Walk with Us

The residents of the Hilltop continue to battle the horde of walkers, aided by their catapults inside the walls. In the midst of events, Yumiko spots Magna, who is disguised and moving amongst the herd, still alive. Despite successfully slowing down the herd, the survivors are overwhelmed and are forced to retreat after the defensive wall falls. In the aftermath of the battle, Alpha chastises Negan for finishing off a dying Hilltop soldier rather than letting him become part of her horde. He believes that they have been victorious, but Alpha does not share his sentiment, since she does not have everything she wants—Lydia. Negan is then ordered by Beta to gather the scattered walkers. In doing so, Negan spots Lydia limping off in the distance and follows her. He encounters Aaron, who is dragging an unconscious Luke. Aware of Negan's betrayal, Aaron angrily threatens Negan, but is forced to fall back to kill incoming walkers while Negan escapes. Negan soon catches up to Lydia and captures her. We later see her tied up inside a cabin

Elsewhere, Alden, Kelly, and Mary make their way down the road with baby Adam. Alden still refuses to allow Mary to hold Adam, though she knows exactly how to calm him down. He finally relents and Mary holds her nephew, quickly quieting him. The three stop to rest briefly and talk about the baby's mother, but Mary hears incoming walkers; the trio flees. Alden, the baby, and Kelly take refuge inside an abandoned van, but Mary stays outside to lead the walkers away. She does so and kills them before being stabbed in the stomach by Beta, who reaffirms that she will walk with them. Mary tries to fight back and, in her struggle, rips a part of Beta's mask off; Beta finishes her off. A lone Whisperer sees this and recognizes Beta from before the apocalypse; Beta slits the Whisperer's throat to protect his real identity. He then waits for Mary to reanimate, but Alden shoots her with an arrow once she does; Beta runs off.

Meanwhile, Carol, Eugene, Yumiko, and Magna are resting in the woods. Eugene looks over the little radio equipment he was able to salvage, and tells Carol about his meeting with Stephanie and how he does not think now is the time for it, but she encourages him to keep the meeting. Magna tells Yumiko how she and Connie blended in with the horde, but became separated. Yumiko becomes angry with Carol and blames her for what they went through, and punches her. Concurrently, Daryl, Rosita, Jerry, Dianne, and Nabila make their way to the rendezvous point where they would meet with Ezekiel and the children, but find it empty; Daryl and Jerry travel back to the Hilltop. They discover Ezekiel still alive under some debris and are told that the children are under the care of Earl, who is keeping the children safe in a cabin. However, Earl is slowly dying from a bite wound and asks Judith to keep the children safe from him; he attempts to commit suicide by headbutting a spike he drove into a table, but fails. When Judith approaches him to see if he dead, his reanimated corpse grabs her.

Afterwards, Ezekiel leads the others to the cabin where they find the children. Daryl comforts a traumatised Judith, who was forced to put down a reanimated Earl. Out in the woods, Negan informs Alpha that he found what she was looking for and leads her to a secluded cabin. Along the way, Negan admonishes Alpha for wanting to take her daughter's life, telling her about his own tragic history with his wife, who died from pancreatic cancer. Alpha retorts that it is Lydia's destiny to be killed by her hand; the two arrive at the cabin. Alpha opens the door, but finds it empty. Meanwhile Lydia has escaped from a different cabin. Negan has deceived Alpha. Confused, Alpha turns to Negan, who suddenly slashes her throat, and then kisses and holds her as she is dying. Negan subsequently meets up with Carol and dumps Alpha's reanimated head at her feet. Carol tells Negan, "took you long enough."

"Walk with Us" marks the deaths of Alpha, portrayed by Samantha Morton (left), and Gamma / Mary, portrayed by Thora Birch (right). Morton's performance has been critically acclaimed.

"Walk with Us" features the death of Alpha (Samantha Morton) at the hands of Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) which resembles her death from an issue adapted from the comic book series.[1] It also features the final appearances of Gamma / Mary (Thora Birch) and Earl Sutton (John Finn), who are both killed in this episode.[2]

During an interview with Dalton Ross for Entertainment Weekly, Morton said this about her character's death:

I knew when I got the part — basically, when [showrunner] Angela [Kang] and I were talking about Alpha and the possibility of me playing her and all that kind of stuff. She was really, really honest and said, "Listen, this is what's going to happen." I think that the overwhelming feeling on the show is that you are part of the story that continues. The show is bigger than any one individual, it is all about The Walking Dead, so to play a villain such as Alpha, you know that something's got to give. So, I always knew.[3]

In an interview with Kirsten Acuna writing for Business Insider, Morton also revealed this about Alpha's death:

Well, I kind of always knew because when I was in discussions with [showrunner] Angela [Kang] under the early stages if I potentially was going to play Alpha, it was very clear that this character would have her head chopped off. So it kind of ... I always knew. Yeah, I just knew.[4]

Angela Kang, showrunner of The Walking Dead, in an interview for The Hollywood Reporter clarified about the fate of Alpha and said:

We often remix moments from the comics, but I came into the room to break the season feeling very steadfast that we needed to do the Negan [kills] Alpha storyline. It's such an iconic storyline. But we needed to have our own twist on it, which is why we have Carol. The emotional aspect of that story is so strong, the idea that they were in it together in this very particular way, but Negan takes his own path toward getting there. But yeah, we were always going to do Negan [killing] Alpha.[5]

In an interview for Entertainment Weekly, Kang explained Alpha's death and said:

So first of all this pairing in the comic of Alpha and Negan, it's one of my favorites parts of the comic and we knew that we wanted to do this story of Negan as the one that ultimately kills Alpha. And so how do we do that in the show where it still has that surprising element that we had in the books? How can we service all the emotional elements that are there, and Carol's part in it. We really liked the idea of doing this partway through the back half [of the season], not in the finale. It felt like Alpha for her side had this kind of epic emotional story with her daughter. And so we wanted to get to a place with the story where we understood that Alpha was ready to kill her own 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. In the books, he was a teacher before the apocalypse began, and we showed him develop this relationship to Lydia. And just the fact that Alpha has this go in and kill everybody, who cares, burn it all down, I'll kill my own child philosophy — that really feels like for Negan that's the red line that he can't cross. There's a lot about Alpha that I think would be appealing to him. He obviously is really drawn to the strong, but we felt that to get the most satisfying version of that, that it had to be complicated for Negan too.

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. And so it felt like if she's there ready to kill her daughter, it's almost like a test for him, and she fails, and so he has to do it in that moment.[6]

• "Walk with Us" at AMC
• "Walk with Us" at IMDb