‘The Walking Dead’: Meet the New Big Bad

Spoilers for The Walking Dead “Adaptation” past this point.

Hello, Alpha! At the very end of this week’s midseason premiere of The Walking Dead, we finally got a glimpse of the new big, bad villain who will bring pain and suffering to our few remaining post-apocalypse heroes. But it was just a glimpse, and perhaps a confusing one, so allow us to explain who Alpha is on The Walking Dead, using a technique we just invented called “an Explainer.”

In the midseason finale (way back in December), we met The Whisperers, a group of humans who dress in zombie skin and believe that since the world has died, it’s their job to roll right along with it and punish anyone trying to hold on to the old ways. In the comics, they mostly keep to themselves, though on TV they seem to be more aggressively pursuing the Hilltop and Alexandria groups.

Everyone knows they’re a problem now, though, particularly after the death of Jesus (Tom Payne), and are trying to figure out how big a problem they’ll be. They end up capturing one of the Whisperers, Lydia (Cassady McClincy) and interrogating her about how big the group is… She says they’re pretty small, and keeps adding numbers, but guess what? She’s lying.

At the end of the episode Alden (Callan McAuliffe) and Luke (Dan Fogler) are surrounded by a group of Whisperers, and one steps up with a shotgun and says something like, “AGDGADG9AEG9EG.*” Honestly, I listened ten times and I couldn’t tell what she was saying. Take off the zombie skin mask, lady!

(*Okay, fine, she said “Trail ends here,” but it’s extremely hard to understand a person when there’s a face on your face.)

That lady, though, is Alpha (Samantha Morton), the ruthless leader of The Whisperers. We’re definitely getting into future spoiler territory now, but Alpha is bald and insane, totally devoted to the Whisperer lifestyle to a fault. She eventually takes off the mask and sneaks into the much teased town fair in order to find out more about the Hilltop group… Which leads to a horrifying warning to our heroes that leaves multiple big name characters with their heads severed and stuck on pikes. In the comics that included Ezekiel (Khary Payton) and Rosita (Christian Serratos). The show has already deviated from the books significantly, but given we got the introduction of a pregnancy storyline with Rosita this week… Uh… I think she may be in trouble.

Also, here’s a fun detail you don’t know about yet (unless you’re familiar with the books): Lydia is Alpha’s daughter. Alpha, as you can imagine, is not a great Mom. She lets members of the group have their way with Lydia (The Whisperers indulge their most animal instincts, because as nihilists they believe nothing matters), and she slowly realizes that maybe the Hilltop group is a better choice than the life she’s currently living.

There’s one more character you haven’t met yet who tags along with Alpha, and that’s Beta (Ryan Hurst), a massive man with a huge knife and a half zombie skin mask who is like a post-apocalypse wrestler. He’s devoted to Alpha, despite The Whisperers trying not to show any emotions or form attachments (because they’re all dead, donchaknow), and goes a little nuts when…

Well, that part would be telling, but suffice to say the Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) storyline that saw him this week wandering the world and trying to find his place in it eventually comes crashing together with The Whisperer storyline, in a big way.

Before that, though, a lot of people are gonna die.

The Walking Dead airs 9/8c on AMC.

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