The Walking Dead Spinoff Reveals Which Character Could Save the World

Who is the asset? The Walking Dead: World Beyond answers burning questions in Sunday’s two-part first season finale, “The Deepest Cut” and “In This Life,” where we learn the asset is needed to “save the world” of The Walking Dead. In “The Sky Is a Graveyard,” a secret meeting reveals that Huck (Annet Mahendru) is a spy for the Civic Republic Military — and she’s protecting “the asset” under orders from her mother, CRM Lt. Col. Elizabeth Kublek (Julia Ormond). During a mother-daughter debriefing seen in “The Deepest Cut,” Huck reports the asset is “not ready for integration yet” and that she needs “more time with the girl.”

Kublek says it’s past time they get the asset — either Hope (Alexa Mansour) or Iris (Aliyah Royale) — to their destination. The sisters, along with guardian Felix (Nico Tortorella) and tag-alongs Elton (Nicolas Cantu) and Silas (Hal Cumpston), have been moving towards a CR research facility in New York State. It’s there that the girls’ scientist father, Dr. Leo Bennett (Joe Holt), is said to be developing a cure to the zombie virus and teaching the next generation of bright young minds.

When Hope deciphers the encrypted codes inside the CRM notebook found by Tony (Scott Adsit) during the group’s raid of a CRM cache, she decodes an alarming message: “RAFT EMBED AGENT EN ROUTE TO NY W/ ASSET + FOUR – ALL FOUR EXPENDABLE.”

In “Madman Across the Water,” Huck explained her Mark Twain-inspired nickname when she told Hope that Omaha security found her floating down the Missouri River in a raft. Catching on that the only thing Huck floated was bullsh-t, Hope figures out that she’s the asset when Huck agrees to continue the trip without Iris and an injured Felix.

While en route to the meeting point where Kublek will pick them up and fly them by helicopter to the New York research facility, Huck reveals she’s behind the distressing communications from dad that convinced the girls to embark on their 1,100-mile trek back in “Brave.”

“I wanted you to want to go, to see if you would. I thought you were strong enough. I was right,” she says. “I figured your sister would try to talk you out of it so you’d come to me, and the two of us would go. Just the two of us.”

Huck says she needed Hope to “see what was worth fighting for,” namely civilization and a future. “The same future the Civic Republic is fighting for.” Making the journey by foot instead of helicopter meant Hope would get to “see the world right” and see the importance of her father’s work.

“It would have been easier if it was just you and me, but you came to see it. Why it’s always about the big picture, the greater good,” Huck explains. “The CRM, they take this sh-t seriously. They have to. The world’s future is at stake.”

When Hope demands to know why the CRM is interested in her, Huck tells her, “Kid, you have no idea who you are.”

Over a glass of wine with CRM scientist Dr. Lyla Bellshaw (Natalie Gold), Leo suspects that Hope might want to be a vintner. He goes on to say he knew she was gifted when a six-year-old Hope took apart and reassembled a computer without help. When Lyla jokes that she’s going to make some amazing wine, Leo replies: “Or maybe she’ll save the world.”

Huck tells Hope that it takes a special kind of smarts to crack a CRM cipher, but this isn’t just about her: “It’s about people like you, making sure their gifts aren’t wasted. It’s going to take a lot to bring this world back. People like you get to be a big part of that.”

We learn that it was Lyla who informed the CRM about Hope’s genius because generations of great minds are needed to bring back the world. Models show that failure to make progress within the next 30 years means human life will be gone from the planet, according to Lyla, making it of utmost importance that they relocate Hope to the think tank in New York.

After Hope and Iris briefly reunite for a goodbye, Hope whispers a secret: “I’m not the real asset. We are. The two of us together.”

A flashback reveals six-year-old Iris helped her sister complete the computer reassembly, and it’s the two girls together making each other better and stronger. “They have no clue what you can do. That’s how we’re gonna beat them,” Hope tells Iris before her helicopter ride to New York. “They think they need me to save the world, but you — you’re gonna save the world from them.”

The Walking Dead: World Beyond season 2 begins filming in early 2021. Follow the author @CameronBonomolo on Twitter for all things TWD.