Artist and former The Walking Dead star Emily Kinney confirmed on Sunday she was involved with an Easter egg included in episode 10×05, “What It Always Is.” At the Hilltop, when Yumiko (Eleanor Matsuura) approaches Magna (Nadia Hilker) as she listens to a phonograph, the song playing is borrowed from “The Turtle and the Monkey” — Kinney’s just-released single. In the show, the melody of “The Turtle and the Monkey” backs new lyrics performed by a male singer, and the voice possibly belongs to Whisperer Beta (Ryan Hurst). Kinney played Beth Greene, daughter of Hershel (Scott Wilson) and younger half-sister of Maggie (Lauren Cohan), for four seasons between 2011 and 2014.
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The version of Kinney’s song depicted in the show sounds suspiciously like Hurst, who has hinted the masked Beta was a celebrity pre-apocalypse. Hurst’s tease came after an episode of spinoff Fear the Walking Dead included a suspected Easter egg seemingly revealing Beta’s true face.
In Fear 5×14, “Today and Tomorrow,” a spilled pile of country records revealed a look at a cowboy hat-wearing singer that looks like the bearded Hurst. In TWD 10×05, the voice on Magna’s record sounds like Hurst, and the episode’s version of the song produces no results on Shazam. A
Another possible hint comes when the singer of this specially recorded version croons the lyrics: “You’re hard of hearing when I’m whispering love songs late at night…”
Matsuura subsequently hinted on Talking Dead the voice on the record is a “familiar” one.
“What do you know? I can’t say too much,” Hurst said on a past episode of Talking Dead when asked about the Fear tie-in. “All I can say at this point is maybe Beta was a large personality in the world before the apocalypse, and that sort of letting go of that might have been tragic to his psyche. I can’t say much more than that.”
In the comics, it was revealed Beta was a recognizable basketball player who also headlined a series of car commercials.
“No, I can’t tell you too much about that,” Hurst later told EW when asked about the true identity hidden beneath Beta’s mask made from his best friend’s flesh. “We’ve been dropping Easter eggs here and there, maybe on this show, maybe on another show that’s connected to it, but I’ll sort of keep dangling that carrot and let people wait for the end of this season to see what happens.”
Kinney’s latest single “The Turtle and the Monkey” is now available for purchase.
New episodes of The Walking Dead Season 10 premiere Sundays at 9/8c on AMC. For more TWD intel, follow the author @CameronBonomolo on Twitter.
