Pretty hard to disagree with you. They look dumb and I think it's a huge stretch to even propose Alpha could have find a handful of people so mentally challenged to deal with her crap and follow her, nevermind a small army... I feel they're even less believable as villains than the crappy woman they had in FTWD season 4, BUT they're creepy and that might be enough to make it work, but realism (if such thing exists in a zombie show) went off the window with that bunch of goofs.

 

The Whisperers were disappointing in the comic (started out decently but the storyline really began to drag as it went along) and it is shaping up to be the same in the show.

They seem to have taken the sexual abuse storylines completely out of the show which was one of the more interesting things about the Whisperers in the comic. Show Whisperers aren't really any different than what we went through the past two seasons. Just a uber violent group with a maniac leader who is completely unrealistic.

 

At least Negan was charismatic and threatening enough to be bought as a leader. He put people in position of power and "wealth" to keep them happy with their positions under his command. Alpha is just getting people to break their spine and live like animals in slow motion. Not a soul would follow.

 

I wouldn't have the patience to be a whisperer.

 

You would do it 'cuz you lurv Beta!

 

Who would go to a forbidden island to preach to a closed tribal group of people who kill anyone approaching them, get shot at with arrows and flee, then come back again only to get themselves killed?

Crazy people do. It's why in a tv show people would wear zombie skins . They are crazy. How ever dumb you think the Whisperers are it does not stack up to real life.

 

I will never understand that dude and what he thought he was going to accomplish.

 

Many of us who are up to date with the comic felt that it would have been wise for the show to either completely skip the Whisperer arc or at the very least scale it down quite a bit as we didn't think the TV audience would buy into them. Well they don't appear to be scaling down the Whisperers at all and from what I have seen so far it isn't an extremely well received arc amongst the TV audience.

We'll how the ratings for the show go through the end of season 10. Right now it is sitting in the low 4's. Considering season 8 never fell below 6m viewers an episode I have a feeling that if the show is down into the 2's and 3's during season 10 Angela Kang won't be back for season 11.

 

I think people will trade a lot for security, or the perception of security. I have no backstory on the Whisperer group, but I'm sure Alpha didn't just start off with this large group willing to strap on walker masks and live among the dead.

Remember when Daryl briefly hooked up with the Claimers? He knew they were bad, he just didn't realize how bad until they had Rick, Carl and Michonne. He told Rick something like ' they had a code, it was stupid...but it was something'

Years into the ZA people may have joined the Whisperers in exactly the same way. May have started out slightly weird and just slowly morphed into what we see today. When your other option is to go it alone, you may just accept things getting weirder and darker and not want to challenge that for fear of losing your own place in the pecking order. Sometimes what becomes familiar regardless of how bad it is may seem 'safer' than breaking away from it.

 

In the comics I liked the Whisperers at the beginning and thought it was an interesting new dynamic, but like you said it dragged on too long. It was at its best when Carl was trying to save Lydia. But the back end of it all was one of the weaker moments in the comics. Even when I was still watching the TWD TV series I thought it would be a mess when they got to this arc, even if they had kept Carl alive.

 

When the Whisperers first were introduced, they were really bad a$$. They even killed one of the best if not the best fighter in the show, Jesus. When Alpha was introduced I thought it was the best introduction of a villain in TWD.

Now the survivors know about them. The surprise element is over. The Whisperers can no longer sneak up to one of the communities, mixed in a walker horde.

Being in the said horde no longer is a benefit. It's just too easy to pick off the walkers one by one as the horde slowly shuffles along. If you're in the horde, if you overreact, you have another problem, walkers trying to consume you. You have arrows coming at you and walkers trying to make a meal out of you. Not a good tactic or situation. A different strategy must be incorporated.

If TWD writers continue the Whisperers arc with them trying to blend in with the walkers it will get stale quickly. If they want to make it good, they need to go in another direction. I certainly hope this arc continues to be good, I like it so far.

 

Where do you see that the TV audience isn't liking the Whisperers? I see exactly the opposite.

 

I agree OP
Since the whisperers have lost their one tactical advantage (camouflage) they are now easy targets.
Having each party carry one (alcohol based, we've seen stills on the show in the kingdom at least) Molotov cocktail each would mean that if you see a herd you immediately toss the Molotov into the middle of it, people are naturally terrified of fire and no conditioning will get them past that. Once one catches fire he or she will start screaming or trying to roll to put it out and draw the attention of the walkers.
Eventually the whisperers would be so afraid of fire that they would run when someone produced a bottle with a rag stuffed into it.

As well as fire you could toss things like bottles filled with bleach or lye solution (drain cleaner) as these will cause severe chemical burns if not washed off immediately (and blindness too), I've already mentioned this in a thread.

Everyone seems to be disregarding the threat of the whisperers too, to a degree. In the latest episode (spoilers ahead) when Daryl tosses Beta down an elevator shaft (even though a fall from that height would have caused some serious broken bones at least) he could have pushed something heavy over on top of Beta too, such as a desk, or fired an arrow from his bow into Beta's chest. But he never bothered to check.

They seem like a badly implemented story arc. While people are going to fairs they could be digging punji pits and setting up other traps to catch and kill whisperers. But they seem to be ignoring the threat, even though (and I've not read the comics) they're sure to turn up at the fair and wreak havoc at the kingdom.

When you think about the whisperers they're combat handicapped by default, as their Ed Gein "it rubs rubs the lotion on its skin" masks would be limiting to both hearing and vision and would need fixing every so often as the eye holes would slip.

 

Yeah but their primary reason for doing what they do is not for combat.....it's just to survive. Granted that probably means they shouldn't worry too much when someone "steps into their territory".....maybe they should just continue to pretend to be walkers and move on. But still.....they aren't doing it for combat initially, it's just a handicap we see now.

 

Indeed, Alpha was at pains to point out they would avoid conflict - even if you step into their territory, even if you kill their people. It's only when her daughter gets kidnapped that the grand scheme shows flaws - they're not prepared for combat, just ready for it.

 

I think it's a very interesting concept and honestly it translated to TV very well....however. It doesn't make sense.

As others have already said, this idea that people would prefer to live like animals instead of living in clean communities like normal people just doesn't make sense. They are similar to the Wolves, but the wolves were a small group and it was pretty clear they were just messed up people. The Whisperers have a code and a system, it's just a dumb system.

The whisperers should have been modified slightly and give them an actual community where they live unmasked, only using the masks to protect them when they are out hunting and scavenging or killing people for their supplies. Having them live in the woods sort of hurts the whole idea of what they are.