The Walking Dead's Little-Known Prequel Will Make You See One Villain In a Whole New Way
The Walking Dead has so many fantastic villains. While the primary threat of the setting is, of course, the zombies, the human antagonists have always been deeply complex and compelling. There's no bigger example of this trend than Negan, but one villain had far more depth than the comic or TV show got to explore: the Governor.
When it comes to The Walking Dead villains, Negan almost always takes the spotlight. While there were other villains, like Alpha and Omega, they rarely got more attention than Negan. While there's no denying that Negan is a fantastic villain, it's a bit disappointing that the Governor is often considered just a lesser version of Negan.
The Governor didn't get that much time in the comics, especially when compared to Negan, and that's really a shame, as Brian Blake had plenty of characterization worth exploring, as seen in The Walking Dead: Rise of the Governor by Robert Kirkman and Jay Bonansinga, a novel set in the comic continuity.
The Governor's Backstory Was Explored Outside The Walking Dead Comics
The Walking Dead: Rise of the Governor Was Published in 2011
When the zombie outbreak first started, most citizens were moved to military bases for protection, but Brian Blake - later to become the Governor - avoided this fate by hiding in the crawlspace of his parents' home. A short time later, his younger brother Philip Blake and a group of friends appeared, looking to check in on his parents. Instead, Philip found his weak older brother and had no choice but to take care of him in this new apocalyptic world. Philip and his friend Nick almost exclusively handled killing zombies, while Brian hid and protected Philip's daughter Penny.
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The group made their way to an apartment building in Atlanta, where they met the Chalmers family. While the two groups were uneasy with each other at first, they eventually managed to work together and started functioning as a familial unit. Brian even began to get braver, volunteering to help clear out the upper floors of the apartment of zombies on his own. It seemed like everything was starting to turn around, but this all changed when Philip forced himself on April Chalmers, resulting in Philip's group being expelled from the apartments at gunpoint.
Before Becoming the Governor, Brian Blake Went Through A Dark Transformation
A Fate That Would Have Been Tragic in the Comics or TV Show
Brian became the villain that comics and TV fans know in the storyline Chaos Theory. In this story, Philip, Nick, Penny, and Brian end up in a pretty well-stocked house to try and ride out the winter. When the house comes under attack by a group of raiders, Philip leaves Brian in charge of protecting Penny. Unfortunately, Penny ends up being shot and turns into a zombie. After brutally beating Brian for his failure, Philip and the rest of his group, a zombified Penny included, move to the town of Woodbury, which is where everything changes.
Philip keeps Penny alive by feeding her random body parts he keeps coming across. Philip insists that he just finds them and isn't hurting anyone. But one night, Nick spots Philip dragging a girl into the woods and confronts him. This confrontation turns deadly as Nick ends up shooting Philip and accidentally killing the girl Philip had kidnapped. Brian murders Nick in response and holds Philip in his arms as he dies. Later on, when Woodbury is under the brutal rule of some National Guard soldiers, Brian helps lead the rebellion against them.
When one of the citizens asks his name, he replies with the name "Philip."
After imagining how his brother Philip would have handled the corrupt National Guard soldiers, Brian suddenly has an out-of-body experience where he acts out what he believes his brother would have done. Brian murders the leader of the National Guard soldiers in cold blood and inspires the remaining citizens to rise up and kill the rest of the soldiers under his leadership. When one of the citizens asks his name, he replies with the name "Philip."
The Governor Was One of the Walking Dead's Most Brutal Villains
He Even Cut Off Rick's Hand
From here, Brian eventually took on the name of the Governor and ruled Woodsbury with an iron fist. Anyone who didn't follow the rules was tossed into the arena, where they were made to fight to the death. The losers were decapitated, and Brian kept the heads in his room, trapped in aquarium tanks. These tanks acted as a form of therapy for Brian, as he sat in front of them and watched them until he was no longer scared of them, instead drawing amusement from them. Brian truly thought he was doing what was best for Woodsbury, but not everyone felt that way, and they eventually staged a coup.
Shortly after the failed coup, the Governor comes across Rick Grimes and Michonne, which is where he enters the comic. The comic and TV show both completely leave out the backstory from Rise of the Governor, which is a shame, because it adds a lot to his character. Brian was originally a weak but good-natured man, someone who wasn't able to survive in the apocalypse on his own. After suffering tragedy after tragedy, he realized that someone like Brian couldn't exist in this world anymore; he had to become someone else.
Because of this realization, Brian took on the identity of his brutal brother Philip. By pretending that he was Philip - that he was simply watching Philip do what he would do - Brian was able to disassociate from the horrible things he was doing in the name of survival. In a lot of ways, Brian is the perfect opposite of Negan. Negan was a man who couldn't survive in the regular world - he just wasn't functional. But in the world of the dead, he was capable of unleashing his inner monster and finally found a place of belonging.
Brian Blake Is Negan's Perfect Narrative Opposite in The Walking Dead
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Brian, on the other hand, was a man who was pushed to his limit and had to adjust in order to survive in the new world. Negan was a man who couldn't survive until the old world fell apart. They're the exact opposites as villains, which is honestly a really cool idea, but the problem is that it's not really explored in either the comic or the TV show. In both the comic and TV show, Brian is just presented as the Governor, the leader of a large group of survivors who is evil. Later on, he's outclassed by Negan, who is the leader of a much larger group of survivors and is also evil.
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The Walking Dead has some truly fantastic villains, which is why it's so surprising that Kirkman revealed two more villains he didn't get to use.
The comics and show just made Brian feel like the tutorial version of Negan, but having all of Brian's backstory included shows that Brian could have been so much more. He is a lesson in what happens when a good man is forced to survive in a dark world. It's no surprise that a Walking Dead villain is a nuanced and complex character. It's just surprising that all of that complexity and necessary backstory was kept in some spin-off novels and neither the Walking Dead comic nor the TV show got to fully explore Brian Blake.
The Walking Dead: Rise of the Governor is available now from Thomas Dunne Books!
- Created by
- Robert Kirkman, Tony Moore, Charlie Adlard
- First TV Show
- The Walking Dead
- Latest TV Show
- The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live
- Upcoming TV Shows
- More Tales from the Walking Dead Universe
The Walking Dead is a massive multimedia franchise that began with a comic book series created by Robert Kirkman, Tony Moore, and Charlie Adlard. The franchise gained widespread popularity with the launch of the television series The Walking Dead in 2010 on AMC, which chronicles the lives of survivors in a post-apocalyptic world overrun by zombies, referred to as "walkers." The success of the original show has led to numerous spin-offs, web series, video games, novels, and other media. The franchise explores themes of survival, human nature, and the breakdown of society in the face of an existential threat, making it one of the most successful and influential horror series of the 21st century.
- First Episode Air Date
- October 31, 2010
- Cast
- Andrew Lincoln, Norman Reedus, Melissa McBride, Danai Gurira, Lauren Cohan, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Chandler Riggs, Steven Yeun, Lennie James
- Current Series
- The Walking Dead: Dead City, The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon
- TV Show(s)
- The Walking Dead, Fear the Walking Dead, The Walking Dead: World Beyond, Tales of the Walking Dead, The Walking Dead: Dead City, The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon, The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live, More Tales from the Walking Dead Universe
- Video Game(s)
- The Walking Dead The Game, The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct, OVERKILL'S The Walking Dead, The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners, The Walking Dead: Destinies
