Wait a second...Rick said nothing about "especially if you see ones who are clearly combatants." Rick's statement was about everyone--no matter their status. If they were from Terminus, he wanted to kill them, which illustrates just how vengeance / brutality thirsty he was.
Yeah, I added that part as commentary. The truth is that all the people left were enemy combatants, who ended up tracking & hunting them
It is action--not just behavior, hence the reason four companions did not agree with his butchering of Gareth. Their faces would never have expressed revulsion if Rick put a single bullet in his head. Rick made a promise to kill Gareth with the machete earlier that day. That was his desire all along.
I went back to rewatch, because I see what you're getting at, but that scene is not all about Rick. Maggie, Glenn & Tara's reactions were not just about Rick. They were about everyone. Michonne & Abraham bludgeon people to death, & Sasha knife hacks a person's throat open. I take exception to Tyrese & Gabriel's reactions. They are clearly not up to the task of living in this world, and since no one says anything at all about the choice to end those people the way they did, it's a leap to say they don't agree with it. They just find it more distasteful. Is it more distasteful than not having a bullet when you need it?
From time to time" is not Rick's mentality. From the second half of season 4 to the climax of the Terminus affair, he's been on a one way path of extreme revenge / brutality. Where are the toned down situations involving a conflict?
One example is that he murdered one of Joe's gang by strangulation, and he murdered two of the Terminuans in the church with one silenced bullet a piece, because that was the needed action, and the remaining ones died without spending valuable ammo. It's not like he's killing people all the time. He kills them when he has to and in the way he has to, and the way he has to do it for it to be done by him is for him to release rage. That he didn't go down there and keep executing people at Terminus is evidence that he is not fueled only by bloodlust. He was persuaded out of it... even though he wasn't wrong, and only just got out of a raging fury of combat
idea of leaving him to turn as being some sort of vengeance does not really sell, since that's sort of an assumption that the victim will endure something dreaded once they have turned. They will not, as there's no evidence of their living conscience after death, so they are just another walker. The sword and resultant pain was the revenge.
She impaled him. It was not a death blow, it was a fatal wound that would take a long excruciating time to kill him, and then he'd turn, which since the majority of the characters have an aversion to it, whether it's a torture or not, is an act of vengeance. If she'd wanted him to die civilly, she'd have just ended him in one strike as you're suggesting. It took someone else to put a bullet in him & finish him off. She wanted him to suffer
Rick's murder of Gareth on the other hand, though snarky with his remark about the promise, was more of a single death blow on that first hit than Michonne's. He likely hacked right through his skull. The rest of the time he's just releasing fury on a corpse. It's not that much different with Carl's rapist, except the blade was smaller & the job of slaughtering someone was more difficult. Daryl stomps a Claimer's skull to pieces. Every murder in the church is equally as gruesome as Rick's, especially Abraham, who furiously bashed a skull apart with a rifle butt
They have evoked Rick's rage, in all these cases, but when the dust settles, he's still a good man. I'd take that kind of man in this kind of world over someone struggling with what needs to be done, like Tyrese, any day of the week, and clearly... so would everyone else, or they'd have stopped hanging with him by now, or at least spoken up about the brutality, but they don't, because they all know they SHARE in it
It is the most awful world a human can live in, where every person you meet might be someone you may need to kill. What you're saying is that Rick is a bad person for surviving the only way he can... brutally. That's not what The Governor or Gareth were doing. They were feeding and thriving on the weakness of others. There's a distinct difference
Rick is the front man, and therefore you seem to be focused more intently on his reaction to the world, but it's not all that far removed from what many of the others are doing. In fact, I'd say Abraham is making a run for the crown of the most brutal character
