Dare I say AMC’s The Walking Dead carries some distinctly Catholic undertones? (Or is it overtones? I’m never sure which I really mean).
I think I’ve always felt this in my bones. I came to the show about three years in, caught up with a summer binge in time for Season 4 , and have watched faithfully ever since. Every now and then, I’ll tune in to some of the Internet’s reactions to the show, and I’m often surprised to find seething hordes of angry fans and critics closing in on the show writers like Rick in the tank.
Those fans and critics were alternately angry at cruel character deaths and bored for long stretches that I found rich in a number of ways: surprising interpersonal cooperation and conflict, compelling explorations of human nature, the tensions between doom and grace, fresh interpretations of mythic archetypes, and through all of it, a persistent resonance with Catholic concerns.
At its most basic, the apocalypse of TWD is a Catholic nightmare about the resurrection of the body and life after death–like Lucifer’s mockery of Christ’s promise. This nightmare continuously tests the remnants of human civilization like Job writ large. To what extent will they–can they–remain true to the things they know to be good amidst the horrors this world will visit upon them?
Then, of course, there are the symbolic echoes of the Judeo-Christian story: Rick Grimes, one-time lawman, leading his people on an Exodus like Moses, the Law giver; Rick, the foster father, raising a child not his own for the promise of hope in a world of death; the repeated gathering of lost sheep; not to mention the more overt winks and nods in names like Judith, Ezekiel, Gabriel, Abraham, Simon, Aaron, the (ironically named) Saviors and their Sanctuary, and, yes… Jesus. (Apparently, your odds of surviving the apocalypse are higher if you have a biblical name; bonus points for Old Testament).
I’m hardly the first to notice this, and in fact, it wasn’t until the most recent half-season (Season 9) that I was able to articulate my Catholic appreciation of the show when others’ faith in the series had been crushed by Negan’s barbed-wired bat. It was the fight for community at Hilltop, in the Kingdom, at Alexandria, that felt so profound in a show that, on the surface, might just have been about killing zombies. Here is a show of diverse, believable, imperfect people, haunted (literally) by their mortality, finding their strength in community and love in their neighbors, daring to show mercy to enemies, yearning to welcome the strangers they fear.
What’s not Catholic about that?