'The Walking Dead' Season 10 finale: Why Beta's death felt anti-climactic and dissatisfactory
And just like that, he was gone. The much-awaited Season 10 finale of 'The Walking Dead' aired at long last, after keeping fans on the edge for months. While the penultimate episode aired all the way back in April, the show had to be halted due to the coronavirus pandemic. So we knew that it would be a while before we saw how an unhinged Beta (Ryan Hurst) would lead The Whisperer War. To be fair, the promos, interviews and buzz surrounding the finale, promised a bloodied battle and a lot of deaths.
There were deaths for sure, but not characters that you felt emotionally invested in. And the character that had an impact--Beta--died, without so much of a whimper. After seeing Alpha (Samantha Morton) have her throat slit and her head on a plaque, this felt like a bit of a letdown for her right-hand man. The end of Beta's arc deserved better closure. This was a man who was heinous in every possible respect, so to say the least, his ending deserved to be gory.
In the beginning of the finale, the good guys use the 'guts' method to make their way through the horde of walkers and lead them away to the cliffs, where they ultimately fall to their death. In the middle of the horde, there are Whisperers waiting to stab anyone they see. The tension began to build, and the music didn't help. Of course, there are casualties, and we get to see gruesome scenes of intestines being ripped out. But these aren't the main characters, so it's easier to move on. We were more interested to know what lay in store for Beta, and he dies in exactly a two-second scene, while Daryl (Norman Reedus) wonders who exactly he ever was. Negan, who has had to ally with Beta due to his double-agent role, spews some lines about how he was just a nobody, and that ends there. It's unsatisfying to say the least, because after all that build-up of nervous energy, you would expect at least a bloodied battle between Beta and prominent people from the communities, be it Daryl, Negan or even Maggie, whose comeback was rather lukewarm.
In another episode, we got some insight into his past. We saw him walking to his apartment, with guitars and pictures of records and concerts around. Apparently, Beta was once a country singer known as Half-Moon. So, before he turned into a psychotic zombie-killer, he was a celebrity. He plays a record and waits for the Walkers to come to his door. And then, he began to raise the army of the dead. He promised to be more terrifying than Alpha.
Well, with Beta out of the way, who's going to be the next horror on the show? 'The Walking Dead' airs on Sundays at 9 pm on AMC.
