WARNING: The following article includes spoilers for The Walking Dead Season 10.
On The Walking Dead, Beta is now the alpha of the Whisperers, but don’t let him hear you say that. In the recent episode, "Look at the Flowers," he gathered a new walker horde, a regiment he intends to use to get revenge for Alpha’s beheading. And now that he's taken lead of them, his objective is the total destruction of the joint communities.
Despite wearing only half a mask, Beta deliberately stepped out into the sea of walkers, making his way to the front of the hungry crowd. Yet, even though he went against the flow of the herd, they parted and let him pass unscathed. To observant fans, this scene came across as narratively flimsy. Given all that we’ve learned about walkers in the last 10 seasons, Beta should have been identified as living. Yet, The Walking Dead has been playing fast and loose with the zombie rules where the Whisperers are concerned.
Postmortem masquerading is nothing new in The Walking Dead universe. It’s been used by our heroes in extreme instances through the years, but it’s never been adopted as a standard for two important reasons: the smell and the upkeep.
In the very first season of The Walking Dead, Rick and Glenn cover themselves in all manner of viscera to escape Atlanta. Yet, even with a foot dangling from his neck, Glenn attracted some unwanted zombie attention. This was when the zombie rules of the series were first established. If you are staggering around like a zombie and stink like the dead, they won’t attack. In fact, in Fear The Walking Dead, Nick Clark stays hidden from zombies by keeping his face masked in blood, but he has to maintain freshness via newly cut open corpses.
Yet, while our heroes have to be covered in fresh guts and gore to utilize this survival tactic, the Whisperers get away with walking amongst the dead by wearing skin masks made of the not-so-recently deceased. We know for a fact that Beta’s mask is already several years old, as he cut the skin its made from off his late friend in Season 10’s second episode, “We Are The End of the World.”
The source comics create a bit more believable narrative. There, The Whisperers wear full-body skin suits that are meticulously tanned and fitted, Beta alone wears only a mask, leading Negan to joke, "Just a skin helmet? You just hang out behind the others saying, 'pay no attention to me,' hoping the dead won’t notice your chin?"
Beta's staggering frame only provides more doubt for his camouflage’s believability on the series. Beta actor Ryan Hurst stands 6'4", a presence impossible not to notice. His mask would be heads above the average walker’s nose and eye line. Looking like a juicy steak, and presumably smelling like one to a walker, Beta’s overlooked presence in any horde is undeniably implausible.
Alas, the show continuously ignores its established rules where the Whisperers are concerned. When Alpha and Daryl fought in the episode "Stalker" and were both bleeding heavily inside a gas station, Alpha called the dead inside to finish him off. The dead walk right past Alpha to attack Daryl… and she wasn’t even wearing her skin mask. Then there’s the fact that the large herd the Whisperers keep near their camp is somehow not attracted to its campfires.
Even the Whisperers' ability to steer the zombies is questionable. In the show's first season, they ignored the guts-covered Rick and Glenn as they passed, they didn’t follow them. In fact, it’s always been quite a production to get walkers to behave. Rick and the gang have done it before, but had to go to great lengths to make it happen, enlisting several vehicles and launching dedicated displays to get the undead to do as they wished.
On the other hand, for the Whisperers, generating a zombie following is as easy as walking in a determined direction. Before the Whisperers were officially unmasked in Season 9’s eighth episode, “Evolution,” the undead were so determined to follow the Whisperers' guardians that they completely ignored a fireworks display. Yet, in the past, the series has shown zombies react to something as insignificant as bunches of balloons.
The Whisperer plotline is perhaps the show’s most terrifying because, at first, it seemed like the zombies might be evolving. Given how little we know about the disease and how often what we think we know is challenged, it could have been possible. Perhaps it’s The Walking Dead’s goal to capitalize on fans' ignorance of the inner-workings of walkers to create an increasingly unpredictable antagonist. After all, Beta is very much set up as a horror-movie-esque boogeyman in the Season’s 10th episode, "Stalker."
So it seems The Walking Dead may continue to push the boundaries when it comes to the Whisperers' zombie immunity and ability to lead them -- something that could prove especially dangerous for the joint communities as the Whisperer War continues.
The Walking Dead stars Norman Reedus, Danai Gurira, Melissa McBride, Josh McDermitt, Christian Serratos, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Seth Gilliam, Ross Marquand, Khary Payton, Cooper Andrews and Samantha Morton. It airs Sundays at 9 p.m. ET/PT on AMC.