WARNING: The following article contains spoilers for The Walking Dead: World Beyond Season 2, Episode 7, “Blood and Lies,” which aired Sunday on AMC.
The Walking Dead has never been afraid of dramatic and brutal deaths, even for its main characters. In contrast to that, World Beyond has steered clear of killing off anyone of relative importance – that is until this week. In “Blood and Lies,” Dr. Lyla Belshaw — Leo’s girlfriend and a CRM scientist – became the victim of a walker bite. How it happened, however, was kind of ironic.
This whole time, Lyla was in on everything that the CRM was doing and was a leading scientist on Project Votus, which involved researching reanimation with live test subjects. When Leo arrived at the CRM research facility, she had befriended him, and the two of them quickly became an item. All along, though, Leo was clueless about Lyla’s secret work or that their relationship was totally fake. Lyla was only carrying out orders to get close to Leo in an attempt to eventually lure him into helping with Project Votus.
Lyla knew the only way to save Leo was to return the vial, so she went to Hope and Iris with a proposal that they accepted. She told them about the CRM’s secret operations at Omaha, and they gave her back the stolen vial. Interrupting Leo’s interrogation, Lyla showed up with the vial and tried to “save” Leo. She had promised Hope and Iris to not sell out their father, but she did exactly that. She snitched on Leo, but it was also her attempt to bring him in to help her with Project Votus, claiming that she was on the verge of a major breakthrough.
Surprisingly, Jadis actually agreed to Lyla’s suggestion, but that didn’t last long. Jadis and Huck went to Lyla’s lab for an update on her work, but they were sorely disappointed when the “major breakthrough” turned out to be nothing. So, Jadis improvised her next step. She ordered Huck to remove the test subject’s restraints and leave Lyla locked in the room with it. Not surprisingly, it wasn’t long before Lyla’s research killed her.
To make things even more ironic, that very test subject had talked to Lyla earlier in the episode. Before she killed him in the name of science, he had begged for his life and accused the CRM of operating on nothing but “blood and lies.” So, it was only fitting that Lyla would die in a pool of blood after being lied to. The test subject was right all along; the CRM never had plans to help anyone but itself, and Lyla’s death signaled how the series’ last few episodes should take an even darker turn.
To see what the CRM kills next, tune into The Walking Dead: World Beyond. The series airs Sundays at 10 p.m. ET/PT on AMC and is available to stream early on AMC+.
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