This week’s episode of The Walking Dead is not the final episode of season 10, but it is the final episode for a while, as the post-production work on the season finale had not yet been completed before the entertainment industry shut down. Moreover, it’s likely that AMC wants to use the season 10 finale — and the expected conclusion to The Whisperer War — to help launch the new spin-off series, The World Beyond, which has also not yet been able to complete post-production on the series, either.
While the pseudo-finale, “The Tower,” ended in with something of a cliffhanger regarding The Whisperer War, it did provide emotional closure for several characters. We’ll address those storylines later, but here we want to explore Beta’s deranged journey. In the wake of Alpha’s death, Beta has completely lost it. In his head, at least, he’s the zombie whisperer — he (thinks) he can hear their thoughts, and that he can talk to them. He cannot. This is all a byproduct of severe PTSD and the mental deterioration that comes along with, you know, wearing the skin of dead people over his face for years.
In any respect, Beta led a horde of zombies toward the the Alexandrians by following a … cat. No, I am not kidding. Mentally-imbalanced Beta — leading a horde of thousands of zombies — decided to follow a cat. Amazingly, the cat led Beta straight to the Alexandrians, who — for reasons that don’t make complete sense — decided to hide out in a hospital instead of the heavily fortified Alexandria. The season finale, thus, is expected to be a showdown between the Alexandrians and The Whisperers at this hospital:
If that hospital looks familiar to fans of The Walking Dead, it is because it should. We’ve seen it before. In season five.
From a different angle, you can also see the overhang. Here it is in season 10:
Here it is in season 5:
Here’s the catch, however. That is Grady Memorial Hospital. It’s in Atlanta. The Alexandrians clearly are not holed up in a hospital in Atlanta as Beta brings his horde of zombies, because Alexandria is in Virginia, literally 630 miles away. In other words, it is the same hospital, but in season 10, Grady Memorial is playing the role of a different hospital, sort of like how Toronto often plays the role of New York City.
Normally, maybe viewers don’t catch on. However, this particular hospital is the sight of one of the most famous scenes in 10 seasons of The Walking Dead: Beth’s death.
It looks like The Walking Dead is doing what we all do: Making the best use of what we have right now, even if that means re-using some old sets in new ways.