The Walking Dead: World Beyondspin-off series has wrapped up but not before leaving us with a post-credit scene that will change the course ofThe Walking Deaduniverse forever. If you have not watched the series finale ofWorld Beyond, I must warn you that this article will contain spoilers. Now is your chance to stop reading until after you watch the show. Ok, final warning.
The end ofThe Walking Dead: World Beyondis nothing more than a starting point for a brand new story inThe Walking DeadUniverse.It all started with a five-minute post-credit scene which saw the series come to an end in the"Last Light.“However, this scene not only moves the universe forward but also connects to the first season finale ofThe Walking Dead.Remember “TS-19?” That’s the episode where a French doctor (Carey Van Driest) downloads transmissions from CDC virologist Dr. Edwin Jenner(Noah Emmerich). Inside a French biomedicine lab tagged with graffiti —Les morts sont nes icl,“The dead are born here”—a man (Oryan Landa) hunting down doctors from the Primrose and Violet Team shoots the woman in the back. “End this? You started this. All the teams. Then you made it worse,” he says in French, suggesting the virus was a man-made disease born in a French lab. As Jenner’s archived video from 2010 plays, he’s concerned by what the woman referred to as “variant cohorts” — a type of walker not yet seen in post-outbreak America. A new walker? Laying over her laptop containing top-secret files, the dead doctor reanimates in record time and bounces back to life as a new Walker, faster and stronger than any seen before onThe Walking Dead.
“The coda afterWorld Beyondhad everything to do with the past and future ofThe Walking DeadUniverse. There is another big story that will be told relating to that scene, and we can’t wait to start showing it to the world,” Scott Gimple,TWDUniverse chief content officer and co-creator ofWorld Beyond, said in a statement aired onTalking Dead. “The universe is unfolding, and to that end, hopefully, this is not the last we’ve seen of the characters fromWorld Beyondor of Jadis (Pollyanna McIntosh). This is a big story, and in some ways, it’s hopefully just starting.”
The scene had a lot of clues that not only call back to other episodes but connect the missing pieces we have been searching for since the show made its debut. Among the files on the doctor’s laptop is one relating to the research of biologist Dr. Ellis (Allan Edwards), the director of the Human Genome Project. Eugene (Josh McDermitt) mentioned Ellis years ago onThe Walking Deadbefore on Season 2 ofWorld Beyond, working with geneticist Dr. Leo Bennett (Joe Holt) and other scientists to develop a cure for the virus. Other visible files include “La modélisation” and “Singerland.”
“I’ll say that there’s a lot packed into those last five minutes. There’s a lot of clues in there,” saidWorld Beyondco-creator and showrunner Matt Negrete. “So if you’ve just seen that coda once, you probably haven’t gotten the whole thing from it. So I would suggest watching it a few times, turn on your closed captioning, turn on your Google translator, and see what you learn. There’s a lot packed in there.”
The scene comes after the final season of theWalking Deadspinoff, which revealed what Project Votus is. We know that it’s the study of live test subjects through death to further research on reanimation. Conducted by Dr. Lyla Belshaw (Natalie Gold) for the mysterious Civic Republic Military, Project Votus was founded by Major General Beale and Lt. Col. Elizabeth Kublek (Julia Ormond) two years post-apocalypse. The program is first mentioned, but never named, on past seasons ofThe Walking Deadwhen Jadis trades people — including the still-missing Heath (Corey Hawkins) and of course Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) — to the CRM with the the famous letters “A” and “B.” It was at a Civic Republic Research Facility in Ithaca, New York, where the CRM was conducting research to potentially slow or entirely eliminate the dead’s rate of reanimation and possibly destroy it for good.
What does this all mean for the future of not only the Walkers but the survivors and the missing Rick Grimes? We will have to wait and see whenThe Walking Deadreturns in February 2022 as the series makes its way to the end. What do you think? Are about to see more from the Walkers? Faster, stronger, maybe even with some memories? Whatever happens, we know that the world has changed. You can watch the series finale ofThe Walking Dead: World BeyondonAMC, Philoand more.
