SPOILER ALERT: This post contains spoilers from Season 8, Episode 6 of The Walking Dead entitled “The King, The Widow and Rick.” Proceed with caution.
Episode 6 of Season 8 of The Walking Dead reintroduced a character we first saw in the season premiere. Remember the guy at the gas station talking to Carl about helping the traveller, and mercy prevailing over wrath? The guy that Rick scared off with gunshots? If you’re still scratching your head, you’ll certainly remember this line of dialogue he spoke: “Someone threw a microwave at me.”
A microwave opens Episode 6, incidentally, when Rick tugs open the door of one balanced in a wheelbarrow and takes out some notes concealed inside. It’s a signifier we’ll see the guy again in this episode.
And when he does turn up, we learn plenty more about him, aside from the fact he’s a Quran-quoting mummy’s boy. He bonds with Carl over their shared desire to honour their dearly departed mothers. Carl by heeding Lori’s words to always do the right thing; the new guy by putting walkers out of their misery as per his mother’s wish to free their souls.
We also learn his name – Siddiq. This confirms the theory that the same man we encountered in the season premiere is indeed Siddiq from the comics. Or at least a version of. And comic-book Siddiq has an interesting relationship with a certain member of Rick’s gang. Namely Rosita.
In the comics, Siddiq gets into a romantic affair with Rosita, who is seeing Eugene following her split with Abraham (now dead in both the comics and TV show, of course). She sees Siddiq behind Eugene’s back. In the TV show, Rosita hasn’t been romantically involved with Eugene, and it seems a highly unlikely scenario. We have, however, seen her struggle to process getting dumped by Abraham in favour of Sasha, and then the death of the man she still loved.
Could Siddiq now be positioned to help heal Rosita’s broken heart? In the comics, he comes into the story after the war with the Saviors has ended. Their relationship results in Rosita getting pregnant. Whether the same is set up for the TV series remains to be seen but if it does follow the same path, there’s every chance things will get better for Rosita before they get worse…
What Else Do We Know About Siddiq?
While the character has entered the show under different circumstances to the comics, there’s plenty about Siddiq that could well feed into the series. He was formerly a member of the Oceanside community, for a start — which would explain why he’s out there surviving alone.
In the TV series, we learned that all the men of Oceanside were rounded up and executed by Negan. This would suggest that Siddiq escaped somehow. The Siddiq of the comics was a fisherman for the Oceanside community, so perhaps he was out at work when it all went down. It was a meeting with Michonne that led to him becoming a member of the community at Alexandria.
At Alexandria, Siddiq heads up a construction team building accommodation for newcomers. He is also given responsibility for trying to recruit members of the Oceanside community for an army. He is intertwined with storylines involving a hostile group known as The Whisperers, who wear the skins of the dead, and a group called The Commonwealth, about whom we know very little so far.
Catch Season 8 of The Walking Dead on Sundays in the US and a day later in the UK.