Jadis (The Walking Dead)

Appearances

Jadis first appears as the strange, soft-spoken leader of a group called the Scavengers, known for her deliberate, broken way of talking and her habit of telling others they speak too much. She comes across as calm and composed, but also clever and sneaky. After Simon and some Saviors kill off the Scavengers, Jadis stops using that broken speech and starts speaking in full sentences. Later, going by the name Anne, she becomes a full member of the Alexandria community starting in season 9 and begins a romantic relationship with Father Gabriel Stokes, though it does not last through the whole season.

She hides the fact that she has ties to a mysterious group that still flies helicopters years into the apocalypse, and eventually she leaves Alexandria to rejoin them, taking a badly injured Rick Grimes with her on a helicopter. In The Walking Dead: World Beyond, Jadis is completely devoted to the CRM, becoming tough and merciless. She tells Huck that she genuinely believes the CRM is the last hope for the world and that their plans must be allowed to succeed.

In the mid-season premiere "Rock in the Road," Jadis's people kidnap Gabriel and then set an ambush for Rick's group when they come looking for him. In "New Best Friends," Rick asks Jadis to team up against the Saviors. She is hesitant but considers it after hearing they could get more supplies. She tells Rick he has to prove himself, then pushes him off a trash heap into a pit of garbage and metal.

After she watches him kill a walker in heavy armor, she agrees to help but demands a large number of guns. In "Say Yes," Rick delivers 63 guns, but Jadis says that is not enough, claiming they need almost twice that many. They renegotiate, and Rick keeps 20 guns while he searches for more. He finds the extra guns at Oceanside in "Something They Need," which seems to secure the Scavengers' help.

In the season finale "The First Day of the Rest of Your Life," on the day of the big fight, Jadis makes a crude romantic advance on Rick when he arrives at Alexandria. The Scavengers and Alexandrians set up bombs at the gates for the enemy. When the explosion fails to go off as Negan and his men wait outside, Jadis pulls a gun on Rick, and the Scavengers do the same against the Alexandrians. She admits she told Negan about Rick's plan because the Saviors offered her a better deal.

Development and reception

Pollyanna McIntosh first appeared as Jadis in a recurring capacity across three episodes of The Walking Dead's seventh season. For the eighth season, she was elevated to a main cast member. Critics offered mixed reactions to the character and her group, the Scavengers. Ron Hagan of Den of Geek! praised the faction as a creative addition, calling them a prime example of the writers having fun and crafting something original that still fit the show's mythology.

Kevin Fitzpatrick of Screen Crush noted a contrast in the season finale: while Sasha's death was treated as a surprise, Jadis and the junkyard group's betrayal genuinely caught viewers off guard. He observed that the outbreak of war itself was predictable, as was the lack of major casualties, but Jadis served as the one true wild card in an otherwise expected showdown. Fitzpatrick also pointed out that Jadis's interaction with Negan highlighted the amusing distinction her group provided, yet the "Heapsters" heel-turn meant the show spent several episodes building them as allies only to have them switch sides with little explanation, essentially locking them in as enemies for the next season.

He questioned the purpose of Jadis's proposition to "lay with" Rick, calling it a wonderfully weird moment for the oddly monosyllabic group, but wondered why it was included given how Jadis knew the exchange would go. Blair Marnell of CraveOnline was more critical, arguing that Jadis and her Scavengers betraying Rick's group was a poor narrative choice. He remarked that hunting down guns for these "cartoon psychos" was obviously a bad idea, and that this storyline did not improve upon the comic book's version.

Marnell felt the Scavengers were out of place from the start and would have preferred seeing them all end up as tiger food. He did concede that Jadis had a very funny moment when she propositioned Rick in front of Michonne, noting the priceless facial expressions from Danai Gurira and Andrew Lincoln. However, Marnell believed that take on Jadis could have had more potential if her followers did not all share the same strange way of speaking. Ultimately, he concluded there was simply nothing more to Jadis or the Scavengers beyond their bizarre trash motif.