The Walking Dead: World Beyond 1.07 Review – ‘Truth or Dare’

Welcome back to The Walking Dead: World Beyond! There’s a lot going on this week: the reveal of Huck’s backstory, dangerous scavenging, decoding maps, flirtation, and a shocking death. Let’s get to it!

The plot: Huck rejoins the group and they all take a night at a warehouse to catch up and plan their next move. After finding a walker with a Marine Corps pin on it, Huck is dealing with a flood of memories, good and bad, from her life before all this, and from when the apocalypse started. A member of the Marine Corps, she remembers partying with her fellow Marines when the news broke, being ordered to find civilians and escorting them to safety, and then later being ordered to fire on civilians out after nightfall. But when that final order came, she chose instead to shoot her fellow Marines and free the civilians, and scarred her face to match her dead friend’s scar as a reminder. While she deals with these over the course of the episode, Felix and Tony bond, and the kids get drunk and play truth or dare. Percy and Iris are flirting, but when Percy tries to push Hope to answer truthfully what the worst thing she’s ever done is, she leaves the game. When she tells Huck she killed Elton’s pregnant mother, Huck tells her not to tell him the truth and continues to advise this throughout the episode. The next day, they all go to a hidden CRM fuel cache, but the place isn’t as empty as hoped. A man who’s been bitten is squatting and holds Hope at gunpoint. Huck talks him down and saves Hope, but kills the man despite telling him she could save him from the bite infection. They get the fuel and some encrypted CRM code books. Tony announces that he and Percy will help them get the girl’s father back (in Ithaca, they’ve determined) and maybe stick around afterwards even. Hope finally agrees that telling Elton would be a bad idea and she shouldn’t. Percy sets up a thoughtful and romantic ‘date’ of sorts in the truck for Iris, but oddly he doesn’t show up. When Iris goes looking for him, the group finds Tony with his beaten in by Silas’s wrench, Percy nowhere to be found, and a shaken, blood-covered Silas in the closet of the room.

Huck’s backstory, and name, revealed at last! I’ve been unclear on just how much of her past Huck remembers, but from tonight it seems clear the answer is all of it; she just really prefers to not talk about it and now we know why. Much of her backstory is still unknown of course, but I can see why having killed her entire unit would be reason enough to want to leave it all behind. We see that she has deep connections to this unit, to her friends in it, when she and one of them talk about a previous traumatic situation and having had each other’s backs there. Whatever happened at Devil’s Pass, however, it weighs more heavily on her than her comrade-in-arms. And perhaps that’s why, in the end, Huck (real name Jennifer Mallick, for future reference) turns her gun on her unit instead. She can see where this path leads: killing civilians won’t weigh on them. They will believe it to be justified, to be right even, and they won’t hesitate to do it again. At this point, she has no way of knowing that things will fall apart so completely, that she won’t face consequences for her actions, but she does it anyways. She knows it’s what she has to do, she pays the price and carries that weight, and scars her own face as a permanent reminder of that. Of what she did, the choice she made, and, as she tells Hope, as a reminder to keep living to do good, because that’s the only way to make the bad mean something. And as far as we can tell, she’s done just that. Though, again, there’s plenty we still don’t know about her life between that moment and being found on the Missouri River years later. It’s notable that when we see Huck give herself that scar, her hair is much longer, closer to what it is now; time definitely passed between killing the Marines and giving herself that.

All this, and Huck’s unusual advice for Hope, paint her as a different sort of hero than we’re used to seeing in the TWD universe. Usually, in both life and media, we urge others to tell the truth no matter how hard. Especially when imparting a hard lesson to a teenager or child, to someone just learning that life does indeed have these hard moments. Usually, that advice is solid and for the best. Lies, generally, beget lies and only dig a person in deeper after all. But Huck recognizes that Hope is a good person, and was nothing more than a scared kid who made a terrible mistake, who did something she couldn’t even really comprehend at the time. She believes Hope’s instinct that the truth will destroy Elton, not to mention their friendship, and she can see that the problem really is more that Hope needs forgiveness, needs to give that to herself, more than anything. Deep down, Hope isn’t a bad person, this isn’t something she wanted to do or intends to do again. And so, as Huck says, she needs to find a way to bear the weight so others don’t have to. It’s already been clear that Hope is something of a protegee to Huck, and this continues them on that path. Maybe someday, this will evolve into more of the ‘I can do what needs to be done’ kind of hero that Huck is, that much is unclear. Right now, I don’t think Hope could do what Huck did with the man who threatened their lives while looking for the fuel cache, but I do believe that Huck made some quick and precise judgments about what needed to happen there. If he’d not been bitten, it’s possible she would’ve let him live, I think. But instead, she said what she needed to say and in the way she needed to say it to talk him down. Leading by example, I suppose, but one wonders if her lack of adding clarifying details on her decision will be a problem later on for Hope. Overall, it’s impossible to truly say what’s best or not with the Elton situation, but Hope comes around to agreeing that she can bear this weight, keep this reminder, so that Elton can live the lie that lets him live with the hope and optimism that are such hallmarks of his personality.

And then there’s someone who also can’t escape the shadow of his past, but in a much more active and dangerous way. Silas, Silas, Silas, what have you done? I mean that literally, because it really is also unclear what he’s done, but it sure looks bad. Ever since Percy showed up, Silas has been skeptical of him and his uncle. In the last episode, his instinct was right–something was off about Percy, he was lying to them, and it nearly cost them all their supplies and their lives. Part of Silas’s judgement was definitely due to jealousy, but the problem is that now, when Tony and Percy have been open with them, helped them, and are willing to stay around to help them even more…Silas has yet to truly re-evaluate his opinion of them, mostly of Percy. It’s not like Percy can’t be kind of a shit, either, he pushes too much with Hope in truth or dare game to be sure. But what he does later for Iris is really sweet, setting up the mini art museum in the truck bed for the ‘date’ with her. The fact that he and his uncle are going to help them is also incredibly altruistic of them, if not outright kind, they’re putting their lives in danger to help these people when they don’t have to.

So the reveal of Tony’s horribly beaten body? The unknown fate of Percy? That massive bloody wrench on the floor, the bloody footsteps leading to where he was hiding in the closet with a bottle of booze? Silas! No! I was stunned by this. I really enjoyed Tony. He was a good guy. Sure, a con man, but as soon as Percy flipped to wanting to help them, he was all in, too, and nothing but charming since then. We know Silas is capable of violence and is obviously physically intimidating, but we still don’t know precisely what happened in his previous home that got him sent to the Campus Colony. We don’t know exactly what went down here yet, but it sure looks bad for Silas. Earlier Tony told Felix he’d die for Percy, he loved him that much, and Iris was awakened by what sounded like footsteps. Percy running away, maybe? It’s hard to figure out what went down. Any attack with that wrench would be damn loud and, had both Tony and Percy been there, loud. The others were close enough to come running when Iris yells for them, so how could they not hear the attack itself? I really want to know what happened. I hope Percy isn’t dead and while I want Silas to not be guilty of this crime…it’s very hard to see how he could possibly not be the one behind it.

In the larger plot arc of the CRM mystery, we don’t get any CRM tags on the episode, but the discovery of their dad’s presumed location and the code books are intriguing. But at the moment, this murder mystery and what they’ll do about Silas. What did you think of the episode? What do you think happened with Silas? Is Percy still alive? And what will they do with Silas in the aftermath? Let’s hear in the comments!

7.5

The final score: review Good

The 411

While the action of the episode was fairly straightforward, I enjoyed getting into Huck's backstory immensely, and liked the unusual lessons she had for Hope. It was a hard one, but it fit what Hope and the situation needed. As these teens learn more and more about who they are and want to be, their choices and paths are taking turns that aren't typical but that fit well, and I like it. The bonding scenes between various parties were nice to see, and my goodness, does the sudden, grisly murder of Tony hit hard. There were a few rough spots mostly due to, I think, scenes needing to be cut for time that ended in awkward time jumps, but it didn't detract too much from my enjoyment of the episode.