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Above is what I wrote in my long ass post in the rate it thread. I agree with you. I do not see it as Maggie hell bent on battling against Rick. I think it is as I wrote and as you have so eloquently stated

 

My only issue with the relationship between Rick and Maggie is that being there was an 18 month time jump, I would have thought maybe they would have hashed things out. It didn't seem like any progress was made. They mentioned on Talking Dead that Maggie was like the Governor, and I really don't want that. Maybe that's at the heart of my issues between them. I understand her pain and frustration about Negan, but I don't want Hershel's last child going bad.

I liked the interactions between Darryl and Rick much better, that actually seemed more realistic. The one thing not mentioned is when they showed Darryl at Sanctuary, you could really feel the fact that Darryl does not like those people, and the feeling is mutual. If Rick set that up so Darryl was in charge there, that to me was a huge mistake.

 

After the war Maggie was finally able to grieve the death of Glenn. All while being pregnant.

And Rick would find himself not only grieving the death of Carl but also of rebuilding Alexandria.

I think it is fair to say that they did not actually have 18 months to work out their differences. They have probably spent 18 months grieving and rebuilding their own communities and no doubt do not see one another unless Rick makes a trip to Hilltop.

So in the proverbial nutshell I find it completely realistic that they are still working on their relationship.

 

Daryl, as Rick's strongest warrior, made sense to me to be the one to watch over the Sanctuary with authority, but there should have been another person who has been a successful advocate for bringing people together. I would have sent Aaron as co-guardian.

There should have been events where the communities had a chance to mingle. Holidays, monthly pot lucks, square dances, roof raisings, quilting bees, I don't care what. They needed to have opportunities to get to know each other.

 

I do not like them split up, yet again. Sounds like Daryl wants to be with his people. I'm happy he has something to say. Rick seemed a bit irked that he did not want to come back to Alexandria. I love that Maggie is not just giving welfare to the Sanctuary, they should have to earn something also.

 

I think the idea is that they have hardly seen each other. Carol and Michonne were just finding out at the museum that Gregory had the idea for an election between himself and Maggie, and that election must have happened a long time ago, as they wouldn't likely have gone anywhere near 1.5 years without an official leader at Hilltop. I think they were setting up the general idea that this joint trip together was kind of a reunion. Same thing at the Sanctuary, when Rick arrived people were telling the kids who Rick was. So it must be a quite rare event that he appears.

 

But to me that brings up just as many questions. The end of the 'war' saw all of the various groups distrustful of each other and even in some cases hating each other, so why would they not spend time together trying to make things right? They must have spent at least some time together, because they were trading goods and making decisions about who would be doing what.

That's why I say the time jump was muddled, because things that should have happened during that time apparently never did, while other things did happen that just seem odd.

 

Well, they had a lot on their plate at the time. Alexandria was half destroyed, and in the meantime they have repaired it and made all kinds of improvements. They are trading, but I dont' know how often the leaders actually travel back and forth. Rick seemed like he hadn't seen Hershel Jr. in a long time, and he said he was surprised Judith remembered who Maggie was.

They may have seen each other on occasion, but it doesn't even seem like its on Rick's radar that anything was wrong in their relationship, so its really not that surprising it was never addressed, given the fact that Maggie mostly appears to be holding her frustrations internally [at least until now] and that they are spending so much time rebuilding and clearing routes, and trying to get enough supplies and food to survive.

 

It's not a split in that sense, it's that with the Rickery leaving teh show there must be new leadership and the Mag is smootly sliding up to that position.

 

Except that I thought she is leaving too?

 

Yep they both are.

 

I thought I was going to leave this thread having just ticked 'agree' to your posts, since I (mostly) do and that leaves one hand free for wine. But that bolded bit is nagging at me.

After the aftermath, Maggie would have been as 'official' a leader as anyone needed ("The Hilltop stands with Maggie!", not to mention her leadership of the defence against Simon), and the Weasel would have still been under house arrest, or house and grounds parole at any rate. Weasel would have been plotting his return to power even in the cage, of course, but to achieve it he'd need to gradually shift very many individual attitudes to him and to Maggie, taking advantage of such mistakes or misfortunes as arise, finding the right moment to say the right thing in the right ear - even to raise the possibility of a vote would need groundwork, let alone to hope to win it. We don't know how long ago the vote was, but it needn't be more than a fortnight or so to stand up in the story. It still works to establish that people don't travel often and that the communities are relatively isolated.

 

I do agree with what some have said about the time jump. A year and a half is plenty of time to resolve a lot of the things that needed to be taken care of after the war. But you could tell by a lot of the conversations that they weren't. It seems that some of them went their separate ways with certain groups and the main focus was to rebuild. So as time went on they didn't resolve things, specifically Rick and Maggie. Things are gonna come to a head within the next couple of episodes I suspect.

 

It possibly could have been more recently like that, although I'm not sure Gregory is that patient with his manipulations. He strikes me as someone who could not wait 18 months biding his time with slow and steady opportunities. He seems to me more like a guy who would hastily jump at every opportunity with something rash the way he did with Ken's death. He's too volatile and emotional and would have betrayed himself it seems. It seems like he would only become docile after an election failed and he basically had no choice but to play along for awhile. After 17 or 18 months I think it would just be established that Maggie was the leader and the idea of holding an election would be a ship that sailed long ago. A year and a half of progress, and rebuilding, and expanding crops and putting up new structures etc would have been done under Maggie's leadership. After all that work and time, to suddenly hold an election wouldn't sit right with me. You may very well be right, but the sense I got from their interactions was that this was the first time they were seeing each other in awhile, and they were catching up. Hard to say.

 

Yeah, in real life sometimes people take 20, 30 40 years to resolve a relationship problem - especially in "families"...there is no set time frame.

 

I didn't watch Talking Dead but I didn't take it as Maggie acting like the Governor at all. Gregory tried to kill her and he ended up paying the price. Rick did the same thing with Gareth. Although Gregory isn't to that level of brutality, she still can't trust having him around, or lurking about somewhere. He's also received other second chances.

It's probably not so much that Rick and Maggie haven't hashed things out. They're just on different paths and she's growing more irritated in time with helping out the Saviors. She still sort of met Rick halfway with his plan. She wasn't in the best mood either because she was almost killed.

Since the prison fell we've had many seasons where most people just agreed with Rick no matter which way he was swinging on the pendulum. That wasn't very realistic. The last significant conflict we had within the group was Rick banishing Carol. And this isn't to that level, just some differences in ideology. Too bad we're not going to see this new dynamic between the two beyond the next few episodes.

 

I would agree that would be a mood killer!