This week onThe Walking Dead,we learn the truth is far from that.
(Perhaps a little too on the nose for someone shedding one life and starting a fresh one.)
There, they encounter a man we come to know as Beta.
Credit: Jace Downs/AMC
Unlike Lydia, the sound of the dead is the only song he wishes would never end.
When he doesn’t like that, she calls him Mr. B, and then just B.
She explains the dead don’t have names so neither should they.
Alpha, however, falls asleep and doesn’t hear Lydia get up in the night.
In his grief and loneliness, Beta accepts Alpha’s invitation to walk with her in the darkness.
Though, he doesn’t want to leave “him,” the walker she killed.
So, she says he doesn’t have to.
He then cuts off the walker’s face and wears it as his new mask.
We see present Beta is also wearing the same smiley face shirt worn by the walker.
(Beta, a new gay icon?)
Alpha is all about reverting back to not a primal state, but a dead state.
The dead are empty vessels.
They don’t fear because they have no emotion.
They just have the need to feed.
So, they, too, must follow suit, Alpha reasons, if they all hope to survive.
But there are more primal emotions and instincts that prevail despite these efforts.
In a flashback, Alpha kills Beta’s walker against his will.
Frances is the woman Alpha forced to give up her baby when they made a display outside of Hilltop.
Beta is forced to kill two of the dead to save her.
He hauls her back to the pack and commands a Whisperer to kill Frances, but Alpha stops them.
Frances returns to the pack with recharged loyalty to Alpha, much to Beta’s chagrin.
Frances, however, is killed when Alpha leads the pack back to their territory.
As a reward, Alpha names her Gamma, third in command.
