The Walking Dead Refresher: What to Know about Jadis
Who is Jadis in The Walking Dead? Here's everything you need to know about Pollyanna McIntosh's character.
"We take. We don't bother." Those were the words that Jadis (Pollyanna McIntosh) used to describe the Scavengers, her group of junkyard dwellers who scrounged up a life among the Heaps in season 7 of The Walking Dead. Jadis' journey on that series ended with her taking Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) away aboard a Civic Republic Military helicopter, only to return on The Walking Dead: World Beyond as a warrant officer inside the ranks of the CRM. And now, in her third appearance within the Walking Dead Universe, Jadis is bothering Rick on The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live.
If you need a brief refresher about Jadis on The Walking Dead and The Walking Dead: World Beyond, we're breaking down everything you need to know about the villain on The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live.
Jadis took and traded people to the Civic Republic Military. Heath (Corey Hawkins) went missing during a supply run during the Walking Dead season 7 episode "Swear," leaving behind a mysterious keycard with the letters "PPP." It was eventually confirmed that Jadis traded Heath to the CRM in exchange for supplies for her people. Supplies like canned food and jars of applesauce, which marked the first time that the three-circle symbol of the CRM appeared on The Walking Dead.
"People are a resource." Jadis initially agreed to help Rick's rebellion go to war with Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) and the Saviors in exchange for guns, but she double-crossed Rick. The season 7 episode "The First Day of the Rest of Your Life" revealed that Negan offered the Scavengers a better deal: 10 people, negotiated down from 12 prisoners, because "people are a resource." But Jadis left empty-handed when the Hilltop and the Kingdom arrived to run the Saviors and the Scavengers out of Alexandria.
The CRM designates people as an "A" or a "B." When Jadis captured Rick in the season 8 episode "The King, the Widow, and Rick," she held him in a storage container marked with the letter "A." Season 9 revealed that Jadis was still in contact with the helicopter group and that her deal required an "A" in exchange for extraction. After Rick led a zombie herd to a bridge he then blew up to save his family and friends, Jadis found him alive in the riverbed. "I have a 'B.' Not an 'A.' I never had an 'A,'" Jadis told the pilot over walkie talkie, adding her "B" was "hurt, but he's strong." The CRM helicopter then shuttled Rick and Jadis away from Virginia. The Ones Who Live eventually revealed that "A's" are leaders and "B's" are followers; "A's" are sent away and killed, but "B's" survive.
Jadis gave Rick to the Civic Republic's army. The Walking Dead season 9 episode "Warning Signs" confirmed that Jadis knew about the existence of a hidden city later revealed to be the Civic Republic of Philadelphia. "There's only one place left for me to go, and you're the price of admission," she told Father Gabriel Stokes (Seth Gilliam), an "A" whom she originally classified as a "B." But Jadis didn't go through with giving Gabriel to the CRM. On World Beyond, Jadis confirmed she traded Rick to the Civic Republic Military for admission into the Civic Republic: "I gave the CRM something very valuable, and I got a new life."
The garbage people's trash talk was theater. After the Saviors slaughtered the Scavengers on The Walking Dead season 8, Jadis dropped her habit of using short sentences and speaking in broken English. Jadis revealed on World Beyond that Scavenger speak was a means to expedite the creation of her own society at the Heaps. "You want to create a civilization from scratch in a hurry, give them their own language," Jadis explained. "Give them a little theater to share in. They'll make that theater real. It'll bond them, separate from everyone else."
Jadis took Father Gabriel's surname. Jadis began using her real name, Anne, when she assimilated into Alexandria after Rick's war with Negan. After her then-boyfriend Gabriel overheard her talking to a CRM pilot on walkie-talkie, Anne confessed that she traded people. "For supplies. For my people," she told Gabriel. "It didn't start that way. It just ended up there." When Jadis resurfaced on World Beyond, it was with an assumed name: CRM Warrant Officer Jadis Stokes. "I think she's not going to give too much away about herself, so why not? Why not take a different name?" McIntosh told ComicBook. "And I believe she did love Gabriel, and I believe she respected him. But I also think there's a certain irony in it where she won't forget that she crossed him and that she did those things as part of her journey. And so I think it's a kind of nod for her to remember him, but also to remember how that went."
Jadis is a "believer" in the Civic Republic, the "last light of the world." "I know that the Civic Republic is the last light of the world, and my purpose is to create a new era on this planet," Jadis said on World Beyond. That series revealed that the Civic Republic Military's mission is to eradicate the dead and reclaim the world for the living.
Jadis has killed thousands of people. World Beyond revealed that Jadis helped carry out the "tactical military operations" ordered by then-Lt. Col. Elizabeth Kublek (Julia Ormond) and CRM Major General Beale (Terry O'Quinn). The CRM destroyed the Omaha Safe-Zone (population: 97,407), its smaller satellite community, the Campus Colony (9,671), and then targeted Portland, Oregon (population: 87,000) with a chlorine gas bioweapon.
Jadis and the CRM covered up its actions eliminating the Alliance of the Three. According to Jadis, the CRM wiped out the Alliance of the Three — the Civic Republic of Philadelphia's accord with Omaha and Portland — because the two smaller communities had become "too reliant" and "a drain of the Civic Republic's resources," threatening the hidden city's 200,000 survivors. "They'd never be fully self-sustaining. It was only a matter of time before thousands faced a famine of devastating proportions," Jadis said. "At best, those thousands would have died slowly. At worst, disease and conflict would have spread through the Civic Republic itself, and then? The light of the world — extinguished forever. Death wins." By killing them, Jadis said, "We made the choice to spare them that by ending it quickly for them so that there could be a chance for humanity to survive."
Jadis is blackmailing Rick. Rick reunited with his wife Michonne (Danai Gurira) on the outskirts of the C.R.P., where she's been entered into consignment as a "B" with a fabricated backstory. Jadis warned Rick that if they escape the CRM together, she'll kill everyone they love back home at Alexandria. She also threatened him with insurance: if Rick kills Jadis, her death would trigger a dead man's switch that would expose Rick and Michonne to the CRM. A CRM reclamation team would then kill everyone and destroy Alexandria in the name of operational security. Jadis reminded Rick of the army's code: "Security and secrecy above all."
New episodes of The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live premiere Sundays on AMC and AMC+. Stay tuned to ComicBook/TWD and follow on Facebook for more TWD Universe coverage.
