Alpha Lives in Tales of the Walking Dead Images

By Cameron Bonomolo - August 24, 2022 08:05 pm EDT

She is Alpha, and she is back on Tales of the Walking Dead. Sunday's episode of the Walking Dead anthology series, titled "Dee," flashes back to the first year of the apocalypse, before survival-at-any-costs mother Dee (Samantha Morton) and daughter Lydia (Scarlett Blum) walk with the Whisperers on The Walking Dead. The episode (streaming now on AMC+ and airing August 28 on AMC) marks Morton's return to the Walking Dead Universe after her character was — spoilers — decapitated by Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) during the Whisperer War on Season 10 of the flagship series. Alpha's story may be over on The Walking Dead, but Dee's Tale is just beginning.

"I've never played Dee before, so I play who Alpha is before she's Alpha, and I've never done that character before," Morton, who played the Whisperer leader on Seasons 9 and 10 of The Walking Dead, said during a Comic-Con press conference. "It was really hard trying to get the tone right in regards to, there's something underneath her, and how is that going to manifest, and when will that manifest? It's dialing in the right sounds at the right time."

Showrunner Channing Powell, who co-created the episodic anthology series with Scott M. Gimple, wrote the episode directed by Walking Dead and Fear the Walking Dead veteran Michael E. Satrazemis. Channing previously scripted "Omega," a Season 9 origin episode set before "Dee."

"We got so lucky with this anthology. We have the best writers ever," Morton said. "I think that with Channing it was about making sure that I fully, fully understood the intentions. And when I was on The Walking Dead ... I really had to play her ... I had to talk to a voice coach and I had to find the voice and the walk and the breath and the music she liked. That's your job as an actor to do that anyway, but I was fortunate enough to work with Channing and the other writers. You get a lot of support."

Morton's Dee/Alpha is the only returning Walking Dead character to appear in the first season, which tells six standalone stories with a cast of newcomers that includes Terry Crews, Olivia Munn, Parker Posey, Jillian Bell, Anthony Edwards, Jessie T. Usher, and Danny Ramirez.

"Dee is somebody [viewers have] never met before," Powell said. "And I keep saying you'll recognize Alpha, but really, it is a new character, actually."

AMC Networks has released images from "Dee," which is streaming now on AMC+ and premieres Sunday, August 28 on AMC. See them below.

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