The Walking Dead: World Beyond (1×01) Brave Review

Another spinoff?????

Synopsis: Iris welcomes an enigmatic ally to their community while Hope questions the visitor’s motives. A message upends the sisters’ worldview, forcing them to decide between the safety of their home and the uncertainty of the world beyond. (IMDb)

And it’s actually not that bad so far. Expect plenty of Easter eggs to be answered as this coming-of-age incarnation of the famed zombie series to fill in some of the gaps as far as the original series is concerned. It starts to do so pretty much right away.

The Walking Dead part of the series doesn’t really come until the end of the episode as Brave does a decent job at introducing us to the world that is World Beyond. World Beyond takes place 10 years after the start of the zombie outbreak and tells the story of a pair of sisters named Iris (Aliyah Royale) and Hope (Alexa Mansour) who live in a walled-off colony just outside of Omaha, Nebraska. Their town is part of an alliance known as the Alliance of the Three with another colony near Portland and the Civic Republic (the three circles or the group that took Rick a long time ago). Meanwhile. Iris and Hope’s scientist father has since left them to work for the Civic Republic to find a cure in some unknown location somewhere within the United States. Little did they know, it may not be as much of an alliance as it seemed as the ultra-secretive Civic Republic and its military power loomed over the others. As far as we are concerned, they can’t be trusted and the girls certainly did not either, or at least the former needed some reminding of that fact.

After losing their mother during the events of a plane crash that seemingly resulted from the initial outbreak and then losing their father, Iris and Hope only had each other. When we first meet them, they are polar opposites with the more hopeful Iris is focused on the future as a way to deflect from her trauma while Hope is dejected and combative with authority figures, including the Civic Republic delegation, led by Elizabeth Kublek (Julia Ormond), that just happened to make a visit to their colony. The moment that turned the tides was once the girls received a message from their father that suggested that he and they were in danger as the Civic Republic were indeed not who they made themselves out to be. As a result, the two decide to venture outside the walls and walk over a thousand miles to find him. Joining them were an orphan named Elton (Nicolas Cantu) and an outcast named Silas (Hal Cumpston).

If there was one negative about the episode, it should have spent more time developing the characters than establishing the community as the latter didn’t really matter in the end as the episode would end with their colony allegedly being destroyed at the hands of the Civil Republic. That development will hopefully come later as the episode implied that these four main characters’ backstories are linked thanks to the aforementioned plane crash where in a struggle, Elton’s mom killed Hope and Iris’ mom while a young Hope killed Elton’s mom. This news is certainly a bomb waiting to erupt but hopefully the writers handle it well.

At the end of the day the series will be these four young people and their naivety experiencing this new world for the first time and we only got a glimpse of that near the end so the jury is still out on that point. Nevertheless, it’s still a decent start.

If you liked this, please read our other reviews here and don’t forget to follow us on Twitter or Instagram or like us on Facebook.

Keith Noakes

The EIC of the coincidentally-named keithlovesmovies.com. A Canadian who prefers to get out of the cold and into the warmth of a movie theatre.