‘The Walking Dead’ Season 9: Samantha Morton Speaks Out About Alpha’s Origin Story

Episode 10 of AMC’s The Walking Dead Season 9 saw the harrowing backstory of Lydia (Cassady McClincy) and her mother. Lydia’s mother goes on to become Alpha, the leader of the new group introduced called the Whisperers. The actress who plays Alpha, Samantha Morton, recently broke down the origin story from the latest episode of The Walking Dead.

SPOILER ALERT: This article discusses Episode 10 (titled “Omega”) of AMC’s The Walking Dead Season 9. Please proceed with caution if you have not yet viewed this episode and wish to avoid spoilers.

“[Alpha’s] metamorphosing from a caterpillar to a butterfly, but not the nicest butterfly,” Samantha revealed about Alpha during the flashback scenes.

In Episode 10 of The Walking Dead Season 9, the captured Lydia revealed how she and her mother fared after the initial outbreak. In a series of flashbacks, viewers came to discover that Lydia was an unreliable narrator and her memories of her mother and what happened to her father were misleading. Initially, Lydia’s father appeared to be violent. However, over the course of the episode, this notion was turned on its head.

However, according to Samantha Morton, Alpha may have always been the sort of person she is now as the head of the Whisperers, the apocalypse merely developed it further.

“I think, for her, something is triggered through the apocalypse,” Morton revealed to Entertainment Weekly after Episode 10 aired.

“Maybe something that was laying dormant inside of her. Maybe we can look at her, childhood things that happened to her, and here she realizes that she’s capable of doing really horrific things in order to survive and to [protect] her child.”

Morton also believes that this level of trauma is what invariably led Alpha to become the person viewers will see in upcoming episodes of The Walking Dead. In fact, she believes that Alpha will go to any lengths to protect her daughter.

And, those lengths were shown when Alpha killed a man very early on in the apocalypse, calling him weak and pathetic before she smothers him. However, Samantha Morton doesn’t believe that Alpha sees herself as a villain.

“She doesn’t think she’s a villain. She’s just doing what she has to do, and she’s been really honest about it. He is pathetic. He is weak. This is a new world now, a new world order, and it’s brutal, but this is her tribe, and this is how they’re functioning. It’s awful, actually. When I think of it, ‘Oh, my gosh!’ But when I’m in Alpha head, it really is like… It’s awful, but it makes sense to her.”

Morton also revealed details of what it was like when she had to play different versions of Alpha during the flashback scenes that Lydia remembered.

“It’s a dream within a dream within a flashback within a what is real?” Samantha revealed.

“We all have that anyway. You can go into a room and have a meal with somebody, and both of those individuals have then said, ‘Okay, write down your versions of what happened at dinner and how you’re feeling,’ and they’ll come up with totally different interpretations.”

Season 9 of AMC’s The Walking Dead will return to AMC on Sunday, February 24. The show is scheduled to air at 9 p.m. ET. As previously reported by the Inquisitr, Episode 11 is titled “Bounty” and the synopsis is as follows.

“The savage group led by Alpha confronts the Hilltop in a harrowing attempt to retrieve her daughter. A supply run for the Kingdom turns into a dangerous quest.”