The Walking Dead: World Beyond has truly come into its own in its final season.
As the show delves deeper into the CRM and their machinations, viewers are being treated to a lot of progression for the characters.
The Walking Dead: World Beyond Season 2 Episode 7 changed the entire series when Lyla (Natalie Gold) revealed classified information to save Leo (Joe Holt) and his daughters.
In a twist of fate, Lyla told Jadis she had made a breakthrough with a dead body not reanimating, seemingly progressing the CRM's goal.
However, the body had reanimated by the time Lyla tried to show Jadis her findings, and Jadis forced Huck to set the zombie free to kill Lyla.
It was one of the most memorable deaths. The test subject ultimately killed Lyla. Natalie was very excited about seeing this play out because she knew Lyla's arc was building towards an untimely demise.
"I just didn't know how, and I thought it was incredibly poetic that it was done in a Frankenstein way. She died by a creature of her own invention," Natalie shared, adding that she got what many think she deserved.
Natalie said she hadn't had a chance to read the script when it was sent, but Jelani Alladin (who plays Will) read it first and hyped her up for it.
The pivotal scene in the installment was when Lyla revealed the truth that Leo and his daughters had stolen the sample, but she followed it up by telling all about the classified intel, which was a great way to secure her future and the future of her lover.
Joe felt like Lyla already had a calculated plan in place instead of her coming up with the plan on the spot.
"She's an incredibly fast thinker. She's incredibly linear and rational, and she's also good at seeing a few steps ahead," Joe explained to TV Fanatic before cautioning, "Apparently not enough steps ahead, but a few steps ahead."
"I think that she was developing that plan as she went along," the star added, noting that Lyla went to Hope and Iris to find out the truth about the vial.
Joe felt like it was her way of saving Leo's life, but she also wanted to extend the research.
"There was something poetic about her sort of dying at the hands of the monster she created. The Frankenstein reference is really clever," he added.
"I don't know that anything happened in the room that would have altered her thought process, but Natalie might have a different answer to that."
Natalie said that Lyla spent the episode trying to find a way to cover for both Leo and the girls. The star spoke to the showrunner Matt Negrete about it, and there was a meaning behind her decision in the interrogation room.
"She was just going to go give back the vial. And then in the moment, it was kind of a big deal for Matt to have her look down at the vial, see her tattoo, which we now know is so associated with her history of her husband and her daughter."
The star said Lyla wanted to figure it all out at that moment how to help everyone and how she could save herself and keep the research going.
"I think that the best thing that she could come up with was to tell the truth and leverage the fact that Leo is so incredibly brilliant and so are the girls and they're an asset and Lyla's an asset and now with no more secrets."
Natalie added that Lyla didn't want to lie anymore, so the best thing to do was to bring Leo and the girls into it.
"By doing that, I think she's saving him and, and trying to bring him into something that can help the world and her mind, and she doesn't realize she's trapping him into something he has no desire to be a part of, but that is essentially what she's doing."
"That's her best plan of action at that point."
Natalie said that she believed Lyla was much further away from a break in her mission to keep walkers from reanimating than she wanted to be, but Lyla thinks that Leo, Iris, and Hope could help turn the research on its head.
Leo has now been told to report to work to secure his safety, but Joe feels like he's now been opened up to the flaws within the CRM and that abuse of science has been carried out under his nose.
"He feels responsible for having put his daughters in danger," Joe shares, adding that he also feels used by Lyla and that the mission now becomes about how he and his allies escape.
The actor says that the research is still valuable but that the CRM does not deserve to use it.
"It's a very powerful motivator for him. He does what he does is to save humanity. So I think that from this point on, he recognizes that within this power construct, he cannot operate in good faith. He cannot operate, He doesn't trust their motivations."
"And he saw now that they are sort of this self-governing entity that is only operating for its own. And so from this point on, he's like, 'Bitch bye you're the CRM.'"
"He needs to go forward with his family and find a way that they can live prosper and still do the work that's necessary to save humankind."
Three episodes remain on The Walking Dead: World Beyond. You can watch the series on Sundays at 10 p.m. Catch the episodes a week earlier on AMC+.