The Walking Dead: World Beyond Season 2 Episode 4 was the first time we saw all the major characters in one episode: Felix, Hope, Iris, Elton, Silas, and Huck. And because they all played a role this week, the episode felt like a fuller, more robust storyline. However, I’m having a tough time picturing how they’re going to wrap all this up by Episode 10.
Warning: This article contains major spoilers for The Walking Dead: World Beyond Season 2, Episode 4: Family Is a Four Letter Word. This is a review from the early showing on AMC+. The episode releases on TV on October 24.
World Beyond and Fear the Walking Dead are both airing on Sunday nights now, and I can’t quite decide which I like better. Both, of course, pale in comparison to The Walking Dead’s final season. But World Beyond really has upped its game too, since it’s competing on an even playing field with Fear the Walking Dead in my opinion. It might be simply because I find the CRM’s storyline fascinating. I miss the “science-y” part that we enjoyed last week, but this week’s episode was still quite compelling.
Hope & Iris Finally Meet Again
Hope and Iris finally reunite and it’s more heartbreaking and less anger-filled than I had imagined. The two sisters are at odds on how to handle things, but they aren’t at odds with each other. They still have each other’s backs even though they disagree. And the truth is that there is NO option in this situation that is good, so I can see both of their viewpoints. On the one hand, Hope thinks their best chance at survival is to join CRM and lie low until they figure out their next steps. She believes that some of what CRM is doing is good, but she also knows they’re dangerous. But she thinks their best chance is to gather their thoughts on the inside rather than being on the run.
Iris, on the other hand, thinks that they will be better off staying on the run and hiding from CRM. She thinks they will be worse off if they essentially let CRM trap them. Sure, they can lie low, but they’ll be under CRM’s control and at their mercy. Iris has Felix, Percy, and Elton on her side, so she has a pretty powerful team to back her up. Hope, on the other hand, only has her dad (whom she hasn’t told everything to) and Huck (who isn’t trustworthy), so she’s in a more precarious position. And I’m pretty sure Mason is a plant, so there aren’t a lot of people that Hope can rely upon from within CRM. In the end, I don’t think either sister’s plan is the “obviously” right one. Both plans have issues and both plans could fail.
While the sisters trust each other, Iris still isn’t being completely up front with Hope, although Hope is being 100% authentic with her. Iris, for example, never told Hope about Elton. Will that come back to bite her? (Haha, get it, “bite” and zombies?) 😀
I’m enjoying Elton’s storyline. The panic attack her felt upon seeing Hope, as all those emotions rushed back, really seemed authentic. Like I said last week, I’m glad the show is revealing these teens are suffering PTSD and aren’t just handling all this death and horror easily. Elton’s growing friendship with Asha is also deepening his storyline and provides a welcome respite from the sisters’ intensity.
Percy’s story was well done this week too. Some people online were complaining about Percy trying to kill Huck, but given what he went through (with Huck basically murdering his father figure in front of him), can you really blame him? He’s not a wise adult who has learned to control his emotions. (And even adults would struggle in THAT situation.) He’s a teenager in pain who lost his family when someone he trusted went psycho on him. Of course he wants to kill her.
Meanwhile, it looks like Silas is going to play a role in helping Hope and her dad escape from CRM if they want. He’s stationed at an outpost and almost left this week when he started worrying about his friends, knowing Huck is still embedded with them. The “carnival of horrors” that he had to endure seemed really unfair to me at first until the kids revealed that they had “de-fanged” the walkers and used the room for target practice. It’s a unique solution for staying strong in an apocalypse. I remember when Rick and the others worried about growing soft when they first moved to Alexandria in the main series. Setting up something like this might have helped them lessen those concerns.
There’s only one BIG problem I had with this episode… Both Felix and Percy are healing far too fast. Percy’s gunshot wound seems to have healed super fast, considering just a few days ago he had almost died. Now he’s out hunting Huck! And it wasn’t that long ago that Felix’s ankle was sliced open and he couldn’t even walk. Now he’s on patrols without a limp! I’m guessing that Silas’ cut hand will not even have a scar next week.
Huck’s Future Is Still Undetermined
We already know that Huck’s storyline about being found in a river almost dead was a setup so she could be embedded in Iris and Hope’s community as a spy for CRM. Well, this week we learned that she gave herself her scar right before going undercover. We had previously seen her giving herself the scar in a flashback because it was her boyfriend’s scar and she wanted to remember him. (After she had to kill him in order to save the civilians.) So this left me with a question that other viewers might know the answer too. I’m a little fuzzy on some details regarding Huck’s reveal, so please feel free to join in the comments below and clear up some things for me.
When we saw this week that Huck gave herself the scar just before going undercover, was this supposed to signify that Huck’s entire storyline about killing the military to save civilians was a lie? OR was this signifying that Huck gave herself the scar to remind herself of where she came from, since she was going so deep undercover? If her background story really is true, then I’m going to guess that we will see Huck turn on her mom once she learns that her mom killed an entire town of innocent civilians. I mean, Huck was willing to kill innocent people to deliver Hope to CRM, so there ARE quite a few lines that she will cross. But I’m guessing she draws the line at killing an entire town full of innocent people.
But even guessing that, I still wouldn’t trust her. 😐
All in all, this was an enjoyable episode. Having all of the main characters back in one episode made the storyline feel more robust and faster-paced. Still, I can’t help but wonder if we’ll see some of these major characters die before the last episode airs. I’m also particularly intrigued to see how it all ties back to Rick, since he was taken by CRM. I’m hoping for some subtle clues soon about what happened to him soon.
By the way, did you catch the Beta Easter egg in the episode?
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