The top 5 Walking Dead deaths of 2020

3) Amelia Ortiz

Of all the characters we met in the backstories of the main cast of The Walking Dead World Beyond, none may have been more fleshed out than Elton’s mother, Amelia Ortiz.

While we were formally introduced to her during Elton’s flashback to the outbreak in the season’s fifth episode, “Madman Across The Water”, we actually met her back in the very first episode, “Brave”, where we watch Hope accidentally kill her on “The Night The Sky Fell” (i.e. when the outbreak hit).

Amelia’s death is…strange, because, it was fairly sudden, which is usually something I dislike in a Walking Dead character’s death, but, in this case, I think it works.

With Amelia’s death taking place the night of the outbreak, the idea of her death coming so suddenly fits in perfectly with the setting. The characters in World Beyond call it “The Night The Sky Fell” for a reason, because planes fell from the sky, rockets were being launched, people were turning en masse, and it was chaos in the streets. A person’s death coming suddenly out the blue because of an accidental gunshot makes perfect sense in that environment.

Additionally, because we the audience don’t know Amelia when we first meet her, like with Silas’s dad, the issue of her death being too sudden or too late is completely averted, because, at the time we’re seeing it, she’s just another person who died when the zombie outbreak happened. This detachment allows us to take Amelia’s death in simply as watching some poor pregnant woman die needlessly, itself a horrible thing, without any expectation of added emotion from having familiarity with her as a character, it’s only when we learn later that she’s Elton’s mother that her death takes on additional significance, and, by then, we’re so invested in Elton, that we can’t help but feel sad at Amelia’s death.

By being introduced to Amelia after we’ve already seen her die, the writers of World Beyond were able to condense her exposure to us to only show the most important aspects of her with regards to the characters we were following in the series, and, in so doing, practically guarantee her death would have significance both to the characters in the show, and to those of us watching it. All in all, it’s brilliant.