‘Sons of Anarchy’ veteran Ryan Hurst made his debut on ‘The Walking Dead’ this past Sunday as the ominous Beta as he previews what to expect from the Whisperer’s No. 2 in charge…
Standing an imposing 6-foot-4-inches tall, it’s understandable why former ‘Sons of Anarchy’ actor Ryan Hurst was the perfect choice to play the ominous and mysterious Beta on ‘The Walking Dead’.
In the comic books, Beta is an imposing figure in both height and stature as he serves as second in command to Alpha in the dead skin wearing group known as the Whisperers.
This past Sunday night, Hurst made his debut as Beta on ‘The Walking Dead’ where he proved his fierce loyalty to Alpha and also showed off his commanding presence while towering over everybody in the Whisperers’ camp.
With only a few minutes on screen this past week, Beta hasn’t revealed much outside of the fact that unlike the leader of the Whisperers, he never removes the mask of dead skin that covers his face to help him blend in with the rest of the undead. As time passes, we may learn more about Beta and his history but according to Hurst, what we don’t know about him might end up scaring the audience even more.
“My take on him was he’s very close to Anton Chigurh from ‘No Country for Old Men‘,” Hurst said about Beta when speaking to EW. “Everyone in the Whisperers wears masks for different reasons, and I’m not gonna reveal too much, but Beta especially is not only is not playing with a full deck, he’s playing with six full decks from five different games. The guy’s sort of impenetrable because he’s just not playing by the same set of rules as anybody else. And more so than a lot of characters on the show, like his sense of humanity is so completely and totally fractured that he lives underneath this mask.
“So what audiences have to look forward to is really that the more you think you know about Beta, the less you do. Only in these coming seasons do we really start to explore, “Really who the hell is this guy?” He’s gonna be a bit of a mystery for quite some time.”
If Beta’s story follows anywhere close to the source material in the comics, Hurst will play a major role on the show through several plot twists that could be coming soon.
It was already teased in the preview for next week’s episode of ‘The Walking Dead’ that Daryl has his sights set on Beta after learning from Alpha’s daughter Lydia that he is the best fighter from the Whisperers. Along with that preview we see a frightening moment where Beta comes charging at Daryl and it looks like that might turn out to be one hell of a good fight.
“The best thing that I can hint at is one of the things that I was excited about; the entire cast is so phenomenal, and what I can hint at is, I guess, to say that Daryl and Beta cross paths, and they see that they’re very similar and very different at the same time, but that they’re worthy adversaries,” Hurst says about the upcoming interaction.
“It’s probably one of the first worthy adversaries that the show has presented to Norman’s character because he’s just such a unique badass, but I guess that’s the best thing is we sort of little by little start to see more and more about who Beta is and put him in some really badass scenarios.”
‘The Walking Dead’ returns this Sunday night at 9 p.m. ET on AMC.
