The Walking Dead‘s Whisperers look set for a different fate compared to the original comic book series. Fans of Robert Kirkman’s The Walking Dead comics had been eagerly anticipating the arrival of the Whisperers for some time before the villains finally debuted in season 9 of The Walking Dead. Both versions of the zombie apocalypse tale see the skin-wearing creeps emerge shortly after an extended period of peace, earned through Rick’s hard-fought victory over Negan.
Led by Alpha, the Whisperers adhere to a more primal lifestyle and mostly prefer to live in the wilderness among the undead, but the group come to blows with Alexandria and Hilltop after Carl (or Henry, in the TV series) takes a shine to Alpha’s daughter, Lydia, who is being abused by her people. With Lydia taken in by the good guys, the Whisperers continue to butt heads with their new neighbors until Alpha sends a bloody message – a row of decapitated heads to mark the border of Whisperer territory. This act provides the spark to ignite a war.
The TV and comic iterations of The Walking Dead take the Whisperers on similar paths, but only to an extent. The villains all but destroy Hilltop, and Negan assassinates Alpha in order to win favor back in Alexandria, allowing Beta to reluctantly assume her position as leader. But despite sharing these developments in common, The Walking Dead season 10 has evolved in such a way that the Whisperers will almost certainly lose via different means on TV.
How The Whisperers Were Defeated In The Walking Dead Comics
As in the comic books, the real threat of the Whisperers is not the group themselves, malnourished and demoralized as they are, but the massive zombie horde they are able to control. In Kirkman’s original story, the attack on Hilltop is a direct response to Alpha’s death, and rather than utilize the horde, Beta has his people attack the settlement directly. They succeed in burning down Hilltop, but take heavy casualties as a result. Next, Beta turns his attention towards Alexandria, and this is where the massive horde is brought into play. Beta unleashes the zombies on Rick’s town and leaves the undead to their work, and by killing Gabriel on the way there, the Whisperers ensure no scout can warn Alexandria of the oncoming attack.
Formulating a rapid plan of action, a small team including Eugene, Andrea and Heath heads out on horseback to enact their usual method of herd control, drawing away small sections from the undead army swarming Alexandria. Meanwhile, a home team headed-up by the reluctant duo of Rick and Negan doggedly fight against the invasion, with both men helping the other escape certain doom. With no way of safely rerouting such a vast quantity of walkers, Eugene’s group resolve to drive the zombies drawn away from Alexandria into the ocean. Through the efforts on both fronts, the entirety of the Whisperers’ horde is either put down in Alexandria or cast into the sea, though not without great sacrifice.
After surviving the attack, the remaining few Whisperers go silent until, one day, Jesus and Aaron happen across Beta in the woods. They kill him, discovering his celebrity status, and then finish off the handful of loyal Whisperers remaining.
Walking Dead Season 10 Is Avoiding The Ocean Plan
Season 10 of The Walking Dead has made considerable deviations from the comic telling of the Whisperer War. Firstly, it’s Alpha who leads the Hilltop attack herself, and most of her cave horde is spent during this assault. The invasion of Alexandria comes later, with Beta now in charge of the Whisperers, and comprises of a smaller horde the former country singer has managed to assembled since Alpha’s murder. While this is a mere technicality in terms of overall story impact, AMC’s The Walking Dead takes its first major detour when Beta marches the Whisperers and their rotting pals directly through the gates of Alexandria, only to find the entire community has already evacuated. This creates 2 big changes to the narrative; firstly, the final conflict won’t happen at Alexandria and, more significantly, Beta is going to lead the charge personally, rather than leaving the zombies to do their work.
When Beta resumes hunting the pesky missing Alexandrians, he heads towards Oceanside, and this is exactly what the survivors (as well as comic-reading viewers) expected. During the journey, however, Beta has a hallucinatory conversation with a nearby walker and decides to change direction, capturing Aaron and Alden in the process. This tactical switch-up seems to deliberately move the action away from open water, and deeper into the middle of the woods, suggesting that the plan to lead the zombies into the sea won’t play out on TV. Adding further weight to that argument, the survivors holed up in The Tower don’t have the resources or access to horses that were available to Alexandria in the comics, making it difficult to see how a plan to slowly draw off chunks of the horde could work. Even more problematically, only Daryl, Judith and a handful of others are currently outside of the makeshift hospital camp.
There are certainly no hints that would set up the ocean to be an important factor in the final, currently delayed, episode of The Walking Dead season 10. This may be due to the CGI costs of sending thousands of zombies into the sea, but it might also be because characters cast into the water previously have soon washed up ashore (see Rick and Tara), making the comic book ocean plan pointless. Instead, The Walking Dead seems to be setting up a siege showdown between the Whisperers and the collected allies of the four main communities hiding in The Tower, and the fact that Beta’s identity has already been unveiled suggests his fate will be decided here too.
How The Whisperers Can Be Defeated In The Walking Dead Now
With the lay of the post-apocalyptic land shifted so dramatically, how might the Whisperers be defeated in the live-action adaptation of The Walking Dead as things stand? The specifics of the comic book ocean plan might have already changed, but The Tower could still be near enough to Oceanside to defeat the horde by using water. With limited personnel, however, it’ll likely only be one character drawing the undead away in a noble act of sacrifice. Gabriel is heavily rumored to be on limited time, suggesting the badass priest might be able to single-handedly lead Beta’s army into the ocean at the cost of his own life. Since this wouldn’t deal with the Whisperers themselves, however, there are more likely options on the table.
Judging from the direction of The Walking Dead season 10 and the trailer released for the upcoming finale episode, outside help from another community looks like the most probable conclusion to the battle against the Whisperers. Firstly, Lauren Cohan’s Maggie is confirmed to be making an imminent return. Maggie has been taking a break in an as-yet-unseen community that may or may not be the Commonwealth, but Carol has written to her old friend asking for assistance against the Whisperers. It would be a heroic return for Maggie if she were to lead a new group into battle against Beta, backing up her former allies stuck in The Tower. This wasn’t an available option for the Walking Dead comic book (since Maggie never left), and would arguably be a more fitting end to the story than simply driving the undead into the sea.
Adding further fuel to that fire, the same teaser trailer also highlights a mysterious masked figure wielding twin-scythes, helping Aaron and Alden to escape from the Whisperers. Some have speculated this new ally could be a returning Morgan, others have likened the figure to Mercer of The Commonwealth, and the warrior could also have been sent at Maggie’s behest. Whatever the case, it certainly seems that the survivors holed-up in the Tower are going to have an influx of outside help when The Walking Dead season 10 returns.
The Walking Dead season 10 is currently on hiatus.
