WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Kingdom: Ashin of the North, now streaming on Netflix.
In Kingdom: Ashin of the North, Ashin faces an uphill struggle in a Joseon era that used her family as political pawns. She turned on the Koreans, wanting revenge against her Jurchen ancestors from across the Chinese border, all because the Seongjaeyain village she grew up in became collateral damage in a war between both factions. However, as Ashin's origin unfolds before Season 3 of Kingdom, Ashin of the North copies The Walking Dead's most heartbreaking arc.
In the final moments of Ashin's story, she returns to her village to find it sunny, lush and filled with her kin. It's a shocking revelation because she just used a zombie infection to wipe out the Joseon camp that framed her people for killing Jurchens, which resulted in the Jurchens from Pajeowi wiping them. However, Ashin then sees her mom and sisters, who were either hanged or burned in the genocide.
But the camera pans soon around her to reveal it's all a hallucination. Ashin's family is dead, and the twist is that she's been keeping them locked in a hut. Ashin then reveals she was stealing meat from the Joseon stables, where she worked as a spy, and bringing it back for the horde. In reality, she never buried the bodies after the slaughter decades ago, opting to apply the resurrection plant to them instead. This process embedded the flower in their foreheads and stitched them up to bring them back to life, all because Ashin couldn't part ways with her loved ones.
Ashin's line of thinking is similar to The Walking Dead, where Hershel Greene kept his family locked in a barn after they turned. He was a religious man, a devout Christian and someone who felt killing zombies was akin to murder. Rick's team was petrified at the notion, and in time, when the zombies broke out, Hershel, Shane and the rest of the group would have to kill them. Despite the threat they posed, Hershel would continue to see the undead as his family because he just couldn't let his wife go. And this experience ultimately left Rick's camp petrified over whether or not they could say goodbye to each other if anyone were to get infected.
Ashin is of this same mindset, so much so, she feeds the last Joseon soldier to her family, realizing they need human flesh, not animals. But things take a darker spin for her when she informs her undead family that once her revenge scheme is finished and she brings down the Korean crown and the Jurchen throne, she'll join them in their tragic afterlife.
To see how Ashin deals with the death of her family, Kingdom: Ashin of the North is available to stream on Netflix.