Walking Dead’s Finale Throwback Confirms One S1 Variant Theory
The latest episodes of The walking Dead featured many throwbacks to previous seasons, with one in particular that could completely change everyone’s perception of the zombie virus. The Walking Dead’s The final episodes introduced the core of survivors to the variant walkers, who had adapted the ability to track survivors, scale walls, and pick up objects for use as weapons. Throughout the show, zombies have remained largely the same with low intelligence, slow movement, and little ability to use tools, but that hasn’t always been the case.
The last season included several calls to the story of The walking Dead, especially the series finale, “Rest in Peace,” which featured a walker using a rock to break a hospital window. This mirrors a very similar event in Season 1 Episode 2, “Guts,” where another zombie tries to break a window with a rock. This season 11 throwback basically confirms that variant walkers have existed since the beginning TWD’s apocalypse, but does not explain how or why. The Walking Dead: A World Beyond tried to expand on this, but only left more variant questions in its wake.
The zombie variant in S1 makes for a great TWD mystery
Since now it seems that The Walking Dead’s Variant walkers have been around since the beginning, speculation has begun to mount as to where they might have been in subsequent seasons. The Stranger has been spotted, like the walker following Andrea in the trailer during the season 2 premiere, and a few walkers climbing the rock ledge of the cave during the season 10 episode , “Press”. Although the variants apparently make few appearances along the way The walking Deadcuriously they didn’t become a main story until the climactic episodes of the final season, during which they became a much more prominent and menacing presence.
Season 1 variants contradict Dr. Jenner in the world beyond
The Walking Dead: A World Beyond expanded in many areas of The walking Dead universe, mainly stories featuring the CRM community, and even that of variant walkers. world beyond heavily implied that the original wildfire virus was created in France at La Biomédicine DDMI for unknown experimental purposes. They experimented to find a cure, but inadvertently created a variant of the virus that enhanced the walkers’ agility, intelligence, and strength. Dr. Edwin Jenner, who appeared during The walking Dead season 1 as the sole inhabitant of the CDC, he claimed to be unaware of a variant cohort in the US.
The walking Dead Showrunner Angela Kang stated that, at first, it was almost as if the variant walkers were regional, potentially based only in Atlanta. However, over time, the variation would have spread to the wider population, meaning they would have become more important as the seasons progressed. It could have been that there were only a few walkers with the virus variant at first, meaning they could have easily fallen under Jenner’s radar, but this also suggests that the variant could be more extreme in France, meaning that Daryl Dixon’s derivation of The walking Dead will present them to a much greater extent.