The Walking Dead: A MAJOR character meets their demise which will turn Season 10 upside down

SPOILERS: This article contains massive SPOILERS for The Walking Dead Season 10 Episode 12, Walk With Us, which aired Sunday night, so read on at your own risk.

Alpha’s long reign of terror came to a shocking end on Sunday’s episode of The Walking Dead.

Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) slashed the throat of the Whisperers leader (Samantha Morton) after telling her he was taking her to her daughter, whom she was determined to kill.

He guided Alpha to a cabin in the woods where Lydia (Cassidy McClincy) purportedly awaited, but when the woman arrived, she found there was no one there.

Alpha turned to Negan in confusion, and he slit her throat, forcing her to bleed out. As he lowered her to the ground, Negan kissed her gently on the cheek to say goodbye.

Afterward, he shook Alpha’s zombified head out of a bag, and watched it roll up to the feet of an unknown person.

‘Took you long enough,’ Carol Pelletier (Melissa McBride) said, as the camera panned up.

As the episode began, it wasn’t clear whether Negan had always been a double-agent for the survivors, or had recently decided to end Alpha’s life.

But Carol had been pursuing Alpha for months, determined to see the woman pay for beheading her ‘stepson,’ Henry.

She and the rest of the survivors had just spent the night defending Hilltop from the Whisperers, who sent a zombie horde to kill them, then set their sanctuary on fire.

To everyone’s surprise, Magna (Nadia Hilker) snuck in with the zombies, having escaped from the Whisperers’ cave, where she had been trapped by an explosion.

The survivors fled in separate units to a rendezvous point in the woods, where they planned to meet up with King Ezekiel (Khary Payton) and the children.

Although the Whisperers had won the battle, Alpha was surprisingly downcast, telling Negan, ‘It is not a victory if I do not have the one thing I want,’ meaning Lydia.

Beta (Ryan Hurst) promised to bring Lydia to her, but Negan found the teen first and sequestered her in a cabin, tying her to a chair with ropes.

In the woods, he ran into Aaron (Ross Marquand), who was shuttling a wounded friend to the rendezvous point and might have killed Negan if zombies hadn’t distracted him.

Mary (Thora Birch), Kelly (Angel Theory) and Alden (Callen McAuliffe) were also walking to the same spot, carrying baby Adam Sutton, who was crying loudly.

Mary, Adam’s aunt, soothed his crying, and her former antagonist Alden softened toward her.

When the baby’s crying eventually attracted zombies, Kelly and Alden hid him in a nearby car.

Mary successfully got rid of the zombies, and turned her face toward the sun with satisfaction.

She was then stabbed in the gut by Beta, who had snuck up on her from the woods.

Ignoring her injury, Mary hammered Beta’s chest with her fists, outraged by the attack.

‘You. Will. Walk,’ Beta insisted, as Mary cried ‘Never!’ and ripped off half his mask.

Beta plunged his long hunting knife into her gut again and lifted it up, killing her.

He then propped Mary’s body up against a tree, and killed a Whisperer who saw him.

When Mary turned into a zombie, Alden shot her down from afar, and Beta fled again.

Elsewhere in the forest, Magna told Yumiko (Eleanor Matsuura) what happened to her and the still-missing Connie (Lauren Ridloff) in the Whisperers’ cave.

Carol, who had caused the explosion that trapped them, squirmed uncomfortably.

‘We killed the skins,’ Magna explained. ‘Then we crawled back into the cave. The sickos were either dead or trapped under rocks from the [explosion]. We kept pushing, searching. Took a turn, and before we knew it, we were in the horde.’

‘Connie and I moved together,’ she added. ‘The sickos pushed forward. Got between us. And her hand just slipped out of mine. I couldn’t find her again.’

Out of the corner of her eye, Yumiko saw Carol try to slip away, which infuriated her.

Carol refused to apologize to Magna, saying it wouldn’t help, and Yumiko punched her.

‘I can’t do this anymore,’ Magna told Yumiko then, telling her how ‘p***ed’ she was after their last conversation, and amicably ending their relationship.

Eugene (Josh McDermitt) went to make sure Carol was okay, and found her lost in thought.

‘Do you know what it feels like to want something so bad, to go after it with everything that you have, p*** off everyone—literally everyone—maybe get people killed, and still you have nothing to show for it?’ Carol asked.

‘I do,’ Eugene replied, explaining that he’d arranged ‘the biggest meeting of my life’ with Stephanie, the voice over his radio, before the radio room burned down at Hilltop.

‘Eugene,’ Carol said, looking at him kindly. ‘Just go to her.’

Eugene acquiesced, telling Carol, ‘I sincerely hope you get what it is that you want.’

At the survivors’ rendezvous point, Jerry (Cooper Andrews) found Ezekiel hiding under a corrugated tin panel on the ground, surrounded by dead bodies.

He had been separated from the children in the smoke, and directed everyone to a dilapidated cabin nearby where Earl Sutton (John Finn) was looking after them.

But Earl had been bitten by a zombie, and after telling Judith Grimes (Cailey Fleming) to ‘keep those kids safe from me,’ he impaled himself on a spike he’d nailed into a table.

When Daryl Dixon (Norman Reedus) entered the cabin, he found Judith holding a bloody weapon, and realized she’d been forced to stab zombie Earl.

Over in the Whisperers camp, Negan told Alpha he’d found ‘that thing you been looking for.’

He walked her toward a cabin where he said Lydia was waiting, as the teen was shown tied to a chair, trying to bust loose.

Thrilled by his initiative, Alpha urged Negan to ‘become a lion’ and ‘build a new pride’ with her.

‘If we’re gonna stick with the whole lion thing, then isn’t it the young lioness who takes her mother’s place?’ Negan asked, though Alpha didn’t answer.

Negan decided to tell Alpha a story about a woman he’d once loved who died of pancreatic cancer, after which, he said, ‘I didn’t feel much of anything anymore.’

‘Be grateful,’ Alpha rejoined. ‘Death set her free.’

‘I didn’t feel scared,’ Negan continued. ‘I didn’t feel happy. I was just here. And that is my strength.’

‘Now me, I am dead to this world,’ he said. ‘But you are pretending. You think that it makes you strong to say that emotions aren’t real, that we are animals. That is bulls***, and you know it. And now you claim that you have to kill your own daughter, your own flesh and blood.’

‘It is her destiny,’ Alpha emphasized. ‘Lydia was made for this. To be free, with me.’

‘You still love her,’ Negan acknowledged, looking at her sympathetically.

‘I have to do it because I love her,’ Alpha replied. ‘She will always be my baby.’

Negan kissed Alpha tenderly and showed her to the cabin door.

At the same time, Lydia escaped her bonds, throwing open the door to find no one there.

Alpha, who saw no one inside her cabin either, turned around, confused.

Negan slashed her throat in one swift motion, and blood poured from Alpha’s neck.

He lay her down gently as the light dimmed from her eyes, then took her head.

The Walking Dead returns next week on AMC.