As The Walking Dead‘s newest spin-off Tales of the Walking Dead is slowly approaching, AMC has released new images and a teaser trailer to get fans ready for new TWD stories. Yet one story everyone’s heard before is getting retold — or at least expanded upon. Alpha is back and as menacing as ever in the anthology, but what more is there to reveal about her?

For fans of the later seasons of The Walking Dead, the name Alpha rings a loud bell. Introduced in Season 9 after the six-year time jump, Alpha proved to be one of the most formidable and daring villains in the series. Some would even say she was a bigger and badder threat than the bat-swinging Negan. Alpha’s cult the Whisperers left a scar on The Walking Dead‘s survivors, who are still suffering from the aftermath of her rage seasons later. Alpha may be long gone, but she’s about to live on in Tales of the Walking Dead.

Samantha Morton as Alpha – The Walking Dead _ Season 9, Episode 10 – Photo Credit: Gene Page/AMC

It was announced in April 2022 that Samantha Morton would return to the Walking Dead franchise as Alpha (now known as Dee) in the anthology spin-off, which will tell multiple stories about different characters during the initial zombie outbreak. Alpha’s debut was met with praise for bringing the horror element back into the original series, but there’s been some confusion on why she’s returning in Tales of the Walking Dead… because The Walking Dead already told her backstory in not one, but two episodes.

Alpha’s origins were shown in episodes Season 9, Episode 10, “Omega” and Season 10, Episode 2, “We Are the End of the World.” The former recounted her daughter Lydia’s earliest memories of the apocalypse (about three weeks to a month in). Alpha, her husband Frank and Lydia stayed in a shelter awaiting help from the Army. But when help never came, Alpha strangled Frank and another group member while also shaving her head and escaping with Lydia. The latter episode was a flashback to a few years after the shelter incident when Alpha and Lydia met Beta, slowly forming the Whisperers.

Both episodes provided insightful context on how Alpha became the ruthless woman she is and how she gained so much power. What was especially great was that she was never portrayed as a good person gone bad, even at the beginning of the apocalypse. There’s reason to believe that Alpha always crossed ethical boundaries and the apocalypse gave her reason to expose her true colors. Her origin story told what needed to be told and there were no more questions that needed to be answered.

But Tales of the Walking Dead thinks differently. It’s honestly difficult to predict what exactly Alpha’s story will be in Tales of the Walking Dead. From the looks of one of the aforementioned promotional stills, her episode will take place in a time when she had hair. The trailer shows Alpha telling a young girl “It’s time you learn how to survive,” and it’s easy to presume the girl is a young Lydia. Their faces are also covered in blood, so Alpha has learned the tricks of the zombie-surviving trade at this point.

Given all these details, it’s hard to fathom when the story takes place. Alpha’s hair is already messing up the timeline, since fans know that she kept her head shaved since she and Lydia escaped the shelter. But besides the possible continuity issue, giving her another backstory episode feels excessive. Not even Negan nor the Governor got two flashback episodes, and now Alpha’s getting three? And judging by her short appearance in the trailer, it’ll just be a repeat of Season 10, Episode 2, in which she tried to teach Lydia how to survive.

The biggest disappointment with bringing Alpha back is that she’s taking another TWD character’s slot. Samantha Morton is a captivating force to watch on screen, but if any original series character should get a backstory, it should be Tyreese, Sasha or even the prisoners in Season 3. It should be anyone who hasn’t had the chance to show their initial outbreak journey. Alpha has only been gone one season from the main series, but she’s once again getting the spotlight when so many other characters deserve it.

Tales of the Walking Dead premieres Aug.14 on AMC and AMC+.