@Oldnewbie said:

Be done away with and Jesus become the face of Hilltop (while Maggie continues to run things)? Gregory is a drunk, clearly a snake, and now that he has ostracized Jesus from his group in his trailer, well, it is time for a permanent change.

I'm with you 100% on that. The day Gregory tried to betray Maggie and Sasha to the Saviors they should've dug a hole outside the gates and put him in it.

Agreed! its seems the people of hilltop already look at Maggie/Jesus as their leaders, I'm surprised they didn't get rid of Gregory yet...he's clearly an asshole and seems useless

As long as Simon is ok with the change.

@TheShredder said:

As long as Simon is ok with the change.

That's a good point. They might recognize the relationship Gregory has with Simon. Perhaps doing away with Gregory could rattle the cage. The Saviors have been shown to act randomly at times especially when they don't get their way.

@GrandTardigrade said:

@TheShredder said:

As long as Simon is ok with the change.

That's a good point. They might recognize the relationship Gregory has with Simon. Perhaps doing away with Gregory could rattle the cage. The Saviors have been shown to act randomly at times especially when they don't get their way.

People on the internet don't seem to realize that Gregory doesn't run the show. Or they don't watch the show? [giveup]

I don't know, but to you and I, it seemed pretty obvious that removing Gregory would stir the Saviors into action. But these guys seem to think that the Hilltop is an independent community that is voluntarily helping the Saviors.

Yeah, the Saviors care about communities producing for them. They don't care about the people in the communities. It's all business in which lives don't really matter. Simon knows that Gregory cowers to him and gives him no troubles. Remove that aspect and Simon has to do a bit of damage control, perhaps by installing a Savior as leader of Hilltop or killing some people to reinforce fear in the community. All the Saviors care about is production and I think they are open to just about any method to secure that production. By killing Gregory they could be inviting something worse.

@GrandTardigrade said:

Yeah, the Saviors care about communities producing for them. They don't care about the people in the communities. It's all business in which lives don't really matter. Simon knows that Gregory cowers to him and gives him no troubles. Remove that aspect and Simon has to do a bit of damage control, perhaps by installing a Savior as leader of Hilltop or killing some people to reinforce fear in the community. All the Saviors care about is production and I think they are open to just about any method to secure that production. By killing Gregory they could be inviting something worse.

Gregory could betray Rick and the Hilltop "troublemakers" at any time, and would do so in a second if it improved his standing with the Saviors. You get rid of him. Then you let Maggie take over as leader. Except of course when the Saviors show up. Then Jesus acts as the front man; Simon will meet with him the way he did to sound out Gregory, so he does his best cooperative little suckup routine and satisfies Simon. As long as the Saviors believe this new leader who took over after Gregory's untimely death from a heart attack (heh heh heh) won't be giving them any trouble, everything's cool.

He'll have to give the Saviors whatever they ask for - Dr. Carson would still have ended up at the Sanctuary, since they're not ready to declare war just yet. But at least Jesus won't blab to Simon about Rick's plans against Negan, or reveal that some folks from Alexandria are at Hilltop training people to fight. Every meeting between Simon and Gregory risks exactly that. Allowing this situation to continue is irresponsible. Yes, I realize they're trying to follow some storyline from the comic regarding Gregory and Maggie's power struggle. All I'm saying is, if this was reality and you were there, eliminating the Judas would be your best option.

As long as Jesus can make Simon believe that he will cooperate just as well as Gregory, then this could work. Of course that also assumes that the people of Hilltop are already shifting alliances toward Maggie. I'm not sure how many would get behind this change should it come to something as drastic or risky (in their eyes) as getting rid of Gregory. Yes, their view of Maggie as leader is forming, but is it solidified enough? I also agree that leaving Gregory in charge does also bring risk to Rick and Co as he already tried to give them up before. Maybe they are banking on the fact that Gregory thinks he will also be punished for harboring the Alexandrians.

Also, nice Jesus/Judas reference, haha

@GrandTardigrade said:

As long as Jesus can make Simon believe that he will cooperate just as well as Gregory, then this could work. Of course that also assumes that the people of Hilltop are already shifting alliances toward Maggie. I'm not sure how many would get behind this change should it come to something as drastic or risky (in their eyes) as getting rid of Gregory. Yes, their view of Maggie as leader is forming, but is it solidified enough? I also agree that leaving Gregory in charge does also bring risk to Rick and Co as he already tried to give them up before. Maybe they are banking on the fact that Gregory thinks he will also be punished for harboring the Alexandrians.

Also, nice Jesus/Judas reference, haha

It's one of the realities of post-apocalyptic life. If you have a dangerous person in your community, and they're likely to hook up with raiders on the outside and return for some payback, you can't let them leave. There's no police to call. No courts to charge them. No prisons to send them to. You wouldn't shoot a girl like Lizzie in our world. She'd get psychiatric help; hospitalization if necessary, but antipsychotics might allow her to live a relatively normal life as long as she kept taking her meds. In the ZA world you don't have options like that.

If Gregory was an unpopular mayor back in the old days, he'd be voted out of office. We don't (perhaps unfortunately) kill sleazy politicians for being sleazy politicians. But if you exiled him from Hilltop, or even just removed him as leader and took away his big cushy residence, he'd go straight to the Saviors and spill everything. Or at least everything that didn't implicate him. I imagine he'd skip the part about "hiring" the Alexandrians to take out their satellite station when he thought that was the only Savior base. You can't let him go running to Simon no matter what. Hopefully his upcoming attempt on Maggie's life will be the catalyst that makes the Hilltoppers realize what needs to be done.

@chrisjdel said:

It's one of the realities of post-apocalyptic life. If you have a dangerous person in your community, and they're likely to hook up with raiders on the outside and return for some payback, you can't let them leave. There's no police to call. No courts to charge them. No prisons to send them to. You wouldn't shoot a girl like Lizzie in our world. She'd get psychiatric help; hospitalization if necessary, but antipsychotics might allow her to live a relatively normal life as long as she kept taking her meds. In the ZA world you don't have options like that.

If Gregory was an unpopular mayor back in the old days, he'd be voted out of office. We don't (perhaps unfortunately) kill sleazy politicians for being sleazy politicians. But if you exiled him from Hilltop, or even just removed him as leader and took away his big cushy residence, he'd go straight to the Saviors and spill everything. Or at least everything that didn't implicate him. I imagine he'd skip the part about "hiring" the Alexandrians to take out their satellite station when he thought that was the only Savior base. You can't let him go running to Simon no matter what. Hopefully his upcoming attempt on Maggie's life will be the catalyst that makes the Hilltoppers realize what needs to be done.

Have you lived in a post apocalyptic world? You speak as if you have mucho experience in that kind of world. Lol.

@TheShredder said: Have you lived in a post apocalyptic world? You speak as if you have mucho experience in that kind of world. Lol.

Yes, I spent many years living in a post-apocalyptic world. It was no fun at all.

This is pretty obvious stuff. I'm just pointing out that when people criticize characters for making life and death decisions, they should stop and think about why we don't do that in the real world and how the collapse of civilization would change things. We basically call for help when confronted with other people breaking the law. But what if there's no one to call anymore? Then the only help is yourself. So yes, you'd be forced to do a lot of things that are crimes now. There'd be plenty of situations where the only options were bad and worse. No good or right choices. You can only play the cards you're dealt, and refusing to go with bad automatically gives you worse.