Season 1 of AMC's The Walking Dead: World Beyond premiered on October 4, 2020, and concluded on November 29, 2020, consisting of 10 episodes.^[2] The series is a companion series to The Walking Dead, which is based on the comic book series of the same name by Robert Kirkman, Tony Moore, and Charlie Adlard. It was executive produced by Kirkman, David Alpert, Gale Anne Hurd, Brian Bockrath, Scott Gimple and Matt Negrete, with Negrete assuming the role of showrunner.

The season follows a heroic group of teens sheltered from the dangers of the post-apocalyptic world leave the safety of the only home they have ever known and embark on a cross-country journey to find the one man who can possibly save the world.

Plot[]

"Brave"[]

Ten years after the world ended, the Campus Colony, Omaha, Nebraska, Portland, Oregon and the mysterious Civic Republic are allied together in the Alliance of the Three. Hope and Iris Bennett are a pair of highly-intelligent sisters living in the Campus Colony whose father Leo was taken to the CR months ago and who has been communicating with his daughters in secret. As the ten year anniversary approaches, Leo sends two distress messages to his daughters who are divided on what to do while their friend Felix, who is dating Will, the head of Leo's security detail, refuses to do anything as it would involve leaving behind Hope and Iris whom he is acting the guardian of. Lieutenant Colonel Elizabeth Kublek of the Civic Republic Military provides the sisters with a coded map to the research facility where Leo is working in New York State.

Concerned for their father's safety, Hope and Iris decide to go after him with two other teenagers, Elton Ortiz and Silas Plaskett, Elton wanting to find his mother who has been missing for years while Silas wants to get a fresh start from the rumors about his violent past. However, a flashback reveals that on the Night the Sky Fell, Elton's pregnant mother had killed Hope and Iris' mother in a moment of panic and was then accidentally killed by Hope, something that she has been hiding from her sister. After discovering that the teenagers are gone, Felix follows them with his friend Huck, convinced that they will only get themselves killed. After the group is gone, the Campus Colony is overrun by a herd and destroyed due to Kublek and the CRM. Sergeant Major Barca reports that they can't find "her" which Kublek is left pleased by.

"The Blaze of Gory"[]

Iris proves to be unable to put down a walker that the group encounters, even after it is impaled upon a fallen tree in the struggle. As the group continues on with their journey, Hope begins leaving clues behind for Felix and Huck, losing faith in their plan but being continually outvoted by the others. An encounter with a second walker leaves it chasing the group before Hope, unable to put it down, traps the walker in an abandoned swimming pool. In order to avoid a costly detour, the group, who are dubbed the Endlings by Hope, are forced to go through the Blaze of Gory, a massive perpetual fire that has drawn a massive horde of walkers to it.

The Endlings are able to get through part of the Blaze, but become stranded in a tire junkyard containing most of the fire. After the others go to sleep, Hope takes off alone into the Blaze. At the same time, Felix and Huck follow their trail while Felix is haunted by memories of his parents who had kicked him out after discovering that Felix is gay as a teenager. At night, Felix sneaks off and returns home, only to discover that his parents have died and reanimated, but he is unable to bring himself to put them down. Felix and Huck close in on the Endlings thanks to Hope's trail of clues and Felix puts down the walker that has been continually stalking them after it escapes from the swimming pool.

"The Tyger and the Lamb"[]

Hope contacts the others and reveals that she has set off into the Blaze of Gory to sound an old tornado siren in order to lure the herd away from them. The others make their way to an office near the factory containing the siren where they are reunited with Felix and Huck. Silas is haunted by flashbacks to a violent altercation of some kind for which he was arrested and has made people fearful of him, calling Silas a monster, causing him to hesitate to put down walkers, admitting to Iris that he's afraid of himself. After some trouble, Hope manages to use the siren to lure most of the herd away, but she injures her foot while making her own escape. Rescuing her sister, Iris puts down her first walker and Hope puts down her first while saving Iris in turn.

The Endlings manage to escape the Blaze of Gory and a falling rack of tires keep the herd from following them any further. In the aftermath, the Endlings all refuse to abandon their mission and go home, and Felix and Huck reluctantly agree to join them, although Felix makes it clear that he intends to keep trying to change their minds. Hope finally opens up to Iris and reveals her role in their mother's death and how she had accidentally killed the woman who had killed their mother. In the Civic Republic, Kublek looks over an attack plan for Omaha and she is visited by Sergeant Major Barca who is struggling to come to terms with the genocide that the CRM has committed. Kublek insists that it was necessary to sustain their modern civilization of more than two hundred thousand people and has Barca taken away when his doubts persist. Despite her own insistence, Kublek is shown to be privately shedding tears over the map of Omaha.

"The Wrong End of a Telescope"[]

The Endlings take shelter from a storm in an abandoned high school where Felix and Huck take the opportunity to try to change Elton and Hope's minds so that they can get the group to turn around. While searching for supplies, Hope and Huck encounter a wolf stalking the school's hallways, but they manage to escape unharmed and find food supplies in the pantry of the school's fallout shelter. Felix and Elton gather water and investigate what turns out to be the wolf's activities while Iris finds herself drawn to the picture of a rebellious student Sabina while enjoying imagining high school life and dancing with Silas. However, the wolf and some walkers drive Iris and Silas into the fallout shelter where they discover that several survivors living there have perished and turned, including Sabina.

The others manage to rescue the two, but Silas flies into a rage, beating a walker to death with his bare hands and injuring Elton when he tries to stop him. Felix puts down the other walkers and snaps Silas out of it and it's revealed that the violent altercation that he keeps remembering is with his father whom Silas supposedly murdered. With Elton's dedication to the mission wavering, Felix attempts to enlist his help to turn the group around at the Mississippi River, their last best chance to do so while Hope, after recalling fighting with her father before he left, becomes more determined than ever to find him. Iris convinces the horrified Silas not to leave and Elton takes a group photo of the Endlings. In a post-credits scene, Dr. Lyla Belshaw performs experiments on a number of zombified test subjects at the CRM's research facility, one of whom is revealed to be one of her and Leo Bennett's own colleagues, Dr. Samuel Abbott.

"Madman Across the Water"[]

The Endlings arrive at the Mississippi River where all of the bridges were destroyed by the military when things went bad, necessitating a boat crossing. However, there are no boats available, forcing the group to build their own makeshift boat out of supplies that they are able to scavenge from the area. Hope learns of Felix's plan to enlist Elton's help to turn the group around and angrily confronts them both about their behavior. Felix later admits to Iris that he needs Leo and his boyfriend Will to be alright because Felix was originally supposed to be the one to go before Leo asked him to stay behind and look after Hope and Iris for him.

With a herd closing in, the claustrophobic Elton is forced to crawl under the boat and fix a problem, but it is ultimately Felix who enables the boat launch just when it seems like they will have to abandon it. The Endlings successfully cross the river into Illinois where Huck departs on a scouting mission for a couple of days. In flashbacks, it's revealed that a five-year old Elton was the only survivor when the museum that his father worked at fell due to his father hiding Elton in a box in his office. Elton subsequently discovered that his father had turned and been put down by soldiers before Elton made his way to the Campus Colony on his own. While comforting Elton, Hope discovers that she had killed his mother on the Night the Sky Fell. Hearing a noise in the woods next to their camp, the Endlings encounter a teenage boy armed with a stick.

"Shadow Puppets"[]

The boy, Percy, reveals that two men have stolen his belongings, including a truck that can greatly shorten the Endlings' trip to New York. Iris becomes enamored with Percy, causing Silas, distrustful of Percy's truthfulness, to become visibly jealous of their relationship while Hope struggles with the revelation that she had killed Elton's mother. The Endlings make a deal with Percy to help him retrieve his truck in exchange for Percy giving them a ride to New York. However, Percy turns out to be a grifter who is working with his uncle Tony to steal the Endlings' belongings. Iris becomes trapped in a dumpster while chasing after Percy and, as a herd closes in on the group as they work to save her, Percy and Tony return and rescue them.

Percy expresses remorse for his actions, having come back to help after Iris had selflessly tried to help him when she had thought that Percy was in trouble. Tony agrees to drive the Endlings to New York as Percy had promised and he privately reveals to Felix that the truck had used to belong to the CRM and that he had found something with the dead driver that can lead the group to a CRM refueling station for supplies for their journey. At the end of the day, the group relaxes by enjoying a shadow puppet show put on by Tony, a former Las Vegas magician, depicting the end of the world. In a post-credits scene, Lyla studies Leo's manuscript and reassures Kublek that neither Leo nor his security detail will be a problem.

"Truth or Dare"[]

In flashbacks, Huck is revealed to be a former US Marine named Jennifer Mallick who defied orders to execute unarmed civilians as things got bad. Instead, Huck kills her comrades, including her best friend Drake, in order to save the civilians, resulting in Huck scarring her own face to match Drake's scar as a reminder. In the present, after a drunken game of truth or dare, Hope reveals to Huck that she had killed Elton's mother on the Night the Sky Fell and Huck advises Hope to keep it a secret from Elton in order to protect him. Tony reveals that he has managed to get his hands on a map to CRM fuel caches and he has figured out how to decode CRM maps. Using Tony's decoders, Iris is finally able to decipher the coded map that Kublek had given to her and Hope which reveals that the CRM's research facility is located in Ithaca, New York.

The Endlings raid the unmanned fuel depot, retrieving CRM code books and enough fuel to make their journey. However, Hope and Huck end up in a hostage situation with Walter, a desperate survivor who has been bitten. Huck promises to help Walter, but after talking him down, Huck kills him instead. Tony and Percy decide to join the Endlings' mission to rescue Leo and a romance begins blossoming between Iris and Percy, much to the jealousy of Silas. However, Iris finds Tony with his head bashed in later that night with Silas' bloody wrench lying next to him and no sign of Percy aside from a blood trail leading out of a window. Nearby, passed out covered in blood with a bottle of liquor next to him, is Silas.

"The Sky Is a Graveyard"[]

A series of flashbacks reveals that Silas' father was abusive, ultimately leading to a violent altercation in which Silas accidentally killed his father and then had to put him down after his father reanimated and attacked his mother. Although Silas' father's death was ruled to be self-defense, his past and blackouts as well as the murder weapon being found at his side leads to a division amongst the group about whether or not Silas is guilty of Tony's murder and Percy's disappearance and what to do with him if he is.

Silas displays suicidal thoughts, almost allowing a walker to kill him before Hope saves him. Rather than continuing to endanger his friends, Silas claims to Iris that he had murdered Percy and Tony and exiles himself from the group. Elton decides to follow his best friend and before he leaves, Hope confesses to accidentally killing Elton's mom on the Night the Sky Fell. In a flashback to her two day scouting mission, Huck is revealed to be Kublek's daughter and a mole within the group whose mission is to protect "the asset."

"The Deepest Cut"[]

In a series of flashbacks, Felix and his boyfriend Will argue about Felix being torn between protecting Leo and staying with Hope and Iris, leading to Will going in Felix's place. Huck secretly meets with Kublek who orders Huck to speed up the process of bringing "the asset" to them and to isolate her from the rest of the group. In the present, with only a little more than a hundred miles to go, Huck purposefully crashes the truck and then discreetly injures Felix to slow the group down, making efforts to divide them.

At the same time, a distraught Elton finds and protects an unconscious Percy who he hallucinates talking to him, conveying Elton's own mixed emotions. Percy eventually wakes up and reveals that it was actually Huck who shot him, not Silas. Huck apparently succeeds in driving a wedge between Hope and the others and they set out on their own. However, Hope had actually figured out how to break the CRM message codes and learned that Huck is a double agent. In a post-credits scene, Will is chased through the woods by CRM soldiers who are trying to kill him.

"In This Life"[]

In a series of flashbacks, Leo and Kari adopt Hope and Iris as babies. Leo later talks about Hope's genius with Lyla Belshaw whom he is dating; Lyla subsequently informs the CRM, causing them to deem Hope "the asset." In the present, Leo expresses his distrust of the CRM to Lyla and asks for her help in proving that he's right. Elton and Percy locate Silas and reveal that Huck was the one who had murdered Tony and shot Percy; with CRM soldiers closing in, Silas turns himself in to give his friends the chance to get away. Elton and Percy agree to find their friends and save them with Percy seeking to get revenge on Huck.

Hope confronts Huck who reveals that the CRM need Hope's talents to help with Leo's research and rebuild the world, but they needed her to see what she was trying to save which is why they had set Hope on her cross-country path. After a fight between Huck and Felix, Hope agrees to go with the CRM, but she secretly tells Iris that they are going to beat the CRM together. Hope and Huck meet with Kublek who tells Huck that she intends to deal with the other Endlings despite Huck's protests. In the woods, Felix and Iris are reunited with Will who is with a large group of people and realizes that they don't know that the Campus Colony has been destroyed.

Episodes[]

Title Screen[]

Main article: Title Screens (World Beyond)

Cast[]

Deaths[]

• Dr. K (Alive and Zombified)
• Kari Bennett (Flashback)
• Amelia Ortiz (Flashback)
• Esmerelda Ortiz (Flashback)
• Jan (Off-Screen)
• Dani (Off-Screen)
• Phoebe (Off-Screen)
• Adult Administrator (Off-Screen)
• Izzy (Off-Screen)
• Mr. Kapadia (Off-Screen)
• Marco Voci (Off-Screen)
• Dr. Bavolar (Off-Screen)
• Cliff Carlucci (Confirmed Fate, Alive)
• Mrs. Carlucci (Confirmed Fate, Alive)
• Sabina James (Alive, Confirmed Fate; Zombified)
• Samuel Abbott (Alive, Confirmed Fate)
• Gary Plaskett (Confirmed Fate)
• Isaac Ortiz (Alive and Zombified, Flashback)
• Dawson (Zombified)
• Corporal Simms (Flashback)
• Powlowski (Flashback)
• PFC Farmer (Flashback)
• Wilkins (Flashback)
• Private Owens (Flashback)
• Drake (Flashback)
• Walter's Brother (Alive and Zombified; Confirmed Fate)
• Walter
• Tony Delmado
• At least 9,655 Campus Colony residents (Off-Screen)
• 2 unnamed Portland representatives (Off-Screen)
• 2 unnamed Omaha representatives (Off-Screen)
• Numerous unnamed Campus Colony residents (Confirmed Fate)
• Numerous unnamed people (Confirmed Fate)
• Several unnamed Hvass High School survivors (Alive, Confirmed Fate; Zombified)
• 1 unnamed CRM driver (Confirmed Fate)
• Numerous Civic Republic test subjects (Alive, Confirmed Fate)
• Several unnamed U.S. Marines (Flashback)
• 1 rabbit

Production[]

Casting[]

In July 2019, Alexa Mansour, Nicolas Cantu, and Hal Cumpston were cast as main undisclosed roles.^[3] The same month, Aliyah Royale and Annet Mahendru joined the cast.^[4] The following month, Nico Tortorella.^[5] Julia Ormond was announced as a cast member in November 2019, playing the role of Elizabeth Kublek, the "charismatic leader of a large, sophisticated and formidable force".^[6]

In August 2019, Joe Holt was cast in a recurring role.^[7] In November, Natalie Gold, Al Calderon, Scott Adsit and Ted Sutherland were cast as Lyla Belshaw, Barca, Tony Delmado and Percy.^[6]

Filming[]

Filming for the season began late July 2019 in Richmond, Virginia and was expected to last until November 2019.^[8] Jordan Vogt-Roberts was originally announced to be the director of the pilot episode.^[9] However, Vogt-Roberts was replaced with Magnus Martens, who previously directed for Fear the Walking Dead. The change in directors was a result of the writers mapping out the rest of the season and production had to go in a different direction; Negrete said Vogt-Roberts still contributed ideas to the first episode. The series was looking to film a plane crash in the vein of Lost with filming to take place in Hopewell, Virginia during the first two weeks of August.

Release[]

Broadcast[]

The season was originally set to premiere on April 12, 2020, on AMC, after the tenth season finale of The Walking Dead.^[10] However, in March 2020, AMC announced that the premiere was delayed and would instead debut "later this year".^[11] On July 24, 2020, it was announced that the season would premiere on October 4, 2020.^[12] The series premiered on October 1, 2020, on AMC+, AMC's premium on-demand service and each episode will be available three days before their broadcast premiere.^[13]

Outside the United States, the series is distributed by Amazon Prime Video and first premiered on October 2, 2020.^[14][15]

Marketing[]

The first trailer was released at New York Comic Con on October 5, 2019.^[16] A second trailer was released November 25.^[17]

Reception[]

Critical Response[]

The first season of The Walking Dead: World Beyond has received mixed reviews from critics. On Rotten Tomatoes, the first season has a score of 46% with an average rating of 4.90/10 based on 24 critics. The website's critical consensus reads: "The strong performances and new perspective in World Beyond within The Walking Dead universe aren't enough to make it stand out in an increasingly crowded franchise."^[18] On Metacritic, the first season has a score of 48 out of 100 based on 10 critics, indicated "mixed or average reviews."^[19]

Daniel D'Addario of Variety gave it a generally positive review and wrote, "This is not a perfect series... And yet there's a willingness to reinvent, to genuinely probe a corner of the universe previously untouched, that makes this series feel serious in its intent and, for fans of the forerunning series, well worth checking out".^[20] In a more negative review from Candice Frederick of TV Guide, she graded it two out of five stars and wrote, "World Beyond doesn't offer audiences fresh ideas or even fascinating characters for which to root."^[21]

Home Media Releases[]

The first season was released on Blu-ray and DVD on June 15, 2021.^[22]

Trivia[]

• This is the only season in The Walking Dead franchise that had more than one episode air on the same night as an episode from another show.
  • It is also the only season that shared an airdate with both of the other shows, namely The Walking Dead and Fear the Walking Dead.
    • The season premiere of this season of The Walking Dead: World Beyond is featured on the same night as the second-part finale of Season 10 of The Walking Dead.
      • This marks the first time a new episode of The Walking Dead: World Beyond and The Walking Dead have been aired on the same night.
    • The second episode of this season is featured on the same night as the season premiere of Season 6 of Fear the Walking Dead.
      • This also marks the first time that a new episode of this series and Fear the Walking Dead have been aired on the same night.
• This season was originally going to premiere on April 12, 2020 but was moved to a later date due to the COVID-19 pandemic as most of the episodes were still in post-production.
• The season's events take place roughly ten years into the apocalypse.^[23]
  • This means the season takes place during the time skip in "What Comes After" of the main show.^[24]
  • With the start of the season being ten years after the outbreak, it starts on Day +3,650 at most.
• Michael Cudlitz, who portrayed Abraham Ford, made his directorial debut and directed two episodes of this season.^[25]
• This is the first season in which Matt Negrete is the showrunner for The Walking Dead: World Beyond.
• This is, so far, the only first season of a TV Universe show to have more than six episodes.
• There are only two living named characters to die on-screen during the present day events of this season, those being Walter and Tony Delmado.
  • This makes it the season of the TV Universe to have the lowest amount of on-screen named character death occurrences in the present day.
    • However, this season has more named deaths which occur in flashbacks, as well as named deaths which occur in the present day off-screen, than Season 5 of Fear the Walking Dead.

References[]