The Walking Dead director explains the latest major death

The season 10 finale of The Walking Dead had one huge (and gruesome) death scene. It ends up the idea actually came from Norman Reedus (Daryl).

The season 10 finale of The Walking Dead managed to deliver on pretty much everything fans wanted. There was a big battle, new characters, returning characters and huge deaths.

SPOILER alert: The biggest death was the leader of the Whisperers, Beta, played by Ryan Hurst. In the finale, Beta assembled his fellow Whisperers as well as a horde of zombies and attacked the hospital where our survivors were hiding. His incredibly gruesome demise comes right in the middle of the carnage. He gets into a fight with Negan and is about to kill him, but Daryl (Norman Reedus) arrives just in time to stick two huge knives through his eyes.

Ouch. There’s no getting up from that, though he does have a half-hearted attempt.

Director Greg Nicotero told ComicBook.com that it was actually Norman Reedus who came up with the idea for Beta to die this way. “Norman had said, ‘Oh, I just should come up with both of my knives and stab him in the eyes.'”

It’s nice to see Daryl get such a big moment. Beta is so tough that normal stab wounds don’t tend to phase him, but that one did.

"Part of the story arc there is that Beta can’t die from those stab wounds. Norman’s knives are f-cking 12 inches long. We sort of justified it in our heads that because he stabbed straight down it’s like the knives go down, they don’t go back into his brain, they go straight down."

So how do you create a death scene like this? “We made a dummy head of Ryan with pullouts,” Nicotero said. “So he did that straight shot where you see the knives being pulled out.”

No Ryan Hurst’s were hurt in the making of this death scene!

In previous episodes, Beta had demonstrated almost superhuman resilience in situations where anyone else would have died. Remember when he fell down an elevator shaft and simply walked away? What about the numerous stab wounds he’s suffered? Even in his death scene, he attempts to rip the knives out of his eyes. “[T]here was a lot of talk about it because Ryan really wanted Beta to continue to fight after that,” Nicotero said. “Norman had his thoughts and [showrunner] Angela [Kang] and [writer] Corey [Reed] had very specific beats because Norman was like, ‘Yeah, I should just stab him and he should die.'”

In the end, however, Nicotero is pleased with how Beta’s journey ended. “I really thought it was a really cool way to resolve that character and give Beta’s story a great end.”

I’m not as pleased with Beta’s ending. I thought his death scene came and went too fast. It’s understandable because they had to fit a lot of story into one episode. This was a fight we’ve been looking forward to for a while, since it was huge in the comics. The TV show wasn’t able to make it as satisfying. But I liked what they added by making Beta a famous country singer pre-apocalypse. That was a nice twist!

The season 10 finale of The Walking Dead is now available to stream! Its spinoff, The Walking Dead: World Beyond is currently airing new episodes every Sunday on AMC.

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