The Walking Dead boss reveals why she unmasked Beta as a famous country singer in ‘dark’ diversion from comics
THE Walking Dead boss has revealed why she decided to make Beta a famous country singer in a past life – in a “dark” twist to the comic books where he was a basketball player.
We reported last week the true identity of the mysterious villain, played by Ryan Hurst, who always wears a mask and never seemed to want to show his face.
Then, in the latest episode Look at the Flowers, Beta’s true identity was finally confirmed when he was seen exploring a hotel filled with guitars and vinyl records following the death of Alpha (Samantha Morton).
On one of the album covers is his face with the words ‘Half Moon’, revealing that in his previous life before the zombie apocalypse he was a renowned musician.
Show runner Angela Kang admitted Half Moon was the name of Beta's album and not his actual name.
Speaking to told , Kang added: “So, we were thinking about all of that stuff, and in the comic books he’s basketball player.
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“But as we were constructing it here, we were like, ‘Does [Hurst] really feel like a basketball player?
“Maybe more of a football player, but is that the way we want to go?’ And Ryan had this idea of, ‘Oh, maybe he was this musician,’ and we thought that that was really cool.
“And I think the aspect of it that was kind of important is he was this famous guy and he had this dark side that kind of came out in the apocalypse.
“So we worked on this backstory and then just thought it’d be really fun to have this musical figure and we were sort of looking for reference and that was what we were pulling on.
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“And just the idea that even before the apocalypse there was a part of him that he kind of kept hidden at times.”
Kang revealed there were clues they planted earlier on, adding: “And there’s a song that played earlier in the season that Magna was listening to, and Emily Kinney actually wrote the song, our alum who played Beth.
“And that was Ryan Hurst singing that song, and that’s the song that recurs now, so we had a little bit of fun kind of burying all of that kind of in the show and even in Fear.”
Kang previously explained how coronavirus had thrown the season 10 finale into chaos.
It was confirmed last week that the AMC show's final episode in the current series would not air as scheduled on Sunday, April 12 in the US as originally planned.