Emily Kinney played Beth Greene on The Walking Dead for four seasons, and then the show killed her in a Georgia hospital hallway in November 2014. On Sunday night, she came back.
Beth turned up in "Genesis," the sixth episode of The Walking Dead: Dead City's third season, which ran on AMC and AMC+ on August 30th. The episode is set in an alternate reality where the outbreak never happened at all.
Beth is still dead in the show's main timeline. "Genesis" runs an entire what-if world in parallel, and in that world she never had to die.
In the alternate reality, Maggie and Negan meet as strangers in a diner, with no idea who the other one is. Beth is alive and working as a singer in the city, and Maggie comes to her about co-signing a loan on the family farm.
Kinney told Collider that the script got to her immediately. "When I read the script, I started crying," she said. "It's been so much time since I've gotten to revisit Beth." She told Syfy she "never would've imagined that I was coming back at all," and that once she was there, "it just felt really natural."
The singing was the hook that got her the invitation. By Kinney's account, showrunner Seth Hoffman had been thinking about it for a while, and she recalls him telling her, "Oh, I was hearing you sing." Beth's guitar and her voice were her signature across seasons four and five, so in this reality she sings for a living!
Beth's death in "Coda" produced one of the loudest fan revolts the franchise has had, complete with petitions and a long campaign to undo it, and those fans are still around.
Eli Jorné, who ran the first two, handed the show to Seth Hoffman for this one, and Dead City has been trying weirder things ever since, including an entire episode set in a world without the outbreak.
The episode itself has taken a beating. "Genesis" has been sitting at 6.7 on IMDb since the day after it aired, the lowest-scored episode Dead City has produced, down from an 8.0 for "Imperialis" the week before.
The complaints really come down to one scene. In the alternate world, Maggie and Negan meet, and the show never once acknowledges Glenn. Negan killed Maggie's husband in the main timeline, and a lot of longtime viewers couldn't watch those two flirt in a diner without thinking about it, regardless of what reality the episode places itself in.
No further Kinney appearances have been announced, and nothing suggests Beth is rejoining the main continuity.
Only two episodes remain for this season: September 6th and the finale on September 13th. There has been no word yet on a fourth season.
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