The Walking Dead’s Shocking Death Twist Explained

Sunday night’s new episode of The Walking Dead packed a shocking twist into its story as the road the Whisperer War rolls on. As it turns out, everyone in the Alexandria area are not who they seem and the first casualty of some villains within the walls has occurred. In Episode 10×07, Open Your Eyes, one character revealed themselves to be aligned with the Whisperers and struck overnight, shocking the audience and inevitably changing things to come on the AMC show as things move forward. The moment is unique to the TV series as it didn’t happen in the comics — but it was planned all along as details hidden throughout Season 10 indicate.

Warning! Spoilers for The Walking Dead Episode 10×07 follow. Major spoilers!

Late in Sunday night’s Open Your Eyes episode, the PTSD memories which Siddiq had been experiencing came to a head when he was alone in a room with Dante. As it turns out, Dante was a Whisperer who forced Siddiq to watch Enid, AJ, and others be executed by Alpha. Siddiq realized this after Dante killed Carol’s Whisperer hostage and heard his nervous tick sound. However, as Siddiq made the connection, it was too late for him. Dante killed him to keep his cover safe.

“I think that ‘tock tock’ sound, it’s a tick of his,” Siddiq actor Avi Nash told ComicBook.com. “It actually occurs during the first, to my memory in this season, when they’re performing surgery on Carol. It’s a tick that Dante’s character has that ultimately that tick thrusts Siddiq’s memory of the mouth that he could see through the whisperer mask, plus where Dante is in physical space in that last scene to his back shoulder allows Siddiq to put all the pieces back together.”

The character of Dante was tremendously different in The Walking Dead comics. In fact, he even becomes a love interest for Maggie in the books. Throughout Season 10, Siddiq’s PTSD has often been triggered by seeing Dante, as he is here a villain. Specifically, in Dante’s first appearance on the series, Siddiq was caught staring at his mouth prompting Dante’s joke about wanting to kiss him. As the season progressed, similar moments would trigger Siddiq’s memories of the night with the Whisperers in which Dante forced him to watch and whispered, “Open your eyes.”

“The tragedy of this is not just that Siddiq forgot that Dante was the whisperer holding him down,” Nash said. “Obviously, he didn’t know. He had to put it together because they wear a mask, but I think the bigger tragedy is that Siddiq has been living with the shame that he wasn’t able to do anything when the beheadings were going on, when in fact he was held down and forced to watch the beheadings. He was struggling and trying to get up and fight or scream, or do something to stop that from happening. It was actually Dante holding him and forcing him to watch that kept him rooted in place.”

Read ComicBook.com’s uncut interview with Siddiq actor Avi Nash right here.

What did you think of the big twist packed into The Walking Dead Episode 10×07? Share your thoughts in the comment section or send them my way on Instagram or Twitter!

The Walking Dead airs Sundays at 9pm ET on AMC.