Warning: This article contains spoilers about Sundays episodeThe Walking Deadtitled Walk With Us.
Did anyone make it out alive on the latestWalking Deadepisode?
Sundays Walk With Us installment saw big losses on both sides.
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Beta once again tracked down former Whisperer Gamma and promised she would walk with them again as a guardian.
He followed through on the first part of that promise by stabbing her to death.
The Hilltops blacksmith, Earl, also met his end.
Jace Downs/AMC
But the show saved the biggest death for last.
But it was all a ruse.
(Also ensure to check out ourepisode Q&A with Samantha Morton, who plays Alpha.)
Jace Downs/AMC
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: So lets talk about the demise of Alpha.
You killed off the Whisperers leader.
How can we service all the emotional elements that are there, and Carol’s part in it.
It felt like Alpha for her side had this kind of epic emotional story with her daughter.
And that seemed to make sense.
It tracked via the rejecting her once and for all.
And then from Negan’s side, we asked ourselves: What is Negan’s red line?
And we know that Negan really genuinely seems to care about children.
There’s a lot about Alpha that I think would be appealing to him.
And so that’s how we worked about just constructing all of that.
And then we really wanted to demonstrate that conflict in real time.
So what happens if shedoesn’tfail that test?
And I guess it goes back to asking about the original plan that Negan had.
It could go either way"?
And it’s always important for me with that character to be true to Negan.
Negan has a selfishness problem at the end of the day.
Is he a hero?
Is he an antihero?
Does he go back and forth?
Negan still has road to travel, even in his own attempts to redeem himself.
And so we always wanted to play that complicated layer with all of it.
Well, that will be revealed.
I won’t say anything about it now.
We see Alpha walking towards that cabin house.
We see Lydia struggling.
She opens the door.
But shes somewhere else.
She was just somewhere else and presumably once she got out, tried to get back to her people.
So we’ll pick up with all of our folks at a later point as well.
I mean, of course.
And so we wanted to be true to where the story was taking us.
But I think that every moment that Samantha was on the screen, she’s amazing.
We really enjoyed having this amazing actress play this role for us all season.
Alpha’s not the only person you killed off.
She saves Alden and then meets her end at the hands of Beta.
Why do this to poor Gamma?
And Thora Birch was amazing in the role of Gamma.
She played the role with such nuance and it does make it tragic.
But, also, Beta is a really formidable adversary, and if you cross him there are consequences.
And I think that’s an important part of the story too.
So all angles this character was just being closed in upon by both sides at various points.
And, by the way, Thora Birch, excellent zombie work on her part, right?
I mean that was really impressive.
But I have to ask: Shouldnt he have shot that first arrow at Beta instead of Gamma?
So that was the intention anyway.
I think that that’s a pretty good guess.
Will we delve any more into his backstory at all?
We will learn more about his backstory.
You take out Earl.
Why Earl, and why are you such a cold-blooded murderer, Angela?
I mean, we love her Earl.
John Finn, also an amazing actor that we’ve been really fortunate to have with us.
And I think that we felt that there was a way to a really beautiful story with Earl.
And this is a man with such honor who has lost so much after losing his wife, Tammy.
He did a beautiful job with it.
It was amazing work and an absolutely brutal way to go.
And Negan finds himself kind of in between these two communities.
And lots of action.
I hope people enjoy how the season plays out.
