Season 2, Episode 10:
The Last Light
The remaining members of the group fight back enemies, both living and dead, on their quest to save the future.
The Series Finale of The Walking Dead: World Beyond.
Tropes:
- An Arm and a Leg: Elton is forced to amputate his own arm after he's bit during a fight with a herd of walkers on the way back to Dennis' outpost.
- The Bus Came Back: For Dr. Jenner (played by Noah Emmerich), albeit in the form of a pre-recorded video, who explains the threat of the "variant cohorts" (essentially, faster and deadlier variants) for the benefit of the researcher at the Biomédicine DDMI research center.
- Call-Back:
- Dr. Jenner's discussion with Rick in "TS-19" had him explain how the French were the closest to finding a cure, but that he'd lost contact with them after their power went out. In this episode, more than a decade after the onset of the virus, we finally learn what happened to them: the facility was abandoned, with a researcher coming back years after the fact and being confronted by an unnamed man who suggests (if not outright states) that the spread of the virus was directly caused by the French, including a team of researchers who travelled to a conference in Toledo, Ohio (who may have spread the "Wildfire" variant of the virus). The same man also implies that several of the original researchers are either already dead or have been captured and working for someone else.
- Dr. Jenner's video message ends with the line, "The day will come... when we'll beat this thing," referring to his line to Rick (and subsequent reveal that the walkers reanimate unless they're shot in the head) in the first-season finale of the main series.
- Character Death: Huck, Frank and Dennis all die during the course of the episode... along with an unnamed researcher who is confirmed to have worked on The Virus that spread across the globe in the first place.
- Cheese-Eating Surrender Monkeys: Subverted; the conversation in The Stinger suggests that the researcher (who was not part of the "Primrose" team, according to the unnamed man) has been running and hiding in the decade-long interim that the outbreak has been going on for. The same conversation also implies that the unnamed man has either encountered and killed some of the Primrose team, or captured them and forced them to work for someone else, though it's not made clear.
- Chekhov's Gun: One that stretches across the entirety of the franchise. In the first-season finale of The Walking Dead (2010), Dr. Jenner makes a reference to French researchers who had been studying the virus for ways to counteract it, and notes that they were the closest out of any international group to finding a cure. In this episode, we finally meet one of the researchers responsible for the investigation — and it's not only revealed that the French were studying it, but it's implied that they released it in the first place, kicking off the entire decade-plus long struggle humanity has had to face.
- Continuity Nod:
- Jadis finally reveals more about what happened to Rick Grimes after he was taken via helicopter at the end of "What Comes After" (his last episode from the main series) — he was set to be classified as an "A" (meaning he would be used as a test subject by Lyla), but Jadis deliberately classified him as a "B" (implying he was sent somewhere else) out of loyalty for what he did for her.
- Before he dies, Dennis mentions that he's reflected on his life, and thought back to a friend who had a cabin in the Smoky Mountains — a reference to Beckett, a Posthumous Character from Fear the Walking Dead.
- Create Your Own Villain: It is implied that the unnamed man's shooting of the female researcher at Biomédicine DDMI has caused her to mutate into a "runner", a faster and more violent walker who is able to reanimate much quicker than normal.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Dennis has Silas shoot him, both because it would be a Mercy Kill (he's mortally injured), and because it would spare Silas from the CRM because they would think he was an unwilling participant.
- Hero Killer: Jadis fatally wounds Huck during a confrontation over the actions of the CRM, though Huck had already planned to die, considering she set a series of bombs and planned a Taking You with Me moment.
- Hero of Another Story: Whoever the unnamed man is in The Stinger — a survivor who has apparently been either hunting down or looking to conscript the scientists who worked at Biomédicine DDMI, and gives the scientist a scathing rebuke about what her facility's actions caused to the world before killing her and sealing the facility.
- The Mole: The series ends with Silas pledging to infiltrate the CRM (after Jadis gives him an opportunity to come onboard as a student of hers) with the intent of destabilizing it from the inside.
- My Greatest Failure: Implied by the unnamed researcher, who returned to Biomédicine DDMI to view Jenner's video messages to the French research team. The unnamed man who confronts her asks if she's been running all this time, which she responds to in the affirmative, and it's suggested that she came back to the center to try to "make things right."
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: To demonstrate how radically different the "variant" walker is in the final scene, it not only reanimates after a minute-and-a-half of screentime, but instead of attacking the computer playing the video monitor (the loudest source of sound), it turns around and runs in the direction the man left, smashing on a door as the camera pans out, implying that this walker retains a limited form of memory.
- Posthumous Character: Dr. Edwin Jenner, who is shown in a video taken prior to the death of his wife (he mentions the "other Dr. Jenner") and her subsequent reanimation, and him taking a level in cynicism before he meets Rick in the first-season finale of the main series.
- Riddle for the Ages: What is the purpose of the graffiti on the wall of Biomédicine DDMI, and the man's line, "We won't jail them like the others"? Did the French intentionally release the virus, or was there an accident that they tried to cover-up, which only made things worse? The dialogue between both characters is ambiguous, with no clear answers.
- Sequel Hook: Dr. Jenner's message about keeping tabs on a new variant eventually comes true... in the form of a much faster and deadlier walker that reanimates less than two minutes after its host body is killed, and displays much more aggression than normal.
- The Stinger: The confrontation between the unnamed man and woman in Biomédicine DDMI, which not only features the return of Dr. Jenner (in video form), but sets up significant implications for the future of the franchise.
- Taking You with Me: Huck attempts it by luring Jadis to have a conversation with her so that they'll both be blown up by the gas/bombs she set. However, Jadis makes it out of the warehouse before it explodes.
- Title Drop: Jadis claims that the CRM is the "last light of the world", just before she has Elizabeth arrested.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: It's heavily implied that the French, either deliberately or unintentionally, were responsible for spreading the virus to the U.S and ultimately caused the near extinction of the Human race. The man who confronts the scientist asks if she is with a specific team, and she responds that the team he's referring to went to a virology conference in Toledo, Ohio.
- Where It All Began: Biomédicine DDMI, the French research complex which is hinted to be the site where the virus outbreak was either originally developed or the site of the first outbreak. , judging by the fact that a walker killed within it reanimates much faster and displays more aggression, is likely the site of the outbreak in the first place.
"Solidarité. À bientôt." Translation
