The Walking Dead Star Says Negan and Beta Episode Is “Something Else”

Sunday’s The Walking Dead 10×06, “Bonds,” is “just the beginning” of a unique rivalry between Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) and Beta (Ryan Hurst) when ex-Savior leader Negan, who prematurely ended an eight-year jail sentence when he escaped from Alexandria, throws in with the Whisperers. Episode 10×05, “What It Always Is,” ended with Negan intentionally wandering into Whisperer territory, where he was quickly surrounded by Beta and a pack of Whisperers camouflaged in the flesh of the dead. When we see him next, Negan is blindfolded and being escorted to the Whisperer camp for an eventual meeting with leader Alpha (Samantha Morton) — if the crude and chatty Negan survives the trip.

“Negan and Beta, same sense of style, leather. There’s something to be said to their sense of style,” Hurst said on Talking Dead. “I think Beta gravitates towards the badasses of the badasses. ‘There can only be one!’ This one is something else. It’s just the beginning of seeing these forces of nature sort of meet and see what pops out of it.”

When previewing the episode earlier in October, Hurst said this next installment is among “the funniest episodes” of the series.

“Beta and Negan, they couldn’t be more diametrically opposite than anything. It’s this stone-faced immovable person and then you have his mouthpiece who just will not shut up,” he told Insider. “The first episode that you see Beta and Negan together is one of the funniest episodes of Walking Dead that you’ve ever seen. It’s still very bloody, still very Walking Dead, but there’s more levity in that episode than in any that I’ve ever seen of the show.”

Beta and Negan sharing the screen is something Hurst has been looking forward to for a long time.

“We’ve shot a bunch. Some of it’s still left to be shot. But, you know, I love the show too. I’ve been looking forward to this,” he said. “Jeff and I have been great friends for a long time. So the fact that we get to share the screen together is an enormous joy.”

While Negan attempts to earn his spot among the Whisperers by proving his might to Beta, Carol (Melissa McBride) and Daryl (Norman Reedus) set out on a dangerous mission to find and then destroy the walker herd that stands as Alpha’s biggest weapon against Alexandria and the allied Hilltop and Oceanside communities.

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.