The Biggest Questions Fans Have After The Walking Dead: World Beyond Episode 2

Spoilers to follow for the first two episodes of The Walking Dead: World Beyond.

The Walking Dead has proven itself to be one of the most popular and influential television shows currently on the air. In addition to providing fans with week after week of gory zombie action, the series has an entire mythology surrounding it. With each passing season, we learn something new about these zombies and the world around our heroes, and that mythos gets expanded further in spin-off series like Fear the Walking Dead and The Walking Dead: World Beyond. 

Right from the start, World Beyond has already differentiated itself from anything else Walking Dead-related. While other zombie stories focus on people dealing with the apocalypse as it happens, World Beyond sets its sights on a group of teenagers who only know of the planet as a zombie-infested wasteland. From the pilot, it's clear the show will focus on four friends as they come of age in the midst of the end of the world. They journey forth from the safety of home to find their own identities and learn more about the mysterious Civic Republic Military, the organization that abducted Rick (Andrew Lincoln) on The Walking Dead.

While The Walking Dead has spanned more than a decade, World Beyond will be much more concise, consisting of two seasons with ten episodes each. That's not a ton of time, and the show has already set up questions that require answers. Fans have taken to Reddit to voice their confusion (and provide possible answers) to subject matter brought up in the show's second episode, "The Blaze of Gory."

"The Blaze of Gory" gives Felix (Nico Tortorella) a lot of screentime, particularly when it comes to his life prior to the apocalypse. In a flashback, we see Felix's parents find out he's gay and kick him out of their home. When zombies start popping up around the country, Felix returns home to check on his parents. Even as the world ends around them, his parents refuse to let him inside their home. 

Back in the present, Felix returns to his house for some much-needed closure. While there, he finds his parents, who have been turned into zombies, and in an act that would make Sigmund Freud proud, he kills his zombified parents. There are a couple of questions that arise out of this sequence of events. First, it's unclear whether Felix's killing of his parents was an act of anger or one of mercy. 

Another interesting question that comes to mind is how Felix's parents turned into zombies in the first place. They clearly holed themselves up in their house, which should have been pretty safe. Of course, in the world of The Walking Dead, zombies can get almost anywhere. However, it's intriguing to ruminate on whether Felix could have done something, like unlocking a door, to allow zombies to eat his parents all those years ago. 

Huck (Annet Mahendru) may look familiar to fans of The Americans and Tyrant, and she continues her streak of playing characters you don't want to mess with on World Beyond. Huck is a Marine-turned-security officer who mentors some of the younger members of the new society, particularly Hope (Alexa Mansour) and Iris (Aliyah Royale). 

She's an incredibly interesting character, in part due to the sizable scar she sports on her face. One question many fans seem to have involves wondering how precisely she ended up with it. It's important to note that she used to be a Marine, so it's possible it has nothing to do with zombies — she could have gotten it at some point during one of her missions before the apocalypse broke out. 

Of course, zombies don't tend to leave behind scars. Considering some of the truly vile humans who have sought power in the midst of the apocalypse, including Elizabeth Kublek, it's easy to imagine some horrible human giving her a scar to remind her of a prior transgression. Don't be surprised if we get a lengthy monologue in a future episode in which Huck details how exactly she got her scar. 

Hope is the rebel of the group, while Elton (Nicolas Cantu) is more analytical and cautious. Their personalities are so vastly different that it would be no surprise for the show to try to set up a "will they or won't they" relationship between the two. However, it's unclear right now if that's what the writers are going for. 

Fans have noted how the chemistry between the two is kind of... off. It's especially notable as Iris and Silas (Hal Cumpston) have a somewhat flirty conversation about music in "The Blaze of Gory." Hope and Elton also pair off in the episode to discuss the existential despair they've both experienced growing up with zombies everywhere. It suggests they're on a similar wavelength, and it's not out of the question for a romance to blossom between the two. 

It's worth noting that teenagers, even when they're not in the middle of the apocalypse, are awkward. It's possible Hope does like Elton, but she just doesn't know how to express it at this time, outside of ruminating on philosophy. 

The pilot episode of World Beyond, "Brave," features a series of flashbacks showing Iris with her mother when the zombie outbreak began. In these flashbacks, a pregnant woman shoots and kills Hope's mother when trying to get her car. Hope manages to get the gun away from this woman and kills her in retaliation. This killing has haunted Hope ever since, and it could come back to bite her in ways she's not expecting. 

This thread takes a shocking turn when Elton takes out a picture of his mother, and we, as the audience, see that it's the same woman Hope killed. You don't set up that kind of connection without paying it off later, so we are fairly certain that eventually, Elton's going to learn the truth. After all, there are only going to be 20 episodes of World Beyond in total, so don't be surprised if the big reveal comes at a pivotal moment in the series. 

The reveal would be all the more difficult if Hope and Elton actually do spark a relationship. Elton's mother was the one who killed Hope and Iris' mother, so it's possible for those two girls to have some conflicting feelings about their friend as well. This set-up has all the makings of a real Chekhov's gun. 

While a lot of questions fans have about World Beyond so far have to deal with just where the plot is going, there are also some logic questions that just raise an eyebrow or two. Toward the end of "The Blaze of Gory," the kids find themselves trapped in a tire fire with a zombie horde confining them inside. The smoke makes it impossible for them to find a way to escape the zombies, so they have to come up with a plan to distract them. Elton suggests one of them could cut through the horde to activate an old tornado siren that would draw the zombies away from the tires. 

Later, Hope decides to take it upon herself to pursue the plan. She grabs a walkie-talkie and begins making her way to the siren as her friends sleep. But wait... how could you possibly fall asleep when there's smoke all around you? What's even more amazing is that the kids aren't even really coughing despite the smell and ash from burning rubber all around them. While having the kids trapped by a literal tire fire serves as a nice metaphor, the logistics of how the kids actually behaved amongst the smoke definitely raises a few questions. 

World Beyond has proven to be a worthwhile addition to The Walking Dead canon. With such a rich mythos surrounding zombies, there are plenty more adventures that can take place in this world. You can bet as the kids in World Beyond get closer to Nebraska, these questions will find answers, even while more questions are raised.