(SPOILERS for this week’s The Walking Dead: World Beyond will be found below.)
It hasn’t reached nearly the heights of this season’s Fear the Walking Dead, nor is it anywhere as good as The Walking Dead is now, but the newest spin-off, The World Beyond, has finally reached the level of passably entertaining with a few cool tricks up its sleeve. It’s an interesting contrast to Fear the Walking Dead at the moment because Fear is telling compelling stand-alone stories — or mini-movies — while The World Beyond is trying to stretch a three or four-hour movie into 10 episodes.
It’s finally arrived to the third act, and it’s seriously starting to heat up, thanks in part to a twist in this week’s episode that few people saw coming. The episode itself largely concerns the death of Tony (and the presumed death of Percy) and the culprit behind it. Silas is the chief and only real suspect. Silas, like his father, has rage issues, and when he feels threatened, he loses his temper, become violent, and blacks out, forgetting the violence he perpetrates. We saw it earlier this season when Silas lost it and beat the holy hell out of a walker, and he’s been warning the others of his anger issues all season long.
In this episode, we finally get a flashback into his past relationship with his abusive father, who Silas violently beat to death, but only when his father first physically attacked Silas. In the Campus Colony, the reputation Silas had was of the guy who beat his father to death, and the reason he decided to go on this journey with Iris and Hope in the first place is that he wanted a “fresh start.” Tony’s death and Percy’s disappearance complicates things, because — though Silas doesn’t remember it — the most logical explanation is that he killed Tony. He was in the same room; the weapon used was Silas’s wrench; and he’s violently lashed out on a prior occasion, resulting in someone’s death.
Eventually, Silas even accepts that he was behind Tony’s murder himself, and rather than put the rest of the group in further danger, Silas decides to part ways with the group. Elton, who believes either that Silas didn’t kill Tony, or that Silas had good reason to kill Tony, also decides to leave the group and join up with Silas, because he doesn’t want to leave his friend to face the zombie apocalypse alone.
The one person who may have answers is Percy, who disappeared presumably into the river, where it’s believed that he would not have survived the undertow. It’s likely, however, that he survived, and that Silas and Elton will come upon Percy in the season finale and find out the truth.
The truth is probably this: Huck killed Tony.
Why would Huck kill Tony? Therein lies the twist. We learned in the opening episode of The World Beyond that Elizabeth — the lieutenant colonel of the CRM — has a daughter in the CRM. I believed that daughter was probably Isabel, the woman in the helicopter and with whom Althea in Fear the Walking Dead fell in love. I was wrong. Huck is Elizabeth’s daughter, and she’s been working with the CRM the entire time to help Iris and Hope journey to CRM headquarters in New York. When Huck left the group and traveled ahead, she was meeting with her mother at the CRM.
Chances are, Huck saw Tony and Percy as obstacles to that, and probably Silas, as well. Killing Tony removes those three complications, as well as Elton.
There does, however, remain some open questions. Iris and/or Hope is referred to by Elizabeth as the “asset.” Why? What do they want with Iris/Hope? Is she someone that they intend to try the cure on? Is she someone to whom they have already given the cure and want to see if it works? Or is she an “asset” because she is somehow being used as leverage to force their father to do something for CRM that he doesn’t want to do? Also, why is it necessary that they make the journey themselves? Why didn’t Elizabeth simply transport Hope/Iris by helicopter? What is valuable about the journey itself?
Most importantly, does this explain why Huck’s accent is so bad?
In any respect, it looks like Iris and Hope’s group will converge with the CRM in next week’s two-hour season finale.
