The Walking Dead – Omega

By: Kelly Kearney

On this week’s episode we peek into Lydia’s past – who her mother is and why the Whisperers walk with the dead. As told though a series of flashbacks, Lydia opens up to Daryl and Henry about her early days with her mother and who exactly is this woman they call “Alpha.”

Baltimore is Under Siege

“Omega” begins with a flashback of a young Lydia (Cassady McClincy) and her parents, Frank (Steve Kazee) and Alpha (Samantha Morton), during the early days of the zombie outbreak in Baltimore. The family is bunkered down in what looks to be a warehouse with dozens of other survivors and the threat outside is just as terrifying as the one inside. Having been locked away from the world with no idea how long this outbreak could last, Frank starts to lose it and insists no one is coming to help them. Alpha tries calming her husband down, but his fear is edging on violent and it his hopeless attitude scares Lydia. Alpha, in what was a huge Easter egg for fans connecting The Walking Dead to the Breaking Bad universe, sang the infamous “Lydia, Oh Lydia,” lullaby to try and calm the frightened girl down.

Cut to the present and Lydia is telling Henry (Matt Lintz) her story while Daryl (Norman Reedus) is eaves dropping on their conversation through the cell window. He hears the young girl describe her father as cold and then admits she has never felt alone thanks to her group that travels with the dead. She even mentions missing the sounds and smells of the walkers, who she says managed to keep her people alive when communities like Hilltop inevitably fall. After her negative run ins with Daryl, she tells Henry, “Your dad is an as**ole, like my father was,” and then she tries tricking the smitten teen boy into giving up details about Hilltop’s guards and where they’re located. Henry goes on to explain that Daryl is not his father, just a friend of his second mother, a woman that you do not want to mess with. Behind her cell wall Lydia smirks and says the same about her mother, you do not want to mess with her either.

The Whisperers are Watching

Out in the woods surrounding Hilltop, Tara (Alanna Masterson) leads Kelly (Angel Theory), Yumiko (Eleanor Matsuura), Magna (Nadia Hilker), Kal (James Chan) and Marco (Gustavo Gomez) to search for Alden (Callan McAuliffe) and Luke (Dan Folger). The group encounters a pack of walkers feasting on the two missing men’s horses. After Magna, with her killer knife throwing skills, and the others take out the hungry herd they realize the horses were sliced open and left for the dead. Tara starts to question Lydia’s story about her mother being her group’s last survivor. It is obvious these horses were gutted with knives and it would take more than one woman to do it. Tara decides it’s too dangerous to stay in the woods and while they’re being watched by the masked villains she orders the group back to Hilltop until they can come up with a better plan.

Back in Hilltop’s cells Henry tries to be nice to Lydia and offer her his egg from breakfast. The girl turns him down saying, “Hunger is a gift. If you don’t understand that, you never will.” No matter how rude Lydia is to Henry, he doesn’t give up on her and she asks him why he’s being so nice. Henry explains that it took someone being nice to him and his brothers, to make this world ok again. Lydia doesn’t share his positive outlook and says, “It will never be ok again.” Henry, who has a set of second parents and two active and thriving communities to call home, doesn’t buy Lydia’s theory that this is all for nothing. He asks her, “Who says?” The girl relays that her father is the one that taught her there is no hope in returning the world to how it was.

“Checkmate”

In a flashback the supplies in the warehouse are low and Frank wants to leave. Alpha argues with him that leaving would be too dangerous and she has no plan of making Lydia an orphan. This angers Frank who tells Alpha that he would never hurt Lydia, but any hope he had of a rescue is long gone. He then grabs a pair of scissors and starts hacking away at the beard he claims he kept because his wife liked it. Alpha holds Lydia tightly as she watches her husband slowly unravel under the stress. She reaches for a game of checkers to keep her daughter occupied while her husband rants about the lawlessness of this new world and living his life for himself.  The mother cracks a joke saying, “Checkmate” and Lydia, who is a smart five-year-old responds with, “That’s chess, silly.” Cut to the cell and Lydia tells Henry that her father always said that and then she corrects herself, claiming it was her mother that always confused chess with checkers. It’s the first of many confusing mixes ups that paint Frank as the villain and Alpha as her hero. Henry is listening intently to Lydia’s story and offers up some information about Hilltop when Lydia asks him about his parents. Her says he’s from a community about a day’s ride away and that’s when Daryl bursts in through door, drags Henry outside and scolds him for putting his parents lives at risk. They have no idea if Lydia is gathering information for her group and Henry starts to realize that he was being used for information and storms off in anger. He tells Daryl that if he wants answers about this group than he should get them himself.

With Henry off sulking, Daryl ties to get the girl to talk by offering her medication for her earache. He tells her about the skinned horses, knowing she lied about her mother being the only one left from their group. He asks Lydia if her mother would kill her own members to stay alive and Lydia admits she would if she had to.  This leads us to another flashback where Lydia remembers her mother smothering a man who tries to escape the warehouse. His panic put the survivors at risk and in her fight to keep him quiet she leans on his throat and kills him. Frank, who is now clean shaven, holds Lydia tightly as he sings her the same lullaby all the while watching the monster his wife has turned into.

Back to the present Lydia tells Daryl that her father uses to sing her that song to keep her calm. He offers her a drink of water to take her pills and the girl turns feral and tries attacking Daryl though the bars. Daryl grabs Lydia’s arm and immediately notices that they are covered in bruises and scrapes. It is clear this child is a victim of abuse, but by whose hands?

Meanwhile, Yumiko, Kelly, Connie (Lauren Ridloff) and Magna decide to ignore Tara’s rules and sneak out of Hilltop to find their friend Luke. While they’re in the woods Kelly almost gets eaten by a walker and the group decide its not safe to wander the woods in the dark. All but Kelly agree they should head back to Hilltop as the young woman can’t imagine leaving one of their own out there to die. Connie decides to stay with her sister and search for Luke while Yumiko and Magna head back to Hilltop.

Back at Hilltop’s jail Daryl, along with a birch branch, talk to Lydia about abusive fathers who beat their kids. As he is peeling the leaves from the switch he talks about what he knows of abusive dads and doesn’t understand how Frank could console Lydia if he was the one abusing her. Having been a victim of child abuse himself, Daryl recognizes triggers in Lydia and the switch in his hand is definitely putting the girl on edge. Lydia fires back that her father was weak and died because of it, which begs the question if Frank is dead then who caused those bruises on Lydia’s arm?  Finally, Lydia admits they were from her mother and she beats her to protect her. The world belongs to the dead now and her mother is just trying to toughen her up. Lydia states, “When you stay soft, people die.”

Alpha Comes to Hilltop

We cut to another flashback of a shaven headed Alpha telling Frank they need to get rid of the man she killed before his corpse starts to smell. Since this is the early days of the outbreak nobody knows that the dead turn into walkers. Later that night the man turns and almost kills Lydia, but Frank gets in the way and pays the ultimate price with his life. Lydia admits she feels like it’s her fault that her father died but is that really what happened? Lydia’s memories seem skewed and they don’t really add up. Daryl questions her stories and Lydia lashes out by saying her father was soft, unlike Daryl, who she thinks is more like her mother than the rest of the people at Hilltop. Daryl storms out claiming she has no idea who he is. When he exits the jail he runs into Henry who was listening to their conversation through the cell window. Henry thinks Lydia is worth protecting and isn’t like the rest of her group. He goes on to tell Daryl a story about Carol (Melissa McBride) and the abuse she lived through with her fist husband, Ed. She kept her hair short so that Ed couldn’t use it to slam her head into walls. She only let it grow after feeling safe with Ezekiel (Khary Payton). He thinks Lydia’s story of abuse is the same. She’s been so used to abuse, she doesn’t know any differently and he thinks she could learn that people are good if she is allowed to stay in Hilltop. Henry leaves Daryl to head back to the cell where he lets Lydia out and the two kids sneak around the community, eating worms and staying out of sight. Lydia grabs a hammer and just as she’s about to bash Henry’s brains in, she hears a baby cry and falls to the ground as flashbacks of her life bombard her. The stories she was told from her mother and the memories she created, are convoluted and do not match up. It is not long before we realize Alpha killed Frank. It seems he was not eaten by a walker and everything Lydia knew to be true was a lie. The girl comes to and begs Henry to take her back to her cell and stay with her for the night.

In the morning Daryl returns to the cell to find Henry and Lydia and learns about the brutality of the woman they call Alpha. Now that Lydia’s been Hilltop’s captive, her mother will never take her back and that was why she tried to get information out of Henry – in order to use it as a bargaining chip with her mother. Daryl decides then and there that Lydia is not the monster he thought she was and agrees to talk to Tara about letting her stay. Henry thanks Daryl for his kindness and says, “I’m glad you’re friends with my mom.”

The end comes in a flurry of panic when outside Kelly and Connie are making their way back to Hilltop’s gates. That’s when Tara spots a herd of Whisperers marching their way towards the community and Connie hides in the corn field as Kelly is dragged through the gates by the guards. Tara screams for Daryl to come to guard look-out and there they spot the bald headed, grimy faced, Alpha, who is beyond intimidating. The leader pushes her way through the sea of masked villains and stands at the gates with her gang of walker wannabees behind her. In a booming voice the woman says, “I am Alpha! We only want one thing from you…My daughter!”