ve had to deal with.
• Dull Surprise: He seems pretty bored in his job, even when he’s abusing his soldiers, showing how detached he is and how he fully buys into how the Commonwealth doesn’t see their prisoners as people. Even when he claims to be impressed by the Coalition residents banding together, he doesn’t change his tone of voice or expression.
• Evil Counterpart: To Negan, who has undergone a Heel–Face Turn, and who even acknowledges he used to be a piece of work like him. He runs a cruel slave system just like how the Saviors enslaved several communities for their own benefit, under the pretense of benefitting the greater good. He bullies and harshly punishes his prisoners even if they're compliant, just like how the Saviors usually abused their vassal states even for the smallest things. He recognizes the dangers of creating a martyr, which is why he decides to kill Annie instead of Negan, the supposed leader of the rebellion, to teach Negan and the others a lesson; eerily similar to how Negan himself killed Glenn to punish Daryl for acting out, and his general old doctrine of killing one person from a community to make an example of them. Fittingly, the Warden meets his demise much sooner than Negan due to his above Big Bad Wannabe tendencies, thanks to making one of the same critical errors Negan made that led to his own defeat and the fall of the Saviors.
• Hope Crusher: He intends to break down the prisoners by keeping them working long, hard shifts, refusing to allow them to speak to each other, refusing to let them use their names, and killing any runaways on the spot. He also has the prisoners taken to the conquered Alexandria to further mentally assault them.
• Karmic Death: After ordering the death of the pregnant Annie, he dies by the hand of the very pissed off Mama Bear Rosita.
• Kick the Dog: He punishes Roberts for trying to go around him to get a transfer so he can be with his sick brother by sentencing him to several more months at Outpost 22.
• Make an Example of Them: A fan of this, as Negan learns the hard way.
• New Era Speech: He takes a page out of Ebony Maw’s script and waxes to the prisoners how their suffering will benefit the good of the Commonwealth in the long run.
• No Name Given: To fully enforce the You Are Number 6 approach to the labor camp, the Warden refuses to give his name to his captives. In “Outpost 22”, his actual name is not even mentioned by his cohorts.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: Forcing Negan into hard slavery is this from Negan and Ezekiel’s perspective, as now Negan has a taste of the slavery he forced onto countless people during the time of the Savior empire. Negan admits that he probably deserves it, while Ezekiel has never forgiven Negan for his past atrocities and agrees.
• Pet the Dog: Downplayed. He claims to be genuinely impressed when the prisoners rally around Negan and Annie, but it's clearly horseshit as he doesn't change his tone or expression and he still orders them all to be shot regardless.
• Wardens Are Evil: One of the most vile villains of the show’s final season.
• Would Hurt a Child: He orders his men to open fire on the pregnant Annie.

Roberts

Roberts (Trooper 127)

Portrayed By: Mahdi Cocci

Appearances: The Walking Dead (Season 11)

Debut: "Faith"

A trooper stationed at Outpost 22.

---

• The Dog Bites Back: He hates working for the Warden since he refuses to give him a transfer so he can be with his sick brother, and the Warden rubs it in his face that as punishment for trying to go around him, he's stuck at Outpost 22 for several more months. Roberts is the first trooper to lower their weapon and turn on the Warden.
• Good All Along: Seems to be another thug working for the Warden, but soon reveals he is a devoted member of his family and proves he is noble when he betrays the Warden.
• Heel–Face Turn: When he is unwilling to fire on a pregnant woman and the Coalition prisoners who stand up to the Warden, he finally turns on his superior and takes down the one trooper who was loyal to him.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: He's a jerk to Negan at first, but proves to be a good man when he draws the line at killing Annie and the Coalition residents.
• Just Following Orders: Like most of the soldiers, he's only a jerk because of the people he's working for and because he's trying to provide for those he cares about.
• Small Role, Big Impact: Without this man, Ezekiel, Annie, Princess, Magna, Kelly, Nabila, and several others would likely all be dead. Daryl and Connie were hiding in the windmill, waiting to strike, but as they were outnumbered and didn't have guns, they would have been helpless to watch as all their friends and family were shot to death.
• Token Good Teammate: Downplayed. He's initially the only member of the Warden's firing squad who refuses to shoot Annie and the rest of the Coalition residents. Once the Warden and his one loyalist have been subdued, the other troopers stand down as well.
• Wouldn't Hurt a Child: He's ultimately not willing to kill the pregnant Annie, and turns on the Warden because of it.

Sanborn

Sanborn

Portrayed By: Phil Armijo

Appearances: The Walking Dead (Season 11)

Debut: "Faith"

A soldier who is loyal to the Warden.

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• And Then John Was a Zombie: He comes back after being killed by Roberts. Rosita uses him to threaten the Warden into telling her where her daughter is, and when the Warden refuses, Rosita feeds him to Sanborn, who takes a bite out of his face.
• Character Death: Shot by Roberts for trying to avenge the Warden.
• Jerkass: He throws Annie to the ground with his gun and smirks when Negan is begging for the life of his pregnant wife.
• Sadist: He takes joy in watching Negan beg for the life of his wife and unborn child.
• Token Evil Teammate: The only trooper stationed at the Outpost who doesn't turn on the Warden and dies trying to avenge him.
• Would Hurt a Child: He doesn't raise any objections to being asked to shoot the pregnant Annie.

Special Forces

General

A group of cover agents who take the Coalition residents prisoner.

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• Evil Wears Black: They're clad entirely in black outfits.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: They manage to capture the entire Coalition, including certified badasses Maggie, Negan, Gabriel, Magna, etc. and have them detained and sent for transport to the Commonwealth labor camp.
• The Worf Effect: As noted above, they succeed in taking the entire Coalition save Daryl, Carol, and Connie prisoner in their initial sweep. And they almost get Daryl too, who is only saved by the timely arrival of Carol, while Connie is later picked up as well.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: It's unclear what happens to them in the aftermath of Pamela's regime being toppled. While a few are seen explicitly being killed, both before and after the shootout with the Coalition, the implication is that there are several hundred (or at least several dozen) of them—given that they were able to quickly capture nearly everyone from the Coalition more or less concurrently—but none of their surviving members' fates are ever shown. While it's possible some were arrested or exiled by Ezekiel off-screen for their crimes, it's also possible that they just resumed living normal lives at the Commonwealth (as it's implied to not be public knowledge that Pamela's Special Forces or labor camps exist).
• Would Hurt a Child: They take all the kids prisoner and are shown manhandling Hershel in a flashback.

Lance's Operatives

Stephanie (SPOILERS)

Shira / "Stephanie Vega"

"Which one of you is Eugene?"

Portrayed By: Chelle Ramos

Appearances: The Walking Dead (Season 11)

Debut: "Acheron, Part II"

A woman who is introduced to the group as Eugene's mysterious radio contact.

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• Action Survivor: She claims to be this, but her performance against the walkers in the future construction sites makes it clear she is defying this trope. Averted when she reveals her true colors and lays Eugene out with a single kick, making it clear her earlier actions were just a put-on.
• Aloof Dark-Haired Girl: After her true colors are revealed, she barely speaks and is a dedicated, murderous operative of Lance Hornsby.
• Ambiguously Evil: With Lance being revealed as an antagonist, it's likely Shira herself is a part of something more sinister. Confirmed in "Lockdown" when Lance sends her and Calhoun to collect the children to use as insurance against Daryl's party.
• Ambiguous Situation: It's unclear whether she ghosted Eugene because she was no longer comfortable with the fake relationship, or whether she realized she wouldn't be able to hide her true nature any longer if she moved in with him as he wanted.
• Bespectacled Cutie: She wears a cute pair of red-rimmed glasses. Later revealed to be part of her pose, likely in case Max happened to mention to Eugene that she wore glasses.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: She's really not a nice person at all, following Lance's orders, including murder and intended mass murder, without question.
• Co-Dragons: She and Calhoun are this to Hornsby as part of his covert operation at Commonwealth.
• Dark Action Girl: A member of the villainous Lance’s forces.
• Faux Action Girl: [[spoiler:Her only victories in any form of combat are against walkers, Non-Action Guy Eugene, and a bunch of innocent civilian Commonwealth workers, and she's never shown actually combatting any combat-proficient characters.]
• The First Cut Is the Deepest: Her fake relationship with Eugene was his first relationship, period. So her sudden disappearance completely devastates him and breaks his heart. It’s not until he meets Max, or the real “Stephanie”, that he finally begins to heal.
• Honey Trap: She poised as Stephanie to get Eugene to trust her and eventually reveal the communities to the Commonwealth. She went as far as to sleep with Eugene to keep up the act, though she finally cuts it off once Eugene asks her to move in with him.
• Jerkass Has a Point: Going along with the long elaborate ruse pretending to be Eugene’s radio contact wasn’t a very nice thing to do. But as Lance points out, there were too many inconsistencies in the group’s auditing and they were within their rights to assess any potential threat. Dumping Eugene out of nowhere was also a cold thing to do, but you can’t blame her for pulling out when Eugene made it clear he wanted to get more serious with her.
• Lack of Empathy: Knocks Eugene to the ground with a kick and barely shows any pity to the man she tricked for months.
• Mythology Gag: Stephanie's apparent Race Lift is a reference to how the character was originally depicted as white in the comics before being drawn as African-American in all subsequent appearances.
• Nice Girl: Seems to be a friendly person, though given she's not really Stephanie it's ambiguous how much of it is genuine and how much is part of her pose. "Lockdown" reveals there's nothing genuine about her at all, as she intends on following Lance's orders to use the Alexandria children as leverage against Daryl's group. In "A New Deal", she and Calhoun gun down several innocent people who then reanimate at walkers and devour several people at the Founder's Day parade.
• Pet the Dog: According to Lance, despite faking her relationship with Eugene, her praise for his novel's manuscript was genuine.
• Relationship Upgrade: By Part 2 of Season 11 she is spending nights with Eugene and they are openly loving of each other, and he even gives her the key to his apartment. But it gets too serious and she bails.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: When her “relationship” with Eugene starts getting too serious, she bails and hides.
• Ship Tease: She shares giggles with Eugene and is physically affectionate with him, and eventually settles into a relationship with him. However, it was all a ruse; she stops when she recognizes that he’s implicitly asking for her to move in with him, and ditches her masquerade as Stephanie.
• The Smurfette Principle: She's the only female member of Lance's underground operation.
• Uncertain Doom: Calhoun is shot in the head and fed to the undead Sebastian, while Lance is killed by Carol in "What's Been Lost". Shira's fate is never revealed by the time the show ends, though considering what happened to Roman, her chances aren't good.

Roman

Roman Calhoun

Portrayed By: Michael Tourek

Appearances: The Walking Dead (Season 11)

Debut: "Rogue Element"

A man who becomes Eugene's number one suspect in his search for the missing Stephanie.

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• Ambiguously Evil: With Lance being revealed as an antagonist, it's likely Roman himself is a part of something sinister. Confirmed in "Lockdown" when Lance sends him and Shira to collect the children to use as insurance against Daryl's party.
• Asshole Victim: He's a cold-hearted murderer working for Lance and gets picked off by Pamela's special forces.
• Bald of Evil: Not a hair on this guy's head, and he's complicit in all of Hornsby's schemes to overthrow the Coalition.
• Boom, Headshot!: He is killed this way by Pamela’s troops.
• Character Death: He is killed by Pamela’s loyal troops offscreen during “Variant”.
• Co-Dragons: He and Shira are this to Hornsby as part of his covert operation at Commonwealth.
• Failed a Spot Check: In "Lockdown", he narrowly misses where the kids are hiding by not thinking to check inside one of the cabinets. Later, he doesn't do a full sweep of an alleyway that would have likely resulted in him spotting Jerry and the kids hiding atop a secret fire escape.
• Killed Offscreen: The first time he appears in “Variant”, he’s already been killed.
• Laser-Guided Karma: He is shot for his part in the Founder's Day incident that he helped cause. It's ironic that he ended up walker food.
• The Quiet One: He rarely speaks.
• Red Herring: Eugene suspects of him having something to do with Stephanie's disappearance. While "Stephanie" indeed broke up with Eugene of her own volition, Roman is still part of Lance's shady group of operatives that includes Shira, a.k.a. the fake Stephanie.
• Villainous Friendship: Lance appreciated him as a colleague if nothing else and lost quite a bit of sanity having to feed his corpse to Sebastian.
• Villains Out Shopping: Eugene observed him going about his day-to-day regime, including going for a regular run.

Recruiters

Carlson

Toby Carlson

Portrayed By: Jason Butler Harner

Appearances: The Walking Dead (Season 11)

Debut: "Warlords"

A recruiter for the community and Aaron's boss who assists him in finding new settlements to immigrate into the Commonwealth.

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• Ain't Too Proud to Beg: The moment Ian turns the gun on him he drops to his knees and starts sniveling like a child. Subverted when it turns out Toby is faking his helplessness and is just waiting for the right moment to strike. Then played straight when Aaron has him cornered after a trigger-happy rampage and Toby can only try to bargain for his life before Aaron shoots him over the roof of the complex to his death.
• Asshole Victim: He embraces his dark side to fulfill Lance’s mission and you can’t help but take satisfaction at his slow, painful death.
• Character Death: Dies when Aaron shoots him off the roof to be eaten by the walkers below.
• Devoured by the Horde: He's helpless to do anything when the corpses of his victims reanimate and eat him alive.
• Dirty Coward: Once it’s clear he’s been beaten, he quickly begins begging for understanding despite loudly whining at Aaron and Gabriel for turning on him.
• Everyone Has Standards: He agrees to Hornsby's plan after learning that the troopers killed were mostly young people in their 20s.
• Evil Counterpart:
  • He's the kind of power-tripping ex-cop Ezekiel initially assumed Mercer to be.
  • He's also the kind of overly-chipper recruiter Aaron was when he first met Rick's group. Unlike Aaron, Toby's deal actually is a set-up and he is there to kill them.
• I Hate Past Me: He has put his past as an assassin behind him and doesn’t want to fulfill Lance’s orders, but once he does...
• Karmic Death: He kicked survivors to their deaths from the roof of their apartment building as a show of the Commonwealth’s strength. He ends up pushed to the ground by Aaron shooting him, but he survives thanks to the Commonwealth armor he’s wearing - but still so horribly wounded he can’t move. His armor ended up doing nothing but keeping him alive so he could feel the walkers of the people he killed feast on his body.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: He seems to be a jovial moron who puts in a really stupid plan to make contact with the complex. Then it’s revealed to all be a hoax so he can get inside and kill Ian and take over the complex from within.
• Oblivious to Their Own Description: After playing with Ian’s corpse and kicking it to vent out some rage, he calls Ian an animal.
• Off the Wagon: He begins drinking heavily to cope with the stress of the mission Hornsby sends him on.
• One-Man Army: He guns down several members of the complex with no problem.
• Pet the Dog: While it doesn't stop him from trying to kill Aaron later, he admits to Lance that Aaron is an all-around likable guy who makes his job as a recruiter a lot easier.
• Retired Badass: He's a former CIA agent who has assisted Lance with other matters in the past, but in the present day, is happily retired.
• Smug Snake: Very high off his own fumes especially once he reveals his true colors. And it quickly fades the moment the group has him dead to rights.
• The Teetotaler: He's a former alcoholic celebrating four years of sobriety.
• Walking Spoiler: He’s a very twist-heavy character.

Jesse

Jesse

Portrayed By: Connor Hammond

Appearances: The Walking Dead (Season 11)

Debut: "Warlords"

A recruiter-in-training.

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• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Seems to be a cowardly Naïve Newcomer, but give the guy props — he survived for several hours after being shot in the back and made it to Hilltop to deliver news to Maggie that her friends were in trouble. If not for him, they might have all been killed, or at least there would have been far more casualties.
• Naïve Newcomer: Aaron and Toby are training him to be a regular recruiter for the Commonwealth.
• Nice Guy: Seems to be a plucky, good-natured fellow who wants to do his part to assist the Commonwealth.

Others

Kayla

Kayla Brand

Portrayed By: Courtney Dietz

Appearances: The Walking Dead (Season 11)

Debut: "Promises Broken"

Sebastian Milton's girlfriend.

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• Brainless Beauty: She's pretty but has no brains behind her good looks.
• Rich Bitch: Downplayed. She has no real characterization of her own but she's the girlfriend of the spoiled, arrogant Sebastian which doesn't say much for her character.
• Rich in Dollars, Poor in Sense: She's a member of the Commonwealth's elite and is a brainless idiot.
• Satellite Character: Kayla exists solely to be Sebastian's girlfriend who's probably even dumber than he is.
• Skewed Priorities: Played With. She's seemingly more upset about getting walker blood on her clothes than she is grateful for her life being saved, though it's Sebastian who does the ranting about it while she reels in horror.
• Too Dumb to Live: Like her boyfriend, she thinks it's a good idea to have a picnic in a zone that is still being cleared of walkers for future habitation, and goes along with Sebastian dismissing their security detail. It's abundantly clear she was going to be walker food had Eugene and Stephanie not stepped in.
• Ungrateful Bastard: Never seen thanking Eugene and Stephanie for saving her life.

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