The Walking Dead Season 11: Leah Twist Explained

| September 12, 2021 |

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the walking dead season 11 episode 4 explained daryl's mystery reaper — *Photo: AMC*

This The Walking Expressionless feature contains spoilers.

One of the issues with the collection of bonus bottle episodes rolled out at the cease of Season x of The Walking Dead is that they were constructed in such a way that they didn't especially matter to the overall narrative. Sure, they were fun. They had some dandy character moments to help explain just how our survivors concluded up the people they are, and what sort of adventures they might accept been upwards to in betwixt seasons, but they oasis't exactly carried a lot of narrative weight this far in flavour xi.

From the very opening moments of "Rendition," as a female Reaper in a mask stares at a fleeing Daryl, it'due south pretty easy to figure out who that person probably is fifty-fifty before the big reveal. The eyes are merely too familiar to anyone who remembers Daryl's episode, "Find Me." Every other Reaper runs off to do battle and she stays focused on Daryl. She follows him through a burned-out mill, ever ane step backside while he sneaks around trying to avert both human and walker threats. By the time Canis familiaris betrays Daryl and runs to her side, it'southward pretty articulate that this is a figure from Daryl's past, even if you missed Season 10 C.

So, she takes off her mask, and Leah is revealed.

Hooray for Daryl! He'due south found his lost love later years apart! Boo for Daryl! She's not lonely. Her fellow Reapers surround him and capture him, putting a pocketbook over his head and dragging him away. Conspicuously, she's non interested in immediately resuming their old beloved affair. Hell hath no fury like a scorned old flame with access to a murder team.

How did Leah end upwards with the Reapers? Leah'south origin story as revealed in "Find Me" is a common one after the fall. She was with a group, the group got overrun, and she fled with her adopted son Matthew until she stumbled across the cabin she'southward living in when Daryl finds her. Matthew died after getting bitten in the chaos; Leah escaped physically unscathed and stuck it out with Dog until Daryl showed upward, the first person she'd seen since Matthew died.

During "Rendition," Leah talks a footling bit about her former life, filling in her back story. She was in the military machine and served overseas. The zombie outbreak kicked off, and Leah reunited with her squad as they banded together for survival. She never went into detail near her group, at least not to Daryl. But as it turns out, the Reapers are what'due south left of her one-time team. After coming dwelling house from various hot-spots with a multifariousness of injuries and PTSD, most of them couldn't adjust to noncombatant life. So, their charismatic leader Pope turned them into a mercenary group, and they went dorsum to doing what they did in the state of war zone, except for much higher pay, right up until the fall of humanity.

Afterward a miraculous incident in which the squad weathers a fire-bombing by the United states Air Forcefulness unscathed, the Reapers transformed from a bog-standard Blackwater clone into a religiously-motivated forcefulness of fighters. The Reapers were baptized in healing burn down and reborn with a Latin catchphrase and The Purge meets Eyes Wide Close masks as role of their new look. Under similar miraculous circumstances, after Daryl leaves Leah to contemplate his fate, her family returns for her and she goes dorsum dwelling, leaving backside all dreams of Dixon, Dog, and domesticity.

Like Daryl, she couldn't stay away from her family in the end. Perhaps she loves Daryl; clearly, she cares plenty nearly him to save his life when he's captured by her brothers in arms. Daryl, in turn, gives her enough information that her people might be able to rails down his own family, without making it piece of cake on them to exercise so. Both of them have put their family unit at risk because of their by together. They're non exactly back together, simply one-time feelings dice difficult after the apocalypse.

It's an uneasy, fraught peace, fifty-fifty after Daryl passes Pope's test. Like Leah says, "We couldn't have been happy in a world like this." Even reunited, they're still not able to be happy, because either Leah has to betray her family for Daryl or Daryl has to betray his family unit for Leah. The cabin is but a few miles away every bit the crow flies, but Daryl and Leah'southward idyllic dear nest seems like a lifetime ago.