- Warning: There are spoilers ahead for "The Walking Dead" season 10, episode 5, "What It Always Is."
- Much of Sunday's episode revolved around Negan's escape from Alexandria and his next move now that he's free to roam the zombie apocalypse outside of four walls and a roof.
- From a comic nod to Negan's jail escape to several callbacks to seasons prior, Insider rounds up some smaller moments you may have missed on Sunday's episode.
- Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.
"The Walking Dead" wrote Angel Theory's progressive hearing loss onto the show this season.
Sunday's episode opens on an extended scene showing what it's like for Kelly trying to survive in the zombie apocalypse. On the season premiere, Kelly tells her sister Connie her hearing is getting worse and that she can't always hear when there's a lot of noise around her.
Kelly's story this season is directly influenced by real life, which was written into the show.
"We have to deal with the fact that at a certain point, the actress herself may not be able to hear," showrunner Angela Kang told Insider in October. "Rather than fighting against that, we just thought we'd make it part of the story."
"I never knew how important it was for others to see representation through myself and Lauren [Ridloff]," Angel Theory told Insider. "It's a beautiful feeling to know that my story could help someone even in the slightest way."
Brandon reveals himself to be a former Savior kid and major Negan fanboy, a nod to the comics.
Brandon says that Rick killed his parents and then dragged him and other Saviors to Alexandria. Rick and his group killed a bunch of Saviors in their sleep on season six, something which Glenn and Heath were highly uncomfortable with doing.
On season eight, they later killed more Saviors, leading Rick to give Aaron a baby he found to raise. Any remaining Saviors, like Brandon, were brought to Alexandria. Brandon has been harboring some ill will toward Rick and the Alexandrians since then.
It's a clever twist on his comic counterpart who lets Negan out of his jail cell in order to get revenge on Rick. Comic Brandon blames Rick for the death of his parents, Tammy Rose and Earl.
He's also a bully, who, at one point, attacks Carl. Angry about his parents' deaths, Brandon lets Negan out of his jail cell under the impression Negan will help him get the Whisperers to kill Rick. On the show, Negan has seemingly let himself out of his cell.
Brandon recalls a terrifying moment with Negan from the season seven premiere.
"I heard you made [Rick] cut his own kid's hand off, then you killed him. Carl Grimes. I heard you shot him," an enthusiastic Brandon tells Negan.
Of course, that didn't happen. On the season seven premiere, Negan did draw a line on Carl's arm with a Sharpie and asked Rick to cut his son's arm off. At the last minute, he told him to stop. It was a cruel prank Negan pulled on Rick to make sure he would fall in line and listen to him.
Negan grew to love and respect Carl and was heartbroken when he died of a walker bite on season eight.
It sounds like Negan was about to tell Brandon that Carl was better than all of them, but he stops short and simply says he wouldn't kill a kid. He probably realizes those are wasted words on Brandon, who seems a bit too far gone.
Brandon says they're both Negan and attempts to bring back Negan's creepy whistle.
Back when Negan was running the show on season's seven and eight, his group would terrorize the other communities with a simple whistle to let anyone know they were coming.
Brandon tries to replicate it on Sunday's episode and use the group's old mantra: "We are Negan."
It's something Negan doesn't seem to care for anymore.
The woman Negan saves refers to the undead as "hissers."
We've heard the undead called everything from walkers to biters. On Sunday's episode, the woman Negan saves refers to them as hissers.
Read more: 20 ways "The Walking Dead" has avoided saying zombies on the show
The title of the episode, "What It Always Is," is a reference to something the woman on the bus tells Negan.
The mystery woman tells Negan and Brandon that her camp was overrun by the dead.
"After that, we went back to what it was before, what it always is in the end, Milo and me, moving from place to place. Surviving," the woman tells Negan and Brandon.
That story of hers is quite similar to what we've seen so many times over the years on "The Walking Dead" with Rick and Carl.
They'd find shelter for a time, but eventually, they'd need to move on at some point whether it was at the farm, the prison, or even Alexandria before they decided to reclaim it as their own.
Negan tells Brandon that people are a resource, an old Savior adage.
When Brandon wants to see if the woman and her son are hiding a secret stash of goods, Negan tells him to leave it be.
"People are a resource," Negan tells him.
It's a phrase he used often as the Savior leader. One of the last times we heard Negan say it to his comrades, he wasn't as nice about it. Negan was clear he didn't approve of killing people in large masses because people were the foundation of civilization. Without them, they'd just be a world run over by the dead.
Brandon's TV show death is a nod to his death in the comics.
In the comics, Negan almost immediately betrays Brandon and kills him after he's let out of his cell. He has no interest in killing Rick for Brandon's benefit.
On the show, Negan only kills Brandon after he discovers he horrifyingly kills two innocent lives. Negan is so disgusted and disturbed by Brandon that he can't let him live knowing that he's a potential danger to others.
Brandon's show death also parallels one from earlier seasons.
Brandon's death brings to mind the time Carol was forced to put down Lizzie on "TWD." After Lizzie killed her sister Mika and threatened to kill Judith to prove a point about the dead still being alive, Carol realized she needed to kill Lizzie. She was an endangerment to baby Judith and to the other survivors.
Similarly, Negan realized the same thing about Brandon on Sunday's episode of "TWD." Growing up in the zombie apocalypse, without knowledge of video games and planes as evidenced on Sunday's episode, has seemed to take a psychological toll on some of the kids growing up.
That may be an interesting bit to see play out on the upcoming third "Walking Dead" spinoff.
Negan shouts out a direct callback to season eight.
Negan starts to yell out, "Little pig, little pig," something he did when visiting Alexandria back on season seven, episode four.
Back then, it was an intimidating cry to get Alexandria to open its doors and to further humiliate Rick Grimes. On Sunday's episode, it first looked like he was just wandering around in the forst, aimlessly killing walkers. But that wasn't it.
He was letting the Whisperers know he was there, a madman searching for them in the dark. He got exactly what he was looking for by the episode's end when Beta threw him on the ground.