The Walking Dead:World Beyond survivors prove they have what it takes

In The Walking Dead: World Beyond episode 3, the survivors prove to themselves and each other that they can make it in the dangerous world they haven’t experienced before.

The Walking Dead: World Beyond has taken a couple of episodes to really build a new world that fans of The Walking Dead universe haven’t seen before, but the show really kickstarted the survivors’ stories in its third installment.

Huck and Felix caught up to the group who are still struggling to find their strengths in the world outside the gates of the Campus Colony. But they quickly learn that they will need to depend on and defend each other, including being willing to kill for each other. That’s a lesson that most of the other groups’ fans have followed in the apocalypse world learned pretty quickly.

But it’s important to remember that for these survivors’ lives have been very different. They haven’t had to battle every day just to scratch out a living. They are still finding out how hard survival is and trying to discover if they have the strength to make it.

Even though they seem like an unlikely group compared to the hardened survivors in The Walking Dead and Fear The Walking Dead, these survivors do have a lot more going for them than you might think looking at them all individually.

Reckoning with the past

Silas’ backstory revealed that he has a troubled past and may have killed before. When he was in imminent danger from a walker he did kill pretty efficiently, so clearly he can kill. He said that he’s afraid of himself but he never told the group why he was brought to Campus Colony or what he did that resulted in his bad reputation there.

There were hints that he may have killed an abusive parent and that has made him afraid of the rage and strength that he has inside of him. But those could be assets in the apocalypse world. First, he needs to make peace with his past, but they all do in one way or another.

Hope was the first one to let go of what was holding her back mentally by confessing to Iris how their mother died, and that Hope had killed the woman who shot their mother.

In the episodes ahead it will be interesting to see how the bond between the core group strengthens as they all reckon with their pasts and their feelings about their seemingly limited futures. Hope has a lot of potential to become a resourceful and capable leader in wild world out of the Campus Colony but she will have to learn to forgive herself for her past.

First kills

Never before in The Walking Dead universe have characters made it several episodes without any walker kills, but episode 103 was the first one in this series where the main protagonists in the story killed the undead.

Hope and Iris finally killed some empties. Iris killed her first empty to save Hope, and Hope used the S pole like a natural to kill an empty to save Iris. It was a breakthrough for the survivors who until now had managed to avoid the empties rather than kill him. But in this world you kill or die, as The Governor said in The Walking Dead. It was time for the survivors to realize that.

More Civic Republic clues

This episode also dropped some important clues about the Civic Republic and a possible location for Rick Grimes. Lieutenant Colonel Elizabeth revealed that the Civic Republic has over 200,000 people living in the group and has essentially fully restored civilization. But the cost of that is high, including slaughtering any other communities that they deem a threat or a potential threat.

She also talks about the Health and Welfare Complex, and the implication is that this is a place where people who don’t follow orders blindly or don’t fall in line with the CRM’s mission as the “light of the world” are sent, permanently.

Could Rick Grimes be a captive at the Health and Welfare Complex after refusing to fall in line after Jadis rescued him? Or could he be with Hope and Iris’ father at the testing and research facility in New York, possibly as a test subject?

Hopefully, more clues will be coming as we get deeper in TWD: World Beyond’s corner of the apocalypse.

Don’t miss new episodes of TWD: World Beyond on Sunday nights at 10 P.M. EST on AMC and follow @SonyaIryna and @CulturessFS on Twitter for full coverage of The Walking Dead universe.