For some reason Zombie stories are simultaneously silly yet compelling.
Lots of situational ethics. It interests audiences to explore “what if” moral conundrums.
To me, that’s not always good story telling. I prefer a well-grounded sense of morality coming from the authors, even though characters are more interesting (and realistic) when they are flawed.
Our sense of morality requires that justice be meted out to evildoers within stories. When a character like Negan bashes heads in of living people who have committed no crimes, but on an arbitrary whim to exert control over a group, the story feels incomplete until he has gotten his just due.
Aristotle identified this in his Poetics as an important part of the structure of story telling. He called it catharsis, which is the purging of pity. It makes the audience want justice to happen to the evil doer.
Wow. Learn something new every day. Never knew that about Aristotle