The Walking Dead World Beyond, Season 2: Who’s THE WORST?

The Walking Dead World Beyond: Dr. Lyla Belshaw

Dr. Belshaw was the Civic Republic Military’s chief scientist at their research facility in Ithaca, New York, whose mission was to help the CRM attempt to find a cure to reanimation, if not the zombie virus entirely.

Described like that, she doesn’t seem that bad, and, in all honesty, compared to many others this season, wasn’t. Yet, within that description lies a lot of indifference to abjectly awful deeds.

Those awful deeds were the CRM murdering tens of thousands of people with mustard gas and walkers and using them as guinea pigs in their attempts to find a solution to the zombie virus.

Now, I’ll be fair: Dr. Belshaw wasn’t the person who ordered those killings, nor took any part in them, but she knew they were happening and did nothing about them.

I will also be fairer still and say that my assessment of Dr. Belshaw last season was too harsh, but not by much. Last season, I noted that Dr. Belshaw was the most irredeemable villain of World Beyond because of her nonchalance in seeing her friend, Dr. Abbott, turned into a walker. Having seen a broader picture of Dr. Belshaw this season, I have decided that that assessment was incorrect because we did see her react to the innocent people she was seeing brought before her as walkers.

The problem is she still worked for the CRM. I understand her fear of being the next person to be picked to be a test subject and deciding she’s more helpful to others by trying to make sure the sacrifice of those innocents (Which she likely thought she could do nothing for) wasn’t for nothing. But, she still knew that the CRM would kill tens of thousands of people for their project and did nothing.

I think the best way to explain Dr. Belshaw’s placement here is this: Dr. Abbott threatened to go public with what the CRM was doing, and Dr. Belshaw didn’t.