Tales of TWD Showrunner Plans Whisperers Origin Episode

Warning: this story contains spoilers for Sunday's "Dee" episode of Tales of the Walking Dead. Here's Hera (Anne Beyer), alpha of the Whisperers before Alpha (Samantha Morton). After episodes of The Walking Dead flashed back to show Alpha and daughter Lydia (Scarlett Blum) at the onset of the apocalypse, later revealing how they met Beta (Ryan Hurst), this week's chapter of the anthology series delved into the origins of "Mama" Dee (Morton). When chaos breaks out on the bayou riverboat where Dee and Lydia lived for a year after being holed up in a basement in Baltimore, "Dee" doesn't end with a scream — but a whisper. 

Dee is about to kill a young Lydia and save her daughter from the horrors of the world when they hear whispers. Hushed voices urge Dee to spare Lydia, revealing themselves wearing walker masks and the skinned flesh of the dead. "Don't speak. Whisper," says their leader, Hera, whose mask hides pale blonde hair. In time, Dee takes over as leader, wearing Hera's face as Alpha during her war with the survivors on The Walking Dead. 

"I was keeping myself from my nature. But that, that was the end of Dee — and the beginning of me," says Alpha, the primal, bald woman who commands her own pack of Whisperers. 

The sequence of events is "Omega" (The Walking Dead Season 9 Episode 10), "Dee" (Tales of the Walking Dead Season 1 Episode 3), and then "We Are the End of the World" (The Walking Dead Season 10 Episode 2). Together, the flashback episodes are pieces of an Alpha and Whisperers origin story — and there are more Tales to tell. 

"['Dee' is] neatly tucked in there [between 'Omega' and 'We Are the End of the World']. And then for the larger mythology, should everything work out and we ever film with actors' schedules aligning, we do have her meeting Beta right after this story," Tales showrunner and co-creator Channing Powell told EW, adding: "I have plans for Alpha. So that would be a dream of mine, should we get a season 2 or beyond." 

Read More ▸ Tales of TWD Recap: Dee ▸ Walking Dead's Dee/Alpha Timeline, Explained

Should AMC renew Tales for a second season, it would flesh out the history between Dee/Alpha and Hera. As Alpha says to her Whisperer mask made from Hera's skin, "I met you. And you showed me love."

"Obviously, that is the origin of the Whisperers story. And they do take Dee and Lydia into their community, which is different actually from the Whisperer camps that Alpha turns the Whisperers into. Their community is very different," Powell said. "Their community is a little bit more human than the way Alpha runs the Whisperers. And Hera is a really compelling, interesting lead in somebody that Dee is very, very intrigued by — not just in terms of her being a leader, but in terms of her being a potential romantic interest." 

Asked about Hera's fate, Powell teased, "I cannot give away what happens. Obviously, it's The Walking Dead. Tragedy befalls everybody at some point. But whatever happens causes Alpha to turn into the Alpha that you know and love from the show." 

New episodes of Tales of the Walking Dead premiere Sundays on AMC and AMC+.

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