The Walking Dead: Who Are the Marauders?
With the Fourth Season finale of AMC's The Walking Dead taking place tonight, a lot of attention [...]
With the Fourth Season finale of AMC's The Walking Dead taking place tonight, a lot of attention has been focused on the events of Image Comics and Skybound Entertainment's The Walking Dead #57. Since they first appeared on the show (in the episode "Claimed," one of our favorites this season), there's been speculation as to what role Daryl's (nee Joe's) group might play in the larger series, and whether they would be adapted from existing characters from the comic books, video games or novels in The Walking Dead's universe. At some point a few weeks ago, many members of the media and even occasionally those involved with the show started referring to the group as "marauders," a phrase that could be interpreted as a fairly generic description of Joe's group, who appear to be essentially a motorcycle gang without the motorcycles. In the world of The Walking Dead, however, "The Marauders" is actually a specific group of people.
In #57, The Marauders are a group of unnamed men encountered by Rick, Abraham and Carl on the highway. Following the fall of the prison, the trio were separated from the rest of their group and came across The Marauders during a longer-than-normal supply run in which they were heading for Rick's hometown of Cynthiana. [Note: Rick, Abraham and Carl were heading into his hometown in the story mentioned above in order to raid the police armory for supplies and check in on Morgan. A variation on that story played out in the Season Three episode "Clear," and ever since, fans have been hoping we'd see more of Lennie James as Morgan. Well, in the comics, he rejoined the cast the next issue.] The Marauders jumped Abraham late at night while the others were sleeping and he was keeping watch, gaining the upper hand and ultimately holding the group hostage until one of them attempted to rape Carl. Rick, having just experienced the loss of Lori and Judith in one fell swoop at the fall of the prison (the comics play out a little differently from the TV series, kids...), snapped and dispatched the men brutally and with gruesome enthusiasm. It's far from a guarantee that Joe's group will become The Marauders, but there's a lot of evidence pointing in that direction: A trailer for the finale from New Zealand seemingly shows the first and last shots from the Marauder experience -- the leader of the group (in this case Joe) telling a member of Rick's group "You done [screwed] up," and Carl's head being cradled to the chest of the non-Grimes member of the group (in the case of the TV series, that's Michonne since Abraham isn't traveling with them).
In between, it appears they're awakened in the night while traveling: in trailers, we see a shot of Dan popping up next to a car window where Carl is lying down (it could be that he's hiding from Joe's group, rather than sleeping, but in any case it's dark and they're out on the road). Still other international TV spots have a different shot, with Dan holding Carl at knifepoint and uncomfortably close to (kissing at?) the boy. It stands to reason that given the importance of the Marauder experience in the overall scheme of the comics -- it was one of Rick's most savage, violent moments and showed just how far he will go in defense of Carl, but was also so traumatic for Carl that he's mentioned it fairly recently as part of the currently-ongoing "All-Out War" storyline -- Kirkman and company may have decided to increase the role of the Marauders for TV in order to make the scene more affecting and less like a "Hell yeah Rick Grimes!" moment without a lot of depth. Making Joe a kind of persuasive figure to whom Daryl can relate (we aren't the only ones who have pointed out his similarities to Daryl's father), and of course putting Daryl with that group to begin with, all points in the same direction: it makes them less a faceless evil and more characters that need to be overcome. Furthermore, making them so effective in dispatching walkers and menacing whenever we've seen them could heighten the shock of Rick losing it and taking them out. It would also play into the oddly-staggered timeline that has been going on since the fall of the prison. One element of the group being separated is that episode are not happening sequentially, and often there are odd, unexpected points of intersection. In the comics, the Marauder attack on the road actually took place before Billy and Ben (here played by Lizzie and Mika) died.
