The Walking Dead Revealed a Clever Connection Between Beta and Maggie

When The Walking Dead revealed Whisperer Beta (Ryan Hurst) was once famed country music singer Half Moon in Season 10 episode 14, “Look at the Flowers,” it might have also formed a connection with a Season 8 episode set years before Beta and Whisperer leader Alpha (Samantha Morton) menaced the Hilltop. In Season 8 episode 12, “The Key,” Hilltop leader Maggie (Lauren Cohan), Michonne (Danai Gurira), Enid (Katelyn Nacon) and Rosita (Christian Serratos) encountered Georgie (Jayne Atkinson), a mysterious travelling benefactor offering the farming colony a “key to the future.” The key was described by Georgie as “a book of medieval human achievement so we may have a future from our past.”

In exchange for a sizable portion of Georgie’s food stores and her key to the future — containing handwritten plans for windmills, watermills, silos, hand-drawn schematics, guides to refining grain, creating lumber, and aqueducts — Georgie wanted records, with the only condition being the records must be music, no spoken word. “Build this place up,” Georgie said when accepting several crates filled with records.

More than six years later, after Georgie’s plans for Hilltop came to fruition, new Hilltop resident Magna (Nadia Hilker) was shown listening to a Half Moon album in Season 10 episode 5, “What It Always Is.” As pointed out by @grimeslegacy on Twitter, because Hilltop owns one of Beta’s records, it’s likely Maggie handed over other Half Moon albums to Georgie when fulfilling her end of the deal in “The Key.”

The likelihood of this possibility increases when considering Half Moon’s level of fame and success: after one of his songs from Half Moon Live in Concert was heard in “Look at the Flowers,” a closer look at the album revealed pre-apocalypse Beta was described as a “true American genius” and “the most prolific recording artist of our lifetime.”

Maggie left Hilltop with young son Hershel and Georgie sometime during the six-year period that followed the presumed death of Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln), going away with her someplace far to assist her with a new community. During that time, Carol (Melissa McBride) has written Maggie unanswered letters about the Whisperers, who are responsible for the deaths of key Hilltop members Enid, Tara (Alanna Masterson) and Jesus (Tom Payne).

For all things TWD, follow the author @CameronBonomolo on Twitter.