enid

Last night on The Walking Dead, the peaceful tranquility of Alexandria was shattered not by a coming zombie horde as many expected, but (spoilers for last night’s episode follow) by a full-blown human invasion. In a masterful bit of editing, as the “next time on The Walking Dead” scenes actually masked this plot turn, hinting that it was the zombies from the season opener, not the Wolves, who were coming to town.

What followed was one of the most brutal, horrifying episodes of the series where the psychotic Wolves invaded the town and hacked everyone to bits, stealing what they could, but mostly getting killed by the few fighting-shape survivors that stayed there, including Carl, Carol, Aaron, and a few others.

But the most interesting aspect of the episode is something that many viewers seem like they’re missing, the fact that Enid has been a spy for the Wolves from the beginning.

Some seemed to make this connection, but right now it’s more of a theory than a fact, based on a rogue line of dialogue or a gut feeling. In fact, I think there are a lot more clues than people think which pretty clearly prove Enid was a spy, even if the show didn’t feel like spelling it out. No, the episode didn’t end with Enid pulling a knife on Carl or kidnapping Judith, but I still think the proof is there all the same. Here are my main points:

Enid’s Backstory

Why show Enid’s backstory at all if she wasn’t integral to this episode? Without that intro, it would have just been her hugging Ron and sitting around in the house with Carl for a minute. The intro is there because Enid is of significance to this episode as the Wolves’ spy.

What we’re meant to believe with the timeline of the intro is that Enid’s parents were killed, and then after wandering around for a while and eating a turtle, she stumbled upon Alexandria and they took her in.

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What I think was cut from this intro was an interim period of time where after hiding from walkers and turtle-eating, Enid met up with the Wolves (we have absolutely no sense of how much total time has passed in that intro). After doing god knows what with them, a plan was formed by the remaining sane members of the group to send her into Alexandria for intel. This is why she turns away and hesitates before going up to the gate. Not because she’s not ready to see other people again, but because she knows what she’s there to do. I’m willing to bet that she may have even done the same thing before at Noah’s community, and she knows where it’s all leading. That’s why she’s so reluctant.

Sneaking Away

The show has made a point of showing Enid sneaking off to the woods after scaling the wall, and she actually sees Carl when she’s outside the wall when they first reach the town. Either she just loves woodsy walks, or this is how she’s feeding intel to the Wolves. At one point, Carl tracks her, but she catches him before she can do anything conspicuous, and that’s when the two have a bonding moment hiding in the tree from the walkers. But the real reason she was out there in the first place was never addressed, and only now does it seem pretty clear what she was doing.

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The Keys

Anyone else wonder why Enid suddenly has all the keys to presumably every door in Alexandria on her? I assume she was tasked with opening up all the locked doors that protect valuables like food and guns, and may have possibly opened the front gate itself. She may have been going to Carl’s house to steal supplies or even kidnap Judith, but changed her mind. Or, you could argue that she was there protecting Carl and Judith, perhaps having told her fellow Wolves that she’d take care of that particular house. After all, you never see anyone even try to enter that house for the duration of the attack. During the fight, it does seem like she had a change of heart, as so far as I can tell, she didn’t do anything to actively aid the Wolves once they were inside. Conversely, we don’t see her kill any of the Wolves, nor do we see any of them going after her. I don’t think that’s true of any other Alexandrian this episode.

The Line

Once inside, the most obvious slip of the episode happens when she’s talking to Carl about how it’s impossible to secure the place because it’s too big. “That’s how we…” she begins, but doesn’t finish the thought. The “we” there is almost certainly her referring to the Wolves. I’d argue that with Rick’s group showing up, they could defend against an attack like that, but I have a hunch that she specifically told the Wolves to come when the main group was out wrangling zombies. How else would their timing have been so perfect? All the heaviest hitters were gone (except Carol, but Enid wouldn’t have known her true potential), so it was clearly the best moment to strike. I think this also answers the question of why she didn’t just abandon the Wolves and live in Alexandria in relative peace. In her view, based on what she’s seen before with overrun communities in the past, Alexandria is too unsafe, and if it doesn’t fall to the Wolves, it will fall to something or someone else eventually. Better to just stick with the plan and escape with her life (which she does), but it seems she makes a point to keep at least Carl safe before she departs. I think she really did grow attached to the community to some extent, hence why we don’t see her doing anything obviously awful to anyone, even if she is a secret Wolf.

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JSS

Enid acts awfully cool when the invasion begins. I thought it was an acting miscue, but it’s more than likely she knew it was coming and had probably even organized it herself. She calmly announces she’s leaving as people are running around getting murdered, and in the end, she does indeed leave. Carl reads her note, “Just Survive Somehow,” which is the JSS in both the title of the episode and in all her doodles in the intro. The implication is that she did what she had to do with the Wolves to survive, including infiltrating and invading peaceful communities like Alexandria and Noah’s camp. “JSS” is certainly referring to more than having the force of will to eat live turtles. The very existence of the intro and the singular line spoken to Carl is probably enough proof on its own, but I do think there are way more clues that support this notion, and it’s not as ambiguous as people seem to think. Now Enid’s run off with the remaining Wolves, no doubt (including the ones Morgan stupidly lets go), and I’m unsure if this arc is over or not.

The Comic

This is from last season. Just an easter egg, but it was identified as Enid’s comic, and there’s no way it’s an accident.

the comic

If we really want to go nuts with this theory, we could speculate that Enid is actually leading the Wolves, and possibly named them. That’s probably a stretch, though from what we’ve seen, she does seem the most sane out of all of them. And a murderous cult run by a child does seem like something creative and messed up enough for The Walking Dead to write into its storyline at this point. For all we know, the intro scene where her parents died could have theoretically been ages ago near the beginning of the outbreak, and it’s impossible to know what she’s been up to since then, including the possibility that she assembled her own group.

What Doesn’t Add Up

Though I think the above is pretty overwhelming evidence that Enid was a Wolf spy, a few things don’t add up in my mind. The first is that so far, the Wolves don’t seem to have anyone mentally capable enough of being a leader, as literally almost every Wolf you meet is absolutely crazy, other than maybe the one Morgan talks to who grabs a gun as he leaves, or maybe Enid herself, as I mentioned. It seems like they would probably operate more like a roving band of berserkers rather than a group that makes careful infiltration plans and sends in spies. That’s more Woodbury/Terminus kind of stuff. But perhaps we haven’t seen the full extent of the Wolves’ organization yet. If we’re going with Occam’s Razor, the simplest explanation would be that the Wolves saw the Alexandria photos, and eventually attacked when they saw a lot of people leave. No real spying required. And yet, with all of the above factors in play, to me it’s too big of a coincidence for Enid not to be significant at all in what happened.

As an aside, I also think it’s weird that the Wolves had literally zero guns, as you would think they would have managed to find some in their various past rampages of destruction. As we’ve seen, guns aren’t exactly scarce in this world, and practically every group we’ve ever seen has them. And if Enid has all the keys and the ability to sneak in and out of places, I would imagine they would have tasked her with smuggling at least a gun or two out to them. A dangerous gang that doesn’t have any guns doesn’t really make sense at this point in the story.

In my eyes, Enid was clearly a spy, and I’m kind of glad the episode didn’t spell it out for everyone. But because they didn’t, I think a lot of people missed both small and large clues about her role in what happened that day. What’s unclear now is if the Wolves have taken enough losses to be considered neutered, or if we will see them return at some point in greater numbers with Enid in their ranks. Pretty amazing episode all around though.

Update (10/20):

This got a lot larger response than I anticipated, so I want to briefly play Devil’s Advocate to my own argument here, and examine why Enid may not be a spy. Counterpoints to everything I talk about:

Enid’s Backstory – It’s exactly how it appears to be. After her parent’s death, she wandered around for a week or two and found the town. She hesitates to enter because she’s worried about seeing people again after pretty much going feral for weeks.

Sneaking Away – After what she endured, it’s no surprise she might have social anxiety disorder, and goes out into the woods to relieve some of that stress and be alone again like when she was wandering by herself. No secret meetings.

The Keys – It’s like she says, she found the keys so the Wolves couldn’t get to the most sensitive areas of the town. No one goes into Carl’s house because Alexandria is a big place and the Wolves don’t have a chance to search every house. She has a relaxed attitude because this is how she always is, and she’s seen a lot of horrible stuff already, so what’s going outside doesn’t really phase her, though it does cement her decision to leave.

The Line – The “that’s how we…” line refers to when her and Carl managed to sneak out of town to go to the woods, but Carl stops her mid-thought. She does refer to the Wolves as “them” when she’s talking about the keys.

JSS – The focus was on Enid this episode with her intro because she’s leaving the show, albeit by running away, not dying, and they wanted to give her some kind of send-off. Her version of “Just Survive Somehow” does not include staying in a camp that can be so easily invaded. “It’s too big,” she says earlier, and it turns out she’s right.

The Comic – Just a light visual gag, albeit one that might be deliberately misleading by the crew.

What Doesn’t Add Up – What else doesn’t add up? As I said, the simplest explanation is that the Wolves saw the photos of the camp, waited until Rick and the others left, then attacked when there were fewer people inside. There doesn’t really need to be a spy for that plan to work. Also, and this is a pretty big point, the Wolves find the photos after Enid has already been in camp for a while. From their reaction, it seems like they didn’t know about Alexandria’s existence before the photos, and Aaron seems to blame himself for leading them there when he rediscovers his lost backpack. They would not have sent in Enid as a spy to a place they didn’t know existed yet. Alternative theories were that Enid met them after she’d gotten to camp when she was on one of her woodsy walks, or that she could be a spy for a different group.

Question everything! I still think she’s a spy, as to me there are too many coincidences to overlook, but I can see both sides. What do you think?

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