Dante (The Walking Dead)

Dante
The Walking Dead character
Portrayed by	Juan Javier Cardenas

Dante is a fictional character from the comic book series The Walking Dead and the television series of the same name, where he is portrayed by Juan Javier Cardenas.

Comic book series

Dante is a guard in the Hilltop Colony who appears to have a crush on Maggie and is one of her right-hand men. He looked for missing survivor Ken, but was captured, and later released alongside Ken by Alpha and The Whisperers. He later helps the others with the conflicts that comes ahead. Maggie sends him to spy on Negan after he leaves Alexandria.

Television series

Season 10

In the season premiere "Lines We Cross", Dante works with Siddiq in the infirmary and checks on Siddiq while he suffers from hallucinations and PTSD. Dante helps at the crash site to help put out the fire and attends to injured survivors. In the episode "Ghosts", Dante tells Siddiq that he was a field medic during combat in Iraq and suffered from PTSD after losing his entire military squad. In the episode "Silence the Whisperers", Dante treats an injured Lydia in the infirmary and Daryl arrives to check on her. In the episode "What It Always Is", Dante radios Siddiq to update him on Alexandria while he is at the Hilltop. In the episode "Bonds", at Alexandria, Siddiq and Dante rush to fight off a fast-moving infection within Alexandria, the cause of which they struggle to identify. In the episode "Open Your Eyes", Dante discovers that the medical kit being used to treat a prisoner's wounds contained hemlock, which was mistakenly given to him; Siddiq blames himself, as he realizes that he accidentally added the hemlock to the bag due to his fatigue. After seeing Dante burying one of the older infected women that he had grown close to, Siddiq attempts to commit suicide by drowning himself, but is rescued by Rosita. As they talk, Siddiq has a realization and rushes to test the water supply, discovering it to be contaminated; he blames himself for failing to notice. After decontaminating the water supply, Dante tries to cheer up a depressed Siddiq, reassuring him that what happened wasn't his fault. While doing so, Dante then makes a strange verbal tic which causes Siddiq to have another lucid dream, in which he remembers one of the Whisperers' making the same tic during the decapitation of several fair attendees. He realizes that Dante is a Whisperer agent who helped Alpha sneak into the Kingdom's fair and capture the victims. He moves to attack Dante, but Dante gets the upper hand and is able to subdue and choke him to death. In the first part finale "The World Before", it is shown that in flashback several months after the blizzard, Alpha chooses and assigns Dante, due to his loyalty and because Lydia doesn't know him, to infiltrate Alexandria as her spy and sabotage the community from the inside for the impending war between them. It is revealed that Dante is the one who painted the "Silence the Whispers" graffiti, sabotaged the water supply, and suffocated Cheryl to death. In the present, Rosita goes to visit Siddiq, but finds Dante who attacks her. Rosita is able to stab Dante in the shoulder with a knife and is forced to put down a reanimated Siddiq, before beating Dante unconscious. Daryl, Carol, Gabriel, and Rosita interrogate Dante. That evening in Alexandria, Gabriel visits an imprisoned Dante and ends up stabbing him to death.

Development and reception

Juan Javier Cardenas was cast as Dante, Siddiq's wise-cracking medical assistant and a spy for the Whisperers.

In a review of the first part finale "The World Before", Erik Kain of Forbes wrote: "Gabriel vs Dante and Rosita vs Dante scenes were both spectacular, but the whole "find the herd" plot and everything Whisperer related-including the weirdly anticlimactic cliffhanger-are just meh".