The following mentions domestic violence and suicide.

One thing The Walking Dead has to be applauded for in its 11-season run is the way it improved its treatment of female characters. In the first two seasons, The Walking Dead greatly relied on traditional gender roles to structure the main group of survivors. The men were the hunters and fighters who protected the camp, whereas the women washed clothes, cooked food and looked after the children. Any woman who opposed this notion was punished by being written as mentally unstable and hostile. By Season 3, those gender roles were broken.

However, there is one outlier to The Walking Dead‘s new and improved outlook on women in the apocalypse. Alexandra Breckenridge’s character, Jessie Anderson, was a Season 1 female character stuck in Seasons 5 and 6. Rick Grimes immediately fell head over heels for Jessie when he arrived at Alexandria, but she was in an abusive relationship with her husband, Pete. The poor writing Jessie received wasn’t attributed to the fact that she was a mother and wife who hardly knew how to fight. Jessie was severely underdeveloped because she was nothing more than a plot device that brought out Rick’s complicated colors.

Jessie’s Arc Only Revolved Around Rick and Her Family

Rick first meets Jessie in Season 5, Episode 12, “Remember,” when the group of survivors is invited to stay at Alexandria. The majority of the survivors are glad to have a home, but keep their guard up since the last time they were promised sanctuary, it turned out to be a group of cannibals. Rick is the most suspicious out of all of them, but takes a liking to Jessie when she offers him a haircut. It’s not hard to see what it is about Jessie that drew Rick to her. She was a nice, beautiful, loving mother who still held onto the goodness of the old world.

Jessie only lasted for 11 episodes, from “Remember” to Season 6, Episode 9, “No Way Out.” In that time, she was a prize that Pete and Rick fought over. The dismantling of her marriage brought out a strange side of Rick that honestly didn’t reflect who he truly is. When Rick promised Jessie that he would take care of her and her sons after “taking care” of Pete, she asked if she would do this for someone else. Any person who’s seen the past five seasons of The Walking Dead would logically say, “Of course he would!” But for some reason, Rick says he wouldn’t.

The interaction between Rick and Jessie is bizarrely out of character for Rick. But it subtly reveals Rick’s true feelings for Jessie, in that he may not have had any to begin with. Rick’s growing obsession with Jessie was fueled by two things: him grasping the old world in any way possible and his desire to appear powerful to the Alexandrians. He wanted to be the righteous hero who does no wrong and has the answer to all their problems. Jessie is the perfect opportunity to prove himself as the only suitable leader for the community; he can save Jessie when their current leader, Deanna, can’t.

Ultimately, Rick unintentionally mistook his slight god complex in Season 5 as real feelings for Jessie. This, of course, doesn’t give Jessie much legroom to grow outside of Rick and her terrible home life. Once Rick becomes attached to her and she to him, she’s stuffed in a box that she’s only allowed to leave when Rick isn’t around, which is hardly ever. Even then, most of her conversations revolve around everything Rick taught her to survive. Her relationship with her oldest son, Ron, crumbles because of the simple fact that he doesn’t trust Rick and she does.

Rick Cut Ties With the Old World After Jessie

Jessie’s gruesome death by walkers in “No Way Out” was a symbolic closure to Rick’s attachment to the old world. When he cuts off her arm that’s gripping his son, Carl, he’s cutting himself off from the pre-apocalyptic world. He can no longer cling to former ideas of normalcy that Jessie represented. To protect his son, he must fully throw himself into the world’s new philosophy of “kill or be killed.”

One would assume that because Jessie was the first woman Rick had a relationship with after the death of his wife, Lori, in Season 3, The Walking Dead would take some time to let her death sink in. But The Walking Dead quickly moved past the end of Jessie and her family, solidifying how unimportant she was in the grand scheme of the story. Following her death, the series jumped two months into the next episode, where Jessie isn’t spoken of again.

Jessie’s death was glossed over so badly that it diluted the moment Rick and Michonne finally act on their feelings in Season 6, Episode 10, “The Next World.” Rick and Michonne’s relationship beautifully blossomed from a close friendship to an intimate relationship, but there was this shadow looming over them. Jessie had only just died the episode before. Rick may have reasonably moved on in the two months between both episodes, but her death was still fresh in the audience’s minds. It was a jarring jump from one woman to another, unjustly reducing both Jessie and Michonne to just Rick’s love interests at that moment in time.

Jessie Was an Earlier Season Female Character Thrust Into a Later Season

Michonne was always the right woman for Rick, but The Walking Dead‘s approach to sailing the Rick/Michonne ship was by disposing of another female character like she meant nothing. Jessie was a rebound, a way for Rick to confirm with himself that he could move on from Lori in order to be with Michonne. The Walking Dead ends up reinforcing those same gender stereotypes of the first two seasons.

The Walking Dead could’ve avoided making Jessie the fridged damsel in distress if she was given more to work with outside of Rick. There’s a fantastic scene in Season 6 when an Alexandrian takes their own life, and Jessie confronts it, instead of hiding away from it like she previously would’ve. In a speech to other Alexandrians, she doesn’t sugarcoat the fact that this is the life they have to deal with now. The scene shows great growth in her character, and that she had the potential to evolve without Rick as the backbone of her arc. But The Walking Dead never acted on that potential.

Women don’t need to be stoic, skilled fighters who are above romance to be well-written characters. Michonne is a great example of that. But the problem with Jessie is she could barely exist without Rick’s existence. Her only purpose was to be a pitied woman that motivated Rick to do good things in terrible ways, showing off his own complex behavior he’d developed in the apocalypse. Once The Walking Dead knew that Rick needed a fresh start, Jessie was well on her way out the door.

The Walking Dead is available to stream on Netflix.