(Warning: Comic spoilers for The Walking Dead and likely spoilers for next week’s episode, “Walk with Us,” will be found below.)
Before the season started, Angela Kang teased that the back half of season ten of The Walking Dead would feature “some stuff that feels like the finale smack in the middle of the run in the back half.” The moment to which Kang is referring will likely appear in next week’s fourth episode of the back half, “Walk with Us,” and it appears as though the preview for the episode teased it.
That small cabin will almost certainly be the site of Alpha’s death. In fact, before the shot of that cabin, The Walking Dead preview seemed to nod toward her manner of death:
That is Gamma, who looks like she’s about to get her neck slashed. In the comics, however, Alpha leads Negan away from the rest of the pack and he decapitates her.
The reality is this: I don’t think that Negan was ever on the side of The Whisperers or Alpha to begin with. I think he was just waiting for the right moment to make a move. However, assuming he did briefly side with The Whisperers, Alpha basically broke up that alliance with her decision to ignore Negan’s advice to make The Hilltop bend the knee. Instead, she decided to launch a tree sap attack on The Hilltop and burn it down with all the people inside. Negan hates that, because while he may have been an evil leader of The Saviors, he saw a lot of value in the people as resources. He did not wipe out communities; he put them to work for him.
In other words, Negan has been playing Alpha just long enough to get an opportunity to kill her. However, I don’t actually think that he’s the one that’s going to slice off her head in the television show. In the comics, he decapitates Alpha and brings her head to Rick in exchange for his freedom. I think that here — and the reason why it may take place in that shack instead of out in the open — Negan is going to tie Alpha up, and he’s going to track down Carol and give her the opportunity to avenge Henry’s death by cutting off Alpha’s head. Carol really needs this.
Either way, it should be a spectacular episode, and a great follow-up to what was essentially The Walking Dead‘s Battle of Winterfell.
