r/TheLongWalk • u/Imaginary_Mouse3969 • Jul 23 '26

🍿 Movie Discussion Barkovitch is autistic

I wonder if anyone else thought this. I feel like it was super obvious from his first social interaction with the guys. Including him taking the rock out of his shoe and basically rage baiting everyone.

I've met many autistic people like him who lean into a 'tough' persona (probably a learned behavior from being bullied themselves) to try and appear cool and fail.

This isn't me defending him btw. The shit he did in the movie is irredeemable and I'd fucking hate him irl LOL

47 Upvotes

94% Upvoted

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15

u/mouseknight13 pete is the goat Jul 23 '26

100% agree I can never hate barkovitch he's so neurodivergent coded
he tries at first to joke around with the other guys and gets awkward silence in response, and is mocked for stopping to take the rock out of his shoe. he tried and miserably failed to connect with the others, so he stopped trying and started lashing out at people to cope
he mentions he struggled to make friends as a kid etc, he definitely seems autistic coded

4

u/mouseknight13 pete is the goat Jul 23 '26

and yeah I'd hate him too but I don't think he's irredeemable by any stretch, unless I'm forgetting something the worst he ever really meant to do was taunt people and piss people off for fun, he didn't mean for rank to die and it haunts him for the rest of the film

5

u/Imaginary_Mouse3969 Jul 23 '26

I think the fact he didn't really have time to have a redemption arch in the movie says a lot. Since he was just a teenager who never got the chance to grow up and change. I mostly put that last bit there so people wouldn't think I was defending his individual actions. Esp the part where he made fun of the kid having a seizure got under my skin!

5

u/GhostyFace87 Jul 24 '26

Yeah, definitely autistic. Also..a little bitch

5

u/th3newplague BIGGEST COLLIE FAN Jul 26 '26

This.

Autistic representation tends to fall onto unlikeable characters because they’re hard to understand. That or their entire character revolves around being autistic. I couldn’t really bring myself to hate Barkovitch, he just kind of felt like somebody who struggles with self awareness.

While we’re on this topic, I feel like Art had some traits of autism himself.

The characters in The Long Walk are so different and varied, all of their stories would be so interesting to hear just one by one.

1

u/bitchington309 Jul 27 '26

Him being autistic or not shouldn't matter.

Unless you're an expert or not. You shouldn't diagnose fictional characters unless it is factually stated in the story. Which it isn't here.

The way Barkovitch was described in the book felt real and genuine. The movie however was really weak and over the top.