Deanna Monroe

Deanna Monroe is a former congresswoman who has built Alexandria into a walled community of gardens, working plumbing, and rules, and she runs it like the politician she used to be. When Rick's group arrives, she interviews each of them on camera, certain that civilization can still be salvaged if the right people are let in.

Tovah Feldshuh plays her as genuinely idealistic rather than naive, a woman trying to govern by consensus in a world that no longer rewards it. The show lets her optimism feel earned instead of foolish for a while, which makes her scenes with Rick — two very different theories of survival sizing each other up — some of the show's sharpest early tension.