The Walking Dead: World Beyond review: “The Wrong End of a Telescope”

This week’s episode of The Walking Dead: World Beyond brings the kids back to high school, and gives a very intriguing post-credits sequence.

The Walking Dead: World Beyond takes us back to high school in another trip down memory lane. We learn more about all of the characters in this episode. Silas, in particular, has a very traumatic past. Even though we don’t know all the details, it’s becoming clear that something horrendous took place.

Upon finding an abandoned high school, Felix, Huck, Iris, Hope, Elton, and Silas head inside to see what supplies they can scavenge. If we’ve learned anything from the flagship show, it’s that splitting up usually isn’t a good idea, and that holds true here. Having Iris split off with the unstable Silas seems like an especially bad idea. If anything Huck or Felix should have been with Iris, but I digress.

Iris and Silas

These two find themselves in a gym, flooded by memories of school dances. Also, they manage to find some soda under the bleachers, and all I could think was that it had to be flat by now.

But sweet memories of the past are interrupted as empties enter the gym, all of it mixed in with some grim flashbacks to Silas’ past. We’re finally able to piece together that he beat his father to a bloody pulp, his rage triggered by some event.

That rage creeps back in as Silas beats the crap out of an empty with his bare hands. Come on kid, don’t you realize the empty could have bitten you, and then it would have been game over? I think so far what I’ve learned from World Beyond is that the characters of the flagship shows are better off the way they are. Being kept away from the outside world during a zombie apocalypse does no one any favors.

Hope and Huck

While Iris and Silas share a dance in the gymnasium, Hope and Huck stumble across a room filled with canned food. This is exactly what you want to find in an apocalypse, and by some miracle, no one else had gotten to it before them. I think after all these years of watching The Walking Dead shows, we’ve come to learn that no one is kind enough to just leave things behind, so this is extremely lucky, or it would be if there wasn’t a huge wolf roaming around the school trying to kill them.

During their raid, Hope learns that Huck wants to double back and go home. But why, apart from the obvious? I have a sneaking suspicion that Huck knows more than she’s letting on, and I’m curious to see where her story goes. There’s definitely something to unearth there, I just know it.

Felix and Elton

Elton is a simple, kind guy who’s willing to listen to others, which means a lot of people try and bend his ear. I think Felix knows Elton will at least entertain what he has to say, and asks him to help convince the rest of the group to head back home.

Why don’t they just let these kids do what they’ve set out to do? I honestly think they need this danger in their lives; they’re way too sheltered, and it shows.

Still, Elton does seem receptive, and he starts to wonder about how they could do that. They would have to encounter the Blaze of Gory again, so it wouldn’t be an easy journey.

The CRM post-credit scene

Okay, so if you blinked at the end of last night’s episode, you might have missed the strange post-credits scene they just threw in there. To be honest, I thought I was watching something from the show that airs afterward, but lo and behold, the three-circle symbol showed up, telling us we were dealing with the CRM.

We see a walker strapped to a gurney, and a woman jotting something down. She’s listening to a recording made by a doctor from Portland, for reasons unknown.

The scene gets weird(er) when we see a picture on the woman’s desk of her with three men: one of them is the walker on the gurney and the other is Hope and Iris’ father.

Seriously, what the heck is the CRM and what are they doing?! And are we going to learn how this all ties in with Rick Grimes, because he’s definitely somewhere with these guys, right?

The Verdict

I’ll admit that I’m not the biggest fan of World Beyond, but this week’s post-credit scene does have me intrigued. I don’t know about the rest of the story, or where these kids will eventually end up, but I do want to know about the CRM.

More specifically, I want to know how the CRM somehow connects back to Rick. The three-circle symbol has shown up across all The Walking Dead shows; the woman in the post-credits scene even has it on her hand. What gives? What the heck is going on?

I think if World Beyond can do that part of the story justice, then it may gain some major brownie points in my book. But the verdict is still out.

Until next time!

Grade: C

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