When a smiling guy named Jesus turns up on a popular U.S. TV drama and says, "We need to talk," then we are obliged to pay attention.
But, first – if you haven't seen last weekend's episode of The Walking Dead (Sundays, AMC, 9 p.m.), go read the horoscopes now, or something.
Jesus (played by Tom Payne) arrived out of nowhere on one of the most cockeyed episodes of The Walking Dead. For a start, the episode was almost happy in tone and texture. Time has passed in the safe community of Alexandria. The zombie hordes are held at bay. There was, unnervingly for the series, an air of happiness.
And then the guy named Jesus turns up. Looking like the spitting image of Jesus in the standard picture of the Sacred Heart, and wearing a tuque, he proved more devil than angel. Adept at kung fu fighting and an escapologist apparently as accomplished as Houdini, he announced himself as a major annoyance.
That seems to be the point. This Jesus character is not sinister in the way that other major figures who interrupt the narrative of the survivors on The Walking Dead are deeply malevolent. Jesus disturbs and interrupts the natural order of things. He does this merely through his presence. People have found an organic sense of peace, love and benevolence and then Jesus ruins it all. It's a rather subversive, sardonic view of things.
The evidence is there, however. The first time Jesus shows his face is when Rick and Darryl are trying to access an old soda-pop machine. It's been suggested back at Alexandria that a can of pop would be a real treat to a certain person. Engaging in fulfilling the wish in the dangerous outside is a foolish, time-consuming act. But it's noble. Then Jesus shows up to undermine the endeavour.
More significant is the final, disquieting appearance of Jesus. He's been tethered, it seems, to everyone. Then there is a love scene in the final moments of the episode. And it is the long-foreshadowed union between Rick and Michonne. Yes, an interracial romance. And one between two strong, loving people. That's precisely when Jesus appears again, in the final seconds, the disrupter, and announces, "We have to talk."
Religion has always taken a battering on The Walking Dead. In the second season, Rick and his group follow the sound of church bells. They find an abandoned church – the bells were set on a timer – and only zombies still sitting in the pews. Rick asks God for a sign that he is doing the right thing and following the right path. But things go from bad to worse for him. Hershel, the one character who maintained his religious faith in the early seasons, met a terrible end. His faith did him no good at all and made him delusional.
Even more meaningful is the Gabriel character, an Episcopalian priest who survived the apocalypse and eventually joins Rick's group. He is first shown to be a coward and then capable of terrible betrayal. He is deeply religious, but his religious faith is utterly out of place in this vicious world. Rick has contempt for him. And viewers are meant to feel the same. His Christian faith is a hindrance, not a help, in a society where people must band together and bestow naturally motivated human kindness on each other.
The arrival of Jesus fuels the show's continuing antipathy toward religion. In his final appearance on Sunday's episode, he disturbs Rick and Michonne when they are naked and in a loving embrace. He's smiling, grinning even, at their shock. They both reach for their weapons and point them at him – as they must in this story that clearly has no patience with religious faith. Jesus has ruined everything, undermined happiness.