The Walking Dead: World Beyond co-creator and showrunner Matthew Negrete says a chilling post-credits scene ending the fourth episode of the Walking Dead spinoff is just a “tease of things to come.” Episode 104, “The Wrong End of a Telescope,” rolls credits before a coda reveals Civic Republic researcher Lyla (Natalie Gold) conducting experiments on “empties” — including the zombified Dr. Samuel Abbott of Portland, now identified as “Test Subject A 4.0.2.” Abbott is one of many zombie-bitten corpses branded as a “TS: A,” answering a burning question raised by past seasons of The Walking Dead that introduced the Civic Republic Military’s long-undefined “A and B” classification system for human trading.
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“What we’re seeing in the coda is a glimpse at a new environment. We don’t know where we are, but it’s a new character, this woman who seems to be doing something very interesting with some empties, that seems very scientific-based,” Negrete explained to Entertainment Weekly. “We also see a glimpse of a photo of some people that include the scientists and the girls’ father and they seem rather close. We also see that the empty that she seems to be studying is also alive as a person in this photo.”
It all “implies that a lot of s—‘s gone down,” Negrete added. “And it raises a lot more questions that we’ll also be answering later on this season and into next season. A little bit of a tease of things to come.”
The framed photograph on Lyla’s desk shows her posed with Abbott as well as Dr. Leo Bennett (Joe Holt), a biochemist-slash-geneticist and the father of Iris (Aliyah Royale) and Hope (Alexa Mansour). Bennett left Nebraska’s Campus Colony as part of a science exchange with the Civic Republic — supposedly to develop a cure to the zombie virus that has plagued the world for a decade — and sent his girls distressing messages from inside a CRM research facility, spurring their 1,100-mile rescue mission to New York.
This scene sets up more to come in the Walking Dead feature films following Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln), who went missing aboard a CRM helicopter in season 9 of The Walking Dead. Former enemy Anne (Pollyanna McIntosh), previously known as Jadis, once labeled Rick an “A” before he was re-branded as a “B” when he was shuttled away to a different corner of the zombie apocalypse.
World Beyond‘s ten-episode first season reaches its midway point with Sunday’s 105, “Madman Across the Water.” The limited event series will conclude with a ten-episode second season as part of a lead into the Walking Dead feature films.
Follow the author @CameronBonomolo on Twitter for all things TWD. New episodes of The Walking Dead: World Beyond premiere Sundays at 10/9c on AMC.
