Of Mice and Lizzie

If you haven't seen The Walking Dead episode "The Grove" you should watch it now. This post will contain major spoilers and you should watch the episode, get your heart ripped out, and then read this post.

Now I am someone with tough skin when it comes to depressing stuff in fiction. I didn't cry when Mufasa died in The Lion King and even Dale's death, though it was hard to bear, didn't make me cry like a little baby. That was saved until Hershel's death.

So when I found out that people said this was a really depressing episode I had to check it out for myself sooner than I had intended. I usually watch episodes a day after they air but this time I had to watch it right before bed.

This is also something that you shouldn't finish right before bed.

The reason why I, and many others, found it so heartbreaking is what happens between Lizzie and Mika. Plus what finally happens to Lizzie is beyond heartbreaking because...I'll get to that soon.

So do I agree about Carol killing Lizzie?

Lizzie is mentally unstable. There is no avoiding that fact. She is crazy.

She thinks that Walkers are like people and that they're just sick/different. In one scene this episode she was even playing with one. She didn't find anything dangerous with the Walker and told Carol that the Walker was a friend.

In another scene Lizzie tells Mika that she never pretended that the Walkers were people, it was always a reality for her.

In an earlier episode Lizzie was shown to nearly smother Judith.

We found out in this episode that it was Lizzie who fed the Walkers so that they caused problems for the people in the Prison (you could also say it was because of Lizzie that Hershel is dead) and she was the one that was dissecting animals.

The final act of killing that Lizzie does is to kill her sister Mika (and she would've killed Judith if Carol and Tyreese hadn't arrived when they did) to prove to the others the 'truth' she knows about the Walkers.

If there was a mental institution in sight, I would say that Lizzie should've been taken there. This is so that she wouldn't cause harm to anyone else and maybe even make a full recovery one day. But this is the Zombie Apocalypse and no one on the show has that luxury.

Because if Lizzie had lived she couldn't stay with Carol, Tyreese, and Judith since having Lizzie around people isn't safe. Another option would be to just leave Lizzie in the house which would've been a slow death if no one came by (and if people came by...yeah, not good either).

So I fully agree with Carol killing Lizzie since that was the best option available at the time.

But the thing that makes Lizzie's death scene so heartbreaking is that she doesn't know what she's done. She merely thinks Carol is mad at her for holding her at gunpoint. She finds NOTHING wrong with having killed her sister.

So Lizzie's death was no real victory in the end since a real victory would be her recognizing what she did was wrong. Lizzie's death was just something that had to happen in the world Carol and the others live in now.

I watched this scene and thought of the ending Of Mice and Men.