The Walking Dead Deleted a Daryl and Negan vs. Beta Fight Scene

Whisperer Beta dies with a whisper on The Walking Dead, but series alum Ryan Hurst reveals a scripted fight scene with Daryl (Norman Reedus) and Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) didn’t make the cut. Hurst, who plays the Whisperer consigliere to Alpha (Samantha Morton) on Seasons 9 and 10 of The Walking Dead, leads a walker horde to doom the survivors in the Season 10 episode “A Certain Doom.” Wearing his Whisperer mask made of walker flesh, Negan baits Beta into a trap — and is nearly gutted for beheading Alpha at a turning point in The Whisperer War. Before Beta can avenge Alpha, Daryl saves Negan, slashing at Beta and plunging two knives into his eyes.

During a recent appearance at Pennsylvania’s Steel City Con, Hurst revealed the Walking Dead writers’ room scripted more of a fight between Beta and allies Daryl and Negan:

“I was hoping that Daryl and I would have got to fight a little more or that Beta would have been able to go at it with Negan a little bit more, which was supposed to be on the books there. It was written that way for a little while, which I was excited about,” Hurst said. “Then, at the last minute, they decided that they just wanted this sort of surprise to happen where Daryl kind of swoops in and saves the day. I was like, [blows raspberry].”

Because Hurst is close friends with both Reedus and Morgan, and his character had grudges against Daryl and Negan, showrunner Angela Kang wanted to end The Whisperer War by “crashing those three characters together at the very end.” 

“Those three guys, they bonded in very particular ways, but they’re also each like an alpha in their own right. So all three of them had to be cool and have a cool part of the thing,” Kang previously told Entertainment Weekly. “And I think they were all great. Negan had his role to play as bait, because he knew he could be great bait, Daryl coming in with the knives, and Beta just the tough guy but also just in some ways, he always knew he would die in the herd. So he got to have this weird, surreal exit, which I think Ryan enjoyed.”

In the comics, Negan battles Beta with his baseball bat, Lucille, in the pages of The Walking Dead #159. The Whisperer second-in-command is eventually shot and killed during a scuffle with Aaron and Jesus in issue #173. 

More than a year after his Walking Dead death, Hurst reflected on his 20 episodes of the AMC zombie drama as “a beautiful experience.” 

“There were so many people there that had been working on that show for so long. It really operated like a city or a town or a village, it mirrored the show a little bit how proficient they were as a community filming the show together,” he said during the Q&A panel at Steel City Con. “The family atmosphere of making this long-running hit show was unique to that show.” 

Season 11 of The Walking Dead returns February 20 on AMC. Follow the author @CameronBonomolo on Twitter and ComicBook’s @NewsOfTheDead for The Walking Dead Universe coverage all season long.