The Walking Dead: World Beyond Season 2 Episode 9, “Death and the Dead,” is the last episode before the series finale. This was an intense episode, but I have no idea how they’re going to wrap everything up to end the series next week.
Warning: This article contains major spoilers for The Walking Dead: World Beyond Season 2, Episode 9, “Death and the Dead.” This is a review from the early showing on AMC+. The episode releases on TV on November 28.
This was a great episode of World Beyond, and perhaps one of the tenser episodes in The Walking Dead universe in quite some time. The war continued, and the outcome really wasn’t clear to me. Would they be recaptured? Would they escape? Who would die in the process? I really wasn’t quite sure who would live or die (though I do feel that the Bennett sisters have lasting plot armor, at least.)
It Was Great to See Silas & Elton in an Adventure Together Again
It was good to see Silas and Elton back together. I always enjoyed their scenes, so starting out by watching them lead a zombie horde toward the CRM facility was a fun touch near the beginning of the episode. Of course, I immediately got nervous when they decided to go on a side mission. But Silas’ motive of wanting to save Dennis’ life (even considering what his wife Huck did to him) is really admirable.
I was constantly suspecting that Jadis was going to reveal to Huck that she figured out Huck was a spy, but it never happened until Huck made the revelation herself. I’m glad they’re not portraying Jadis as an all-knowing villain. And I’m glad this show has taken pains to show Jadis’ side in this and why she’s so passionate about her purpose. Even if I disagree with her, at least she has real motivations driving her and she’s not a caricature villain.
The scene where Hope had to bash in Zombie-Lyla’s head was SO dark. That poor girl is going to have even more PTSD if she survives all of this.
The scene with Elton and Silas in the globe was perhaps the “campiest” part of the episode, but it still fit. In fact, I really enjoyed how they used dark humor in Elton and Silas’s scenes. It wasn’t campy enough to qualify for Z Nation, but it provided some much needed dark humor to offset the episode’s intensity. I wish they employed more of that type of dark humor in this show, because I think it would fit well. A teen’s outlook on the apocalypse — especially when the teen is someone as smart as Elton — could definitely provide fodder for quite a few dark humored observations.
Percy’s Death Was Realistically Heartbreaking
Closer to the end of the episode, we had our first major fatality since Lyla… Percy died during a gunfight when Mason tried to escape during Felix and Jadis’ standoff. I had suspected that Percy might be dying when he and Iris had that moment where they talked about their future together. In The Walking Dead universe, that’s often a sign that someone is going to die soon. But the way Percy died was so unexpected and, yet, so realistic. He died almost anticlimactically, killed by a gunshot when we weren’t even focusing on him. Iris found him with the head wound, so there was no need to keep him from turning. And just like that, he was gone. There was no major buildup. No “should we or shouldn’t we.” He was just gone. And that was, quite sadly, perhaps one of the most realistic death scenes that we’ve seen in The Walking Dead universe.
Iris’ pain is palpable. It seems that no one in the Bennett family is allowed to have a lasting love. Their dad’s wife (and their mom) died first and then Lyla. Now Iris’ boyfriend died. And Hope has a blossoming relationship that was nipped in the bud by circumstances beyond anyone’s control. (Except, maybe they could have taken more time to try to talk to Mason about what was happening and at least given him a chance…) To be honest, I can’t even blame Mason for running away when he had the chance. His life was threatened over and over, no one explained why, and all he knew was that these strangers were killing people he knew and cared for.
What I don’t understand, however, is why Huck didn’t just kill Jadis in the next scene. Everyone took off, the CRM was on its way, and Huck had her gun trained on Jadis. She should have just killed her so that someone new would be put in charge of hunting them down — someone who would need to do a little catching up and, thus, give them more time to get to Portland. But instead, she let Jadis live. I know this was purposeful plot armor since there’s no way the show would kill Jadis off. But I wish they had made Jadis’ survival more realistic.
At the end of the episode, they feel that everything is lost. Huck visits Dennis and finds him near death. When we later see Huck standing outside near the shipping crates crying, we’re left with the question of whether or not Dennis died. But in her grief, she does discover that these crates are all filled with the very weapon they were trying to track down. So now they can still try to save Portland and take the fight right back to the CRM. It seems like an impossible task, but it looks like the war isn’t over yet.
Overall, the actors knocked this one out of the park. You could tell their hearts were in the scenes, and the episode moved at a quick pace that kept me interested from beginning to end. At this rate, next week is bound to be an exciting conclusion.
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