'The Walking Dead': Can Georgie Be Trusted?

Sunday's installment of The Walking Dead introduced Georgie (Jayne Atkinson) and twins Hilda (Kim [...]

Sunday's installment of The Walking Dead introduced Georgie (Jayne Atkinson) and twins Hilda (Kim Ormiston) and Midge (Misty Ormiston), who came to Hilltop bearing gifts.

The seemingly benevolent Georgie told a suspicious Maggie, Michonne, Enid and Rosita that she came to trade what she called "essential knowledge for the future."

"That's what I have. I've made the same offer before," she said, making a simple offer: "Fill the crates, get the knowledge. Simple as that. It's not a fair trick, just a fair trade. I promise you."

In exchange for four crates filled with records (but no spoken word), Georgie would offer up knowledge that she refuses to share with the "weak."

Michonne, cautious but open to the trade, advocated entering into a pact with the trio despite the too-good-to-be-true-ness of the situation.

Georgie, with her power suit and van full of goodies, brings to mind memories of the Governor: he, too, seemed well put-together and upright — until he wasn't.

Maggie mulled over the idea of taking Georgie's supplies for a desperate and near-starving Hilltop, but ultimately agreed to the terms laid out in Georgie's deal.

The politician-like Georgie, noticing Hilltop's dire situation, added just one caveat: the terms of the deal now includes a "sizable portion" of food, amended to the deal not as a gift but as part of barter.

"I'll be back," she told Maggie. Maybe not for while, but I will. And by then I expect great things."

Maggie received a loose-bound book, "A Key to a Future," its mission statement laid out plainly on its cover:

Being a guide to the machinery, techniques, tasks, travails, and SOLUTIONS employed by early civilizations to recent times; let this be the path forward from the past to a more advanced NOW.

"Inside there are handwritten plans for windmills, watermills, silos, hand-drawn schematics, guides to refining grain, creating lumber, aqueducts," Georgie said. "A book of medieval human achievement so we may have a future from our past."

The intention is to build up Hilltop into something even greater, something that falls into line with the visions of a dying Carl Grimes, whose dying wish was an idyllic future for his family and friends.

It was that still recent loss of Carl that coaxed Michonne into giving the trio a chance, actress Danai Gurira told Talking Dead.

"Michonne's response and way of calibrating everything right now is what I call 'AC,' After Carl — everything is affected by that loss," Gurira said.

"She's in tremendous grief, and the only way that she's able to process it really is through connecting to what he last said. That's actually how she navigates not crumbling. So there's something about these women that for Michonne starts to resonate as, 'you take a chance on people, it's not always a bad thing.' And it's something that he really instilled in her as he was dying, and to me, I really felt Michonne seeing that as Carl showing her the grace that's still in the world and the reason to keep going on."

Talking Dead host Chris Hardwick attempted to pry details out of Atkinson, but the series newcomer would only say it makes sense for the four women to be openly suspicious.

"Why would you trust anybody in the world of The Walking Dead?" Atkinson said. "And I think when you see Georgie, she's put together well, she's wearing these round sort of Harry Potter type glasses, she's pretty clean — she does have back up — and she's not afraid. How is this person not afraid?"

"She's not afraid, and I think she anticipates that they're not gonna trust her," Atkinson explained. "But she knows who she is, she knows what she has, and she's been looking for them."

Atkinson told ComicBook.com she believes she could be portraying the television version of a major character recently introduced in Robert Kirkman's comic books, but Georgie's true purpose in The Walking Dead remains to be seen.

The Walking Dead airs Sundays at 9/8c on AMC.

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