The Walking Dead: World Beyond: Who’s The Worst?

4) Dr. Lyla Belshaw

On the surface, Dr. Lyla Belshaw, a scientist for the Civic Republic’s Ithaca research facility, seems like a really nice lady.

As we’ve seen over the few brief scenes she’s been in, she seems warm and friendly: Taking team photos with Dr. Leo Bennett (Iris and Hope’s dad) and Dr. Samuel Abbott (A scientist from the Portland community), and building a romantic relationship with Dr. Bennett, even joking about her subpar lentils.

However, look a little deeper, and you see someone who seems quite the opposite.

The first scene we saw her in was a post-credit sequence at the end of episode four, “The Wrong End Of A Telescope”, where she was overseeing a spate of experiments on a collection of empties the Civic Republic is holding at the facility. Now, with a group as large, and with the sort of resources the Civic Republic has, the idea of them testing on the dead is not a farfetched one — If any community has the means to find a cure to the zombie virus, the Civic Republic would be it — yet, the fact all of the test subjects are fresh is concerning. Obviously, if you’re looking to cure the virus, it’s best to test possible cures on people who died only of empty bites, and, the fresher they are, the better chance you have of making the subject viable, if a cure were achieved. But, this raises the question: How are they getting the test subjects?

Well, the answer is revealed to us pretty quick, as we see Dr. Samuel Abbott, a bite near his heart (Just like all the other test subjects), gagged, as his undead body fidgets in his holding pen, alongside dozens more empties. Clearly, he’d been intentionally infected.

What makes this such a condemnation of Dr. Belshaw isn’t what she does — We don’t even get any indication she ordered Dr. Abbott to be turned  — but, what she doesn’t do: React.

As she sees Abbott brought out, she reads off his test subject number and some technical details, but nothing else. She never pauses at seeing this man who seems to be her friend now reduced to a husk of his former self, she never sheds a single tear for him, she doesn’t even glance at the picture of her standing with him, fondly and somewhat sadly reflecting on happier times when he was still alive. Nothing.

What kind of person does this? Who watches their friend flail around as a zombie, and treats it as routine as flipping past a rerun on TV? A person who doesn’t care, that’s who.

Honestly, this makes Belshaw worse than Kublek. After Kublek had Sergeant Barca taken away for questioning her decision to massacre Campus Colony, we see her start crying, presumably feeling guilt for the decision she made, even if she felt justified in it, but, Dr. Belshaw, on the other hand? NOTHING.

This makes it seem like everyone is expendable to her. Not in a ruthless, cutthroat kind of way, but, in a cold, robotic, “Oh, well, he outlived his usefulness.” kind of way…like a person who’s never truly attached to anyone, like a sociopath.

Because of this, I have to award the dubious honor of most irredeemable to Dr. Belshaw. Everyone else had something, some kind attachment to the people around them, even if that wasn’t always good, or showed some remorse for what they did, but, Dr. Belshaw’s detachment is, frankly, kind of chilling. She’s not menacing, or cruelly overt about it, and that’s what makes it so messed up: This is normal for her.

If that isn’t sinister…I don’t know what is.

But, what do you guys think? Who would you saw is the most irredeemable villain of the first season of The Walking Dead: World Beyond? Was there anyone I included that you thought I shouldn’t have? Is there anyone I missed? Let me know! And, of course, if you enjoyed this, and want to hear my ideas on how to survive a zombie apocalypse, you can always pick up a copy of my book, The Rules: A Guide To Surviving The Zombie Apocalypse! You can also find it at Amazon here, and, on iTunes here!