The Walking Dead: World Beyond Star Warns “Anybody” Can Die in “High-Stakes” Final Season (Exclusive)

It’s the end for the Endlings on The Walking Dead: World Beyond. The second and final season of the event series, premiering October 3 on AMC, concludes the epic story of the Endlings: sisters Iris (Aliyah Royale) and Hope Bennett (Alexa Mansour) and their friends Elton (Nicolas Cantu) and Silas (Hal Cumpston). Together, they made a cross-country journey to save the one man who might save the world — zombie cure-seeking scientist Dr. Leo Bennett (Joe Holt) — from the clutches of the Civic Republic Military. In these remaining ten episodes of TWD: World Beyond, the stakes have never been higher as innocence — and lives — will be lost in a final fight against the CRM for control of their destinies.

We went to the cast of World Beyond to find out what it means to go into a two-season Walking Dead story of just 20 episodes as envisioned by creators Scott Gimple and Matt Negrete, who have guaranteed no survivor’s safety in the “close-ended” AMC series. According to Elton actor Cantu, “anybody” can bite it before the epic conclusion. 

“When you work on a Walking Dead show, you always have the expectation of, ‘Oh, when am I going to die? When is that going to happen?'” Cantu exclusively tells Brandon Davis for ComicBook. “And that was present in Season 1, but at least for me, going into Season 2, I was like, ‘So this is the last season. Come on. People are going to go, is it going to be me? Who’s it going to be?'”

Cantu continues, “You’re going to have to watch to see because the stakes are up there. We’re finally getting to Walking Dead mode, where it’s just like, anybody can go. So, high-stakes season.”

Whether or not there’s a Walking Dead future beyond World Beyond, says newly-promoted Season 2 regular Jelani Alladin, both the show and its cast end in a sense of completion. 

“I think that the end of anything never is the end for the characters, right? It’s never the end for the lives of the characters that we’re watching,” ays Alladin, who plays CRM escapee Will. “It may be the end of the actors, but I think what Matthew Negrete and Scott Gimple have done, is that they’ve completed this arc, the arcs of these characters. In ways that there’s still room for them to grow, and continue to live on if possible, and continue to explore different things. I think that we get such a blast with each other on set, we laughed a lot.” 

How World Beyond ends, and where its cast of characters end up, is a closely guarded secret. Cantu and Cumpston, who play best buds Elton and Silas, are satisfied with the ends of their arcs on World Beyond but will mourn laying this Walking Dead series to rest after two seasons. 

“I liked it. I like the way my guy finishes his arc,” says Cantu. Adds Cumpston, whose Silas is presently a prisoner of the CRM, “I quite like the ending of my arc also. Yeah, I don’t know. It was pretty neat at the end because you feel accomplished and happy that, ‘Oh, all right, we’re finished shooting!’ But it’s also weird knowing that it’s very likely that we won’t work with our friends again in a show.”

Negrete previously revealed the characters of World Beyond — even those who don’t survive the Final Season — could return in the Gimple-created anthology spin-off series Tales of the Walking Dead. The series in active development at AMC Networks is like a zombie apocalypse Twilight Zone, telling episodic stories about new and existing characters in stories spanning the entire Walking Dead timeline. 

“Creatively, I think that the audience will feel satisfied with where things end at the end of Season 2,” Negrete said in a post-Season 1 interview last year. “There is a possibility of these characters appearing on Tales of the Walking Dead, whether it’s a glimpse at their past, or an opportunity to see where they are in the future after the show ends. I think all of those things are definitely possibilities.”

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TWD: World Beyond returns October 3 on AMC; new episodes stream early Sundays on AMC+. Follow the author @CameronBonomolo on Twitter for all things TWD and stay tuned to ComicBook for coverage all season long.