‘The Walking Dead’ Fans React to Intense Baby Scene

The Walking Dead on Sunday revealed more of the brutal philosophy embraced by Alpha (Samantha Morton) and the Whisperers when the villains were shown leaving a crying baby to be mauled by walkers.

When confronting Alpha, who had marched on Hilltop to demand the return of daughter Lydia (Cassady McClincy), Daryl (Norman Reedus) was surprised to learn one of the Whisperers carried a baby into the dangers of the wild.

But when the child's cries alerted a pack of nearby walkers, its mother unfurled her carrier and left the helpless baby in the dirt. The child was spared only through the intervention of Connie (Lauren Ridloff), who then fled into Hilltop's corn field to escape the attracted walkers.

"We're animals. Animals live out here. Animals have babies. So we have babies out here," an unfazed Alpha coldly told Daryl, who later journeyed outside the Hilltop walls with Kelly (Angel Theory) and Tammy (Brett Butler) to recover Connie and the baby.

The moment comes after Lydia was thrown off guard last episode by a mother and her crying child when Henry (Matt Lintz) temporarily freed her from the Hilltop jail.

"There's an aspect related to the culture of their society that's probably running through her mind. But I also think for somebody who's been told the world is over, there's no such things like communities behind walls that are safe and where people can live — all of that's a lie, all of it will fall apart always," showrunner Angela Kang told EW.

"To be in a place that is clearly thriving, where they have crops, where people have homes, where people can have families, and the baby cries, and the baby is safe, these are all things that are just breaking every sort of truth that she believed that she knew about the world. So it's like the hopefulness of being able to raise children in a post-apocalyptic world — I do think that there is something to that for a lot of our characters.

"Lydia spent her entire childhood that she really remembers in the apocalypse, and that's an emotional thing to think, like, 'I've been wandering around outside the walls, wearing this skin of a dead monster, and here's this baby that just is safe behind walls, loved by somebody, taken care of by a community.'"

The Walking Dead next airs 912, 'Guardians,' Sunday, March 3 at 9/8c on AMC.

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