And we met one of the leaders of that group in Lt. Col. Elizabeth Kublek (Julia Ormond).
Is Kublek friend or foe?
It’s tough to say.
Zach Dilgard/AMC
On one hand, she provided the sisters with a coded map to help find their father.
On the other hand, that could be a trap.
And what’s up with the final scene with human and undead bodies strewn about?
Zach Dilgard/AMC
Did Kublek and the CRM save the day or destroy it?
What is the arrangement?
There’s a lot of mystery surrounding them.
There’s a question of, it seems like he’s in danger.
They got these messages from their father that are very clearly distress messages.
So all signs point to these may not be the most straightforward, up-and-up group of people.
Is this a barter system, or what is the arrangement?
It’s really about connectivity.
It’s that Omaha’s in the middle of the country.
It is a barter system.
They do get supplies from each other, but you also get intel.
There is a sense that there is strength in numbers, to a degree.
The Civic Republic, as we will come to find out, they have very specific goals.
They think very, very big-picture in a lot of ways.
It’s a question for them of, how do these other communities fit in with those big pictures?
That’s something that we’ll be exploring as the season and the series goes on.
I don’t know who you are.
I don’t' know what you’re doing."
And Elizabeth responds: “You will.
Some day you’ll understand.
“ShouldIris trust her?
I don’t know if she should.
That’s just my opinion.
She wants to be able to communicate with her father to know he’s okay.
It appears he’s not.
She doesn’t even feel like she would be able to confront Elizabeth at this point and get answers.
So her dad’s breaking the rules.
So Iris essentially can’t even go to Elizabeth with that question.
Well, it’s interesting because Elizabeth clearly has an interest in these two sisters.
Is she playing a game here that we don’t quite know yet?
I don’t know.
She gives them this map that sets them on their course.
I think that there is a part of Elizabeth that feels for these two sisters.
She is someone who maybe sees a bit of herself in Iris and Hope.
Her organization does have their father, and because of their rules, they can’t communicate with him.
She can’t say one way or the other exactly where he is or what his condition is.
So, yeah, it’s an open question mark.
But they’ve made that decision, so at least they know where they’re going.
I have a theory that I’m going to run by you.
We’re going to see how you react to this.
Here’s my theory.
I don’t think the dad sent the message about his safety not being assured.
Something doesn’t add up here.
He said not to tell Felix.
Later, Elizabeth’s given them a coded map to where he is.
It’s not as simple as him just sending the message.
What do you have to say to that, Matt?
I will say that the Civic Republic is…
They’re definitely up to something.
We have that last shot of Elizabeth walking through the campus.
It looks destroyed by Darth Vader.
She doesn’t come across well in that scene.
She says, “Good.”
We’ll see if that theory holds water or not.
You brought up the last scene.
What else can you tell me about that?
Obviously, there’s been some sort of massacre.
A brick wall’s been knocked down, there are painted walkers everywhere.
What else can you say about what exactly has happened there?
I will say it seems like one of two things.
There’s obviously been some devastation.
There are painted walkers inside the walls and we see the walls haven’t held.
It looks like a herd maybe has gone through, but for whatever reason, the walkers got in.
We see some bodies in the back of the truck.
It’s just a question of what led up to that?
Was it that the CRM swooped in to attempt to save the day after a herd came in?
Or is it something a little more nefarious than that?
But we later see the flashbacks of what really happened and how this woman panicked and shot her mom.
Then we also see then that woman getting shot.
So how much information does everyone really know about what actually happened in that scene?
As we’ll find out, Hope hasn’t told her sister.
They’re very close in so many ways, but this is an event that has defined Hope.
As we see in the pilot, she has a very negative view of humanity.
She says this line to Huck that essentially people turn.
It’s just what happens.
I think that she has very little faith in humanity because of what happened that night.
Then that prompted Hope to pick up the gun and shoot this woman.
How much does Iris know about that confrontation?
She doesn’t know anything.
She pauses and she’s tempted to say something, but she doesn’t say anything to Iris.
So Iris doesn’t know.
So that’s a secret to Iris.
As we find out a couple of scenes later, that woman was Elton’s mom.
He doesn’t know that.
Hope doesn’t know that the woman she shot was Elton’s mom.
So that’s going to be a bit of a ticking time bomb, going into the future episodes.
Yeah, that really is Iris' journey for the first episode.
We introduce her as this is a goody-goody class president who’s making signs and greeting the CRM.
She’s all in on this alliance.
I think she’s asking herself, what is she able to live with?
What is she not able to live with?
Has she been living for this future blindly without really thinking about what’s important to her personally?
What she’s realized by the end of the episode is that what’s important to her is family.
It is her father.
Any info you’re free to share or tease in terms of what that thing is?
Yeah, it’s something very dark.
I just have to say, it’s such a great episode.
If I were in the zombie apocalypse, everyone would sleep behind a barred door.
You never know what’s going to happen in the middle of the night!
Why would you ever sleep in a room with a door open?
You just want to close it, just in case.
We actually called those death doors.
That’s what the art department called them.
“All right, we’ve got a death door coming in” and it was great.
