Who is the Asset on The Walking Dead: World Beyond?

Who is the asset? The Walking Dead: World Beyond raises questions in “The Sky Is a Graveyard,” where Civic Republic Military Lt. Col. Elizabeth Kublek (Julia Ormond) reveals a spy in the group trekking 1,100 miles to a CR research facility in New York State. It’s there that sisters Hope (Alexa Mansour) and Iris (Aliyah Royale) expect to find their scientist father, Dr. Leo Bennett (Joe Holt), and bring him home from the science exchange where he’s supposedly seeking a cure to the zombie virus. In Sunday’s episode, we find out that Huck (Annet Mahendru) is a plant protecting and keeping watch over “the asset” that Kublek needs to reach their destination for reasons that remain classified.

When Huck breaks away from the group for a 48-hour recon mission — set between the events of “Madman Across the Water” and “Shadow Puppets” — she secretly meets with Kublek and reports that “the asset” is safe.

In episode 101, “Brave,” Kublek’s helicopter touches down at the Nebraska Campus Colony where Hope and Iris live with their guardian, Felix (Nico Tortorella), while Leo is away as part of the first science exchange that Kublek says is critical for the Alliance of the Three — and the planet. This decade-old community is where Hope receives combat training from Huck, a laid back Campus security officer, and Hope’s closest confidant along with Iris.

Iris is pursuing biochemistry and immunology, taking after her father, but Hope is a promising chemist who uses science to make stink bombs and alcohols for her illegal distillery.

When Kublek entrusts Iris and a suspicious Hope with a coded map guiding them to the CR research facility where Leo is teaching in New York, she tells them the map’s watermark and stamp will show “certain people” that it was given to them by the CRM’s lieutenant colonel. “And if those certain people found that out,” Kublek says, “I would certainly go to jail.”

It’s after that meeting with Kublek that the girls receive a distressing message from Leo, who Felix says is violating ten provisions of the Four Corners Agreement by sending communications outside the Civic Republic. The map and the alarming message spurs Hope and Iris to leave home with new friends Elton (Nicolas Cantu) and Silas (Hal Cumpston), and the foursome departs right before the CRM massacres the 9,000-plus people living inside the Campus Colony.

At the destroyed Campus, Sgt. Major Barca (Al Calderon) reports that the CRM “can’t find her,” and Kublek responds: “Good.”

When Huck and Felix catch up with the kids in “The Tyger and the Lamb,” Huck loses her cool when she realizes Hope is missing (she ran off alone to sound a siren an episode earlier in “The Blaze of Gory”). After Hope and Huck break off together while exploring a waystation in “The Wrong End of a Telescope,” Hope remembers the last conversation she had with her father before he left, revealing her suspicions that he was trying to protect her from something.

In a flashback, Leo tells Hope that he’s been meaning to tell her something. “It’s big stuff, but it’s not bad stuff,” he says, promising to tell her when he gets back. This same episode ends with a reveal that the CRM is conducting zombie experiments under Dr. Lyla Bellshaw (Natalie Gold), one of Leo’s colleagues, at the research facility where he’s supposed to be with security detail Will (Jelani Alladin).

Bellshaw continues her experiments in a second post-credits scene ending “Shadow Puppets,” where we catch pieces of a phone call from Kublek: “Yes, I’m still working on that, but — of course. It will be taken care of by the time they arrive,” Bellshaw says. “Dr. Bennett won’t be a problem. His security detail won’t be, either.”

The group flies blind until “Truth or Dare,” where Iris locates the CR research facility on Kublek’s coded map. Iris does this by making use of colored lenses found inside the CRM truck stolen by grifters Tony (Scott Adsit) and Percy (Ted Sutherland), who agreed to drive the group the rest of the way to New York. During their raid on a CRM cache, Tony came across a book of encrypted CRM codes that the group is so far unable to decipher.

When they find Silas blacked out near Tony’s dead body and Percy missing, Silas becomes the prime suspect and exiles himself. Elton follows when Hope confesses she killed his pregnant mother ten years earlier, leaving the group splintered going into the two-hour season finale.

We know that whatever reasons Kublek has for shepherding the girls towards their father, she’s seemingly doing it without clearance or knowledge from the “certain people” who are of higher rank in the CRM. If Hope is the asset under Huck’s protection, all will be revealed in “The Deepest Cut” and “In This Life” when the episodes air together on November 29.