He's Still Breathing
With as close as Tara and Daryl have become, you would think Tara would take a cue from Daryl's compromised though diplomatic approach to Dwight. Daryl, someone who is famously emotional and reactive, is capable of working with a man that tortured him as long as it helps them win, but Tara can't get over the fact that he (accidentally) killed her girlfriend, Denise, seasons ago.
Compared to Daryl, Tara comes off as a little petty and selfish here. By constantly goading Dwight and allowing herself to remain on a murderous edge with him, she is endangering the entire group. When you are running from your enemies with children and refugees through a walker ridden swamp, it is neither the time nor the place, Tara.
How has Daryl managed to become more level-headed, with a conviction to save his people, which no personal qualms could rattle, while the once chill Tara is consumed with a brash vendetta of revenge and hate? Considering the past, how can Daryl choose to have faith in Dwight while Tara chooses to have none?
Though Tara has seen her share of bloodshed, we must remember that she has missed out on some of the more traumatizing, Savior-induced events in this conflict. Daryl, on the other hand, has a more extensive and intimate history with the Saviors, and this creates between them a diametrically opposed view on Dwight. Daryl caught a glance of who Dwight really is (or was) when he first met him in season six, before Negan the man was even in the picture. Dwight even passed their "test" when Daryl threw the three questions at him.
Dwight was a man who loved and who did not want to kill. Daryl then saw him transformed, both physically and morally, into a subjugated foot soldier, a deformed soul sentenced by circumstance to carry out a life of tragedy and meaninglessness. He is like two people in one; he is somehow both good and bad. And I do believe that Dwight is a good person, and I think Daryl believes it too. Daryl saw what Negan did to Dwight, and even under Dwight's ordered torture of him, because of this, Daryl can understand and empathize with Dwight. Tara, adversely, has seen Dwight only as a monster.
She had never heard of him until she came back from a run which occurred during Negan's bloody introduction. So, she heard about Dwight and about Denise, Glen, and Abraham's deaths all at the same time. These differing perspectives explain Tara's annoyingly insistent lack of patience with Dwight. How will their faith in Dwight, or lack of it, affect their survival?
Right away, Tara becomes another character to ignore Carl's dying warning about turning people away, and I don't think that will play out well for her, Dwight, or anyone. With Daryl taking a swing at Rick not long ago, she seems lucky to get off with a stern verbal warning from him after pushing Dwight away and back to the Saviors.
Daryl understands that Dwight is the ever shifting fulcrum in this heavily weighted, constantly changing conflict; Dwight must always be positioned in their favor because he could destroy them if he doubles back with the Saviors. Daryl has struck a balance between maintaining a total devotion to the idea that nothing will stop them from getting their people to safety and yet remaining adaptive enough to make necessary compromises.
Now that Daryl has come back around from his bout of anger and shaky judgement, perhaps Tara should just have faith in him on the Dwight issue.
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Eugene Porter (Josh McDermitt) Photo by Gene Page/AMC
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