The Walking Dead: The Truth About [Spoiler] - From Page to Screen

SPOILERS AHEAD for tonight's episode of The Walking Dead.

As we expected, tonight's episode of AMC's The Walking Dead leans heavily on Robert Kirkman and Charlie Adlard's The Walking Dead #67, in which it's revealed that Eugene Porter is not, in fact, a brilliant government scientist. Instead, he's a clever guy who's good at lying.

This wasn't unexpected to anyone who'd been reading the comics for the last ten years, of course; this is, in fact, Eugene's defining characteristic and arguably one of the only really memorable things that he was involved in until the "All-Out War" storyline about 75 issues later, when he would be notable for standing up to Negan and overcoming his long history of cowardice.

Here's the scene, courtesy the official AMC page for The Walking Dead:

For those who can't get the video to load, here's how we described it in our recap of the episode: 

Glenn smells something, and they look ahead down the road where they spy a horde of walkers. Glenn tells everyone they have to turn around and head back. Abraham says that he's not giving up the ship. Abraham says that they can get through that they aren't going around or back.

Rosita tells Abraham no that the others are right. Abraham grabs Eugene and starts walking back to the fire truck. Eugene starts screaming, "I'm not a scientist." Eugene says he lied, that he's not a scientist, and that he doesn't know how to stop it.

Everyone is standing around staring at Eugene. Rosita insists that Eugene is a scientist. Eugene says that he just knows things and knows that he's smarter than most people. He says that he just wanted to get to DC, because he believes that locale holds the strongest possibility for survival. He just wanted to trick some people into taking him there.

Rosita says that people died trying to get him to DC. Eugene says that as the reality of getting to DC came closer that he tried to slow their path. Eugene says he also says he also lied about T. Brooks Ellis liking his hair. Abraham gets up and punches Eugene out. Eugene falls face flat into the pavement.

As Abraham goes at Eugene again, Rosita steps in front of him and puts her hand on her gun. Maggie rolls Eugene over, but he's out cold. Abraham walks away and falls to his knees on the roadway.

So...how does this compare to the version that played out in the comics?

Well, first of all we should note that in The Walking Dead #67, he didn't confess to anyone early (and couldn't have confessed to Tara even if he had, since Tara doesn't exist in the comic books).

Second, like the massacre of The Hunters, the whole group was together, rather than divided, when it happened and so everyone, including Rick, played off the scene a bit.

All that said, here's how it played out:

...So, yeah. Actually, not too similar, actually. Far less so than our other recent page-to-screen comparisons for things like the Hunter massacre or Carl's pudding adventure.

Of course...what comes next? It changes Abraham, it changes the relationships among the whole group...and while Rick and Abraham are evaluating what to do next, they get an unexpected visit.