"The Walking Dead: World Beyond" ended on Sunday with an extra five-minute scene, which brought back a face we never expected to see again.
The surprise cameo seems to set off new avenues of exploration in the ever-expanding "Walking Dead" universe.
If you were baffled by the scene and what to make of it, you're likely not alone. You really need to watch the scene at least twice to capture all of the dialogue going on in the foreground and background.
To help make sense of it, Insider asked the showrunner Matt Negrete and "TWD" universe Chief Content Officer Scott M. Gimple what they could share about the scene, its implications moving forward in "TWD" world, and the unexpected cameo.
While they didn't reveal a lot, the dialogue offered a few interesting pieces of information, including that the zombie outbreak might have started overseas.
Let's unpack it piece by piece.
During the scene, an unnamed woman accesses some dusty old videos on a laptop.
When she plays one of the videos, we see Dr. Jenner (Noah Emmerich). As a reminder, Jenner was the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention virologist whom Rick and the survivors stayed with briefly on season one of "The Walking Dead." (Yeah, a real blast from the past!)
Gimple confirmed to Insider that it wasn't archival footage of Emmerich. They filmed that for "World Beyond."
"Working with Noah was awesome because I was a fan that first year" of "TWD," Gimple said. "I didn't work on the show those first six episodes. I watched every single one of them live and I loved Noah on the show."
"There are things he said that stuck with me," he continued. "The series seven premiere is a bit of dialogue from Jenner. So it was thrilling to do."
It was also a full-circle moment for Negrete, who previously worked with Emmerich on USA's police drama "White Collar."
During "TWD" season one, Jenner and his wife were trying to find answers to the walker outbreak. After her death, he finally gave up, blowing up the CDC and taking his own life. Before he died, he gave Rick vital information: Everyone was infected.
On "World Beyond," we're watching a video from early in the walker apocalypse when Jenner's wife was still alive. (We'll come back to that shortly.)
The mystery woman is interrupted from Jenner's video by a man with a gun. The two proceed to have a conversation in French.
Because this seems like vital information, here's how that convo goes down, according to the show's subtitling:
Unnamed man: Are you one of the doctors? Woman: Yes. Man: You've been running ... hiding all this time? Woman: Yes. Man: Are you a member of the Primrose team? Woman: No. Violet. Man: Where is the Primrose team? Where did they go? Woman: They weren't here when it happened. When you all did what you did they were at the conference in Toledo. Man: Spain? Woman: Ohio. America. I hoped against hope that they were here — that somehow they came back and that they were still working and that they were close. Man: Why would you come back? Woman: I was tired of running. And I had that hope against hope and I had to try. If they were to return here to their work they might end all this even after all this time. Man: They should be dead. If they aren't and they somehow come back like you, we won't jail them like the others. We'll kill them. End this? You started this. All the teams. Then you made it worse.
The man then shoots the woman dead, in what appears to be the head. (That's important.) As she lies head down on a table, Jenner continues to speak and mentions "variant cohorts." He says they haven't seen anything like that "here" in the United States.
The woman unexpectedly wakes up, turned into a member of the undead despite being shot in the head. She appears to move a bit quicker than the walkers we've grown accustomed to seeing on "TWD" and its spinoffs and starts banging on a door.
As the camera shifts to the outside, we see she's in a room labeled "la Biomédicine DDMI" and the scene ends.
