Did anyone die in The Walking Dead Omega ?

The backstory of The Walking Dead’s newest villain shows that she has been leaving bodies in her wake for a long time.

The Walking Dead delivered a pretty intense look at Alpha and Lydia’s backstory in “Omega,” which is a bit unusual for the show. But the backstory, given through Lydia’s memories, gave some important insights in Alpha’s personality.

Lydia is a complicated character. Years of abuse and gaslighting by her mother, Alpha, have left her memories hazy. As she revealed her history to Henry she realized that some of her memories were inaccurate because her mother had deliberately gaslighted her to make her remember her father as being abusive when really Alpha was the abusive one.

Lydia’s memories of the early days of the apocalypse are of a basement bunker type of shelter where many people were holed up trying to figure out what to do next. There were signs of marital discord between Alpha and Frank, her husband. Initially Lydia remembers her mother singing to her and comforting her during the terror of those early days but later on she remembers that it was actually her father Frank who would sing to her and comfort her.

After more than a month in the shelter the walkers have surrounded the building and the people inside are starting to panic. One of the survivors, Matias, has a panic attack and starts to get very loud. Alpha, worried about the noise and worried that his panic will spread throughout the shelter, kills him. That shows that very early on in the outbreak Alpha was already willing to do whatever she had to do to keep control of a situation and she had no moral qualms about killing a living person. This memory of Lydia’s shows viewers that Alpha is a strong, capable, and rational killer which makes her a formidable enemy.

Lydia’s Father, Frank

The only other death in The Walking Dead “Omega” was Lydia’s memory of the death of her father, Frank. When she was originally telling Henry her story she told him that she had gone into a segregated part of the basement shelter to look at Matias’ dead body. He reanimated and came after her. She screamed and her father came to her rescue but her father was killed and eaten by Matias.

Except that was a false memory implanted by Alpha. As Lydia starts to remember the real sequence of events she remembers that Alpha, who by that time had cut off all her hair and armed herself, killed Frank with a knife that she still carries today. A closeup of the knife later on when Alpha appears at the Hilltop shows that ten years later she still has the knife she used to murder her husband. That gives even more insight into Alpha’s lack of remorse and lack of humanity. She will kill without hesitation, even if she is killing those closest to her.

Alpha’s one weakness appears to be Lydia. Even though it seems that Alpha was always cold and abusive to her daughter and continues to abuse her even now Alpha and a group of Whisperers show up at Hilltop at the end of the episode to get Lydia. Alpha promises the survivors the Whisperers will leave them in peace if they give Lydia back. Lydia may be the one person in the world that Alpha has a soft spot for but that is only going to make her more dangerous if the survivors try to keep Lydia to give her a chance at a normal life.

Alpha will confront Daryl and the rest of the Hilltop leaders in next week’s new episode of The Walking Dead “Bounty”.