| King Ezekiel | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Ezekiel | |
| Aliases: | King Ezekiel |
| Franchise: | The Walking Dead |
| Notability: | Supporting character |
| Gender: | Male |
| Location: | The Kingdom, Virginia |
| Known relatives: | Carol Peletier (ex-wife) Henry (adoptive son; deceased) |
| Status: | Alive |
| Introduction: | "The Well" |
| Actor: | Khary Payton |
Ezekiel is a fictional group leader in The Walking Dead multimedia franchise. He appeared on the AMC survival horror series The Walking Dead where he was played by actor Khary Payton and made his debut in the second episode of season seven, "The Well".
Biography[]
Season 7[]
Ezekiel is the leader of The Kingdom, who two runners were responsible for rescuing Carol Peletier and Morgan Jones in the season six finale, "Last Day on Earth". Though Morgan adjusts quickly to the new surroundings, the awakening Carol believes the medieval-style Kingdom to be a joke, especially being led by a "king" who also owns a pet Bengal tiger named Shiva and plans to leave once she is well enough. While on a run with Ezekiel and other Kingdom runners, Morgan discovers that The Kingdom is secretly letting pigs they are selling to the Saviors eat walker flesh in hopes of making them fall ill to get out of Negan's grasp. Ezekiel also mentions to Morgan that he hopes he will train Benjamin in the art of Aikido with a staff. Later, Ezekiel catches Carol attempting to sneak out and grab a pomegranate. Dropping his medieval accent and King facade, Ezekiel mentions that before the apocalypse, he was a zookeeper who tended to an injured Shiva when she busted her leg on a concrete moat. Since then, she has remained loyal to him and that rumors being spreading that Ezekiel was an extraordinary man who conquered a tiger and made it his pet. This made people look to him as a leader for safety and he has to keep selling the lie to keep up hope. Ezekiel tells Carol that he respects her decision either way but really hopes she will stick around. Carol stays in an abandoned house not too far from The Kingdom and is visited by Ezekiel and Shiva, who tells her she really needs to try a pomegranate as she smiles politely back at him. [1]
Jesus later introduces Rick Grimes and his group to Ezekiel and The Kingdom. Though initially angered that Jesus has revealed The Kingdom's secret dealings with The Saviors to a group of outsiders, he agrees to hear out Rick's plan. Rick explains that the three groups: Alexandria, Hilltop and The Kingdom have to align in order to fight back against Negan and the Saviors to quit being under their thumb. As a last attempt plea to Ezekiel, Rick relates the situation to a fairy tale he was told as a child about a rock in the road that would cause horses to break their legs and people to lose all of their valuables when their carriage wheels would hit it but nobody would ever remove the rock from the road despite the damage it was causing. A little girl who was poor and her family lost the contents of their carriage dug at the rock for hours, only for it to turn out to be a bag of gold set out there by a king in order to test someone's will to remove it. Ezekiel turns down their offer the next day, unwilling to break his deal of peace with the Saviors and put his people at risk. [2]
Ezekiel has another meeting in secret with Gavin and the Saviors to give them more supplies. However, tensions begin to rise again between Richard and Jared when Jared requests his gun. As he goes to pistol whip Richard, Morgan slaps the gun away with his staff which is grabbed by Jared and he hits Morgan in return, causing Benjamin to knock Jared off of his feet with his own staff. Ezekiel is angered that their peace deal was almost broken by the confrontation and tells Gavin that he will ban Richard from future meetings but Gavin requests he stay and threatens him. Ezekiel, Jerry and a few others Saviors go to Carol's house later that day to bring her a cobbler. [3]
During the next supply delivery with the Saviors where the Kingdom must deliver twelve melons, Richard secretly stalls the meeting with a line of shopping carts and hides the melon under a bucket on the street. Gavin is outraged that the demand has not been met and one of them must be shot as punishment. Richard demands to be shot by Jared but Jared instead shoots Benjamin, who was standing behind Richard, in the thigh. Benjamin later bleeds out on the table at Carol's cottage and Morgan learns that Richard was behind it all along to sacrifice himself and turn Ezekiel against the Saviors but now that Benjamin is dead, he will lead the armies to crush the Saviors himself. When the Kingdom delivers the missing melon, a stunned Ezekiel, Gavin and the other Kingdom members at the meeting watch as Morgan blindsides Richard with his staff and strangles him to death in retaliation for Benjamin's death. Morgan and Carol later switch their positions with Morgan residing at the cottage and Carol moving in to the Kingdom. Carol manages to convince Ezekiel that they need to go to war after learning about what happened to Glenn, Abraham, Olivia and Spencer. [4]
Ezekiel, Carol and the Kingdom armies prepare for the fight against Negan and the Saviors. Ezekiel manages to convince Morgan to also join their cause since the latter plans on killing the Saviors on his on due to his view on being stuck. At Alexandria, Rick's group is held captive by the Saviors and the Scavengers with Negan planning to bash Carl's head in with Lucille and break Rick's hands as punishment for conspiring against him. However, The Kingdom arrives and Shiva mauls a member of the Saviors, causing a firefight and preventing Carl from being killed. Ezekiel leads the armies into the ambush along with the Hilltop army led by Maggie Greene. Ezekiel, Rick and Maggie are later seen on a podium to command the armies. [5]
Season 8[]
Season 9[]
Season 10[]
Ezekiel resides at the Hilltop following the flooding of the Kingdom. In the episode "What It Always Is", it is revealed that Ezekiel has thyroid cancer and a history of it running in his family.
Trivia[]
- Ezekiel is the second survivor to be diagnosed with cancer during the apocalypse after David Chambler.
Appearances[]
Season 7[]
- "The Well"
- "Rock in the Road"
- "New Best Friends"
- "Bury Me Here"
- "The First Day of the Rest of Your Life"