The Walking Dead: World Beyond Season 2 Episode 3 Ending Explained
Contains spoilers for "The Walking Dead: World Beyond" episode "Exit Wounds"
The Campus Colony Crew is slowly coming back together. After last week's episode of "The Walking Dead: World Beyond" returned Silas (Hal Cumpston) to our screens, this week's, "Exit Wounds," gave Elton (Nicolas Cantu) his Season 2 debut. And he brought teen con artist Percy (Ted Sutherland) along for good measure. The episode also teased a significant reunion for many of the show's main characters, but one that could turn out to be quite tumultuous.
At the episode's beginning, Elton and Percy are struggling to get by on their own out in the wilderness when they come across two well-stocked young people making camp in a clearing. Elton wants to approach them with honest intentions and ask for some of their food. Percy, on the other hand, wants to use the tricks of his trade aka scamming and scheming to steal their supplies. The pair meet somewhere in the middle, which doesn't sit well with their new friends.
In a more civilized part of the state, Hope finds herself settling into her new life at the Civic Republic Military's research base. Perhaps a little too comfortably. After learning more about her father's miraculous research on how to curb the proliferation of walkers aka empties, Hope seems to have developed conflicted feelings about the CRM itself. They are still the organization that has caused her and her loved ones a tremendous amount of personal grief. But, the work they are facilitating is pretty remarkable. How will she reconcile these two thoughts and, more importantly, how will she explain them to Iris (Aliyah Royale)?
Elton and Percy make it to the Perimeter
After the pair of young people — who we later learn are named Asha (Madelyn Kientz) and Dev (Abubakr Ali) — catch Percy trying to steal their supplies, they chase him and Elton into the woods. A pack of empties approaches and gives Elton and Percy the chance to lose their pursuers. However, their getaway is short-lived. They stumble onto a clearing where the ground is made up of empties, who begin to wake up, shake off the moss that has grown over them, and attack.
Asha and Dev swoop in to save Elton and Percy, before throwing the pair in a cart and hauling them past a bunch of very concerning signs warning that they are entering a toxic area. It's all a ruse, though, as Elton and Percy are actually being brought to ... the Perimeter. It turns out that Asha and Dev are Indira's (Anna Khaja) children. Furthermore, the series of warning signs are just the community's way of deterring potential interlopers and the strange ritual of replacing the empties eyes with flowers that we see Asha and Dev participating in at the beginning of the episode is a bit of harmless spiritualism (they believe the empties are actually vessels and killing them "helps [their] soul move on"), not an alarming Whisperer-esque ritual.
In fact, the whole Elton and Percy plot at the beginning of this episode was really nothing more than an entertaining way of getting the pair to the Perimeter so that they could reunite with Iris. The fact that we learn a bit more about the artist colony turned survival camp/artist colony is icing on top. There may also be some puppy love brewing between Elton and Asha, which would certainly add more intrigue to the dynamic at the Perimeter.
Iris gains a new recruit
Speaking of potential romance, Percy's arrival at the Perimeter gives him a chance to rekindle the flirtation that had begun to brew between him and Iris last season.
Iris has a large grin on her face while she cleans the bullet wound Percy has on his shoulder courtesy of Huck/Jennifer (Annet Mahendru). While they make small talk, he notes, "You seem different." It's an astute observation. Even though Percy hasn't known Iris for long, she — perhaps more than any other character — has undergone a significant transformation in a short amount of time. Iris 2.0 is looser and more organically confident. However, she is still just as driven and still somebody who likes to get her ducks in a row.
Their conversation naturally drifts to the events that transpired last season. Percy is understandably still hung up on the fact that Huck murdered his uncle, framed Silas for the crime, and tried to kill Percy, as well. Iris seizes on the animosity she can see welling up in him. "They just keep taking," she says. "My dad, Hope, Silas ... but you and Elton, you found us. It's a second chance. We just have to make it count."
If Iris really does want to go to war with the CRM, she'll need an army to do so, and in Percy, she has a loyal soldier. Even though she may still be a ways off from getting that second chance she's speaking of, she has already made great progress toward that goal in Season 2.
Huck's personal life is put under the spotlight
"Exit Wounds" sees Huck/Jennifer reuniting with Dennis (Maximilian Osinski), the manager of the empty extermination facility we met in "Foothold." The two appear to have been married (Dennis can be seen fiddling with a wedding ring) but were separated after some kind of catastrophic mistake on Dennis' part. Exactly what happened isn't explained, but it was something so bad that it got Dennis pulled from active CRM duty and left Jennifer feeling that she had no choice but to take the undercover assignment in the Campus Colony.
"I left because of what you did, to try and come back from it," she tells Dennis during one of their conversations. "While I was gone I had to do some things, too. Some things I hated doing. But because I left, five people are alive that would have been dead."
She goes on to say that, for the time being, she can't find a way to square what he did with the consequences (good or bad), so she thinks it's best for them to break up. One of the things that makes Jennifer/Huck such an enigmatic character is that her loyalties are often divided. She does have an allegiance to the CRM and her mother, but she also clearly has a moral compass that sometimes leads her to disobey orders she doesn't believe are just. We learned this last season when a flashback revealed that she killed her Marine squad to prevent them from murdering a group of civilians. And she demonstrated that this season when she helped hide Iris and Felix at the Perimeter.
In the case of Dennis, it's clear that there's a part of her that loves him, but at this moment in her life, she can't be compromised by allowing those feelings to take over.
Hope is conflicted now that she's living at the CRM facility
Hope is also emerging as a character who may have some divided loyalties. This week's episode once again shows her settling into the rhythm of life at the CRM research facility. For Hope, this is deeply unsettling considering how much she despises the organization on principle.
After being praised for her out-of-the-box thinking in chemistry class and receiving an invitation from Mason (Will Meyers) to join in on a student mixer, Hope appears to be letting her guard down a bit. She initially rejects the invitation but then makes an appearance where she meets her peers, learns more about how the Civic Republic itself operates, and even gets in on a game of Jenga.
But Hope's conscience is not clean. Throughout the episode, she has flashes of scenes from last season, specifically ones of the Campus Colony Crew struggling on their journey across the country. She is starting to feel guilty about how cozy she is getting at the CRM research facility. While she has begun to see that some of the work being done there is actually quite remarkable, she also can't forget what the CRM put her friends and family through.
The episode ends with Hope forcing Huck to take her to the Perimeter to see Iris and the others. After three episodes apart, this reunion is bound to be intense. While Hope has been developing conflicting feelings about the CRM, Iris has only become more and more radicalized against it. That's not even to mention the fact that Iris has figured out that the CRM was behind the destruction of the Campus Colony, which Hope has not. Throw in the fact that Percy is itching to get revenge on Huck and you've got a recipe for an explosive next episode.