Timeline Tales of The Walking Dead | Dee

Timeline Dee – SPOILER ALERT

Complete summary table at the bottom of the page.

The origins of evil: Alpha’s past

The Dee episode represents the crowning achievement of Tales of the Walking Dead for fans of the original series.
Unlike other Tales episodes, it isn’t a standalone story, but a direct prequel to the original series, focusing on the origins of one of The Walking Dead‘s most iconic villains. This chapter abandons the lighthearted tone of the first episodes to delve into darker psychological drama, revealing the missing pieces of Dee’s transformation into the ruthless Alpha, leader of the Whisperers.

The untold past

• The year of the Apocalypse: The episode is set approximately three years after the global outbreak (but with flashbacks that take us back to a few months after the beginning of the fall), placing itself chronologically in a time frame almost parallel to the events of The Walking Dead‘s ninth season.
• The clash of two survival models: The timeline shows Dee and Lydia aboard The S.S. Remus, a luxurious river steamer transformed into a refuge for elite survivors. This environment introduces a temporary oasis of apparent civilization, which will inevitably collapse due to the naivety of its inhabitants and Dee’s ruthless foresight.

Psychological evolution: from Dee to Alpha

• Rejecting the false normality: While Brooke tries to preserve morals, good manners, and a carefree attitude for the children (including Lydia), Dee sees this behavior as a fatal weakness. Dee knows that the old world is dead, and that to protect her daughter, she must eradicate every trace of vulnerability from her.
• Lydia’s trauma: The episode delves into the toxic and symbiotic relationship between mother and daughter. The child’s trauma stems not only from the walkers, but from her oppressive mother, who comes to view murder and emotional hardship as the only forms of love and protection.
• The aesthetics of survival: It is in this episode that we see Dee take her first steps towards the philosophy of the Whisperers: she learns to blend in among the dead not only with blood, but by understanding their “savage nature”, going so far as to disfigure Brooke as punishment (a symbolic gesture of depriving her civil identity) and finally shaving her hair.

The first encounter with the Whisperers and Hera

Dee‘s finale builds a golden bridge to the main series of The Walking Dead. After escaping from the boat and a desperate murder-suicide attempt (thwarted by Lydia herself, who confesses to “hearing the dead talking”), Dee and her daughter are surrounded by hooded figures moving among the walkers.
Prominent among them is Hera, the original leader of the Whisperers. The episode ends with a macabre and revealing detail: the human skin mask that Alpha will wear in The Walking Dead is not just any mask, but the facial skin of Hera, whom Dee will later kill to take her place as Alpha leader of the group.
This episode also marks the first meeting between Dee/Alpha and Beta.

September 17th, 2013
After leaving the Baltimore basement where they fled at the beginning of the outbreak, Dee (Alpha) and her daughter Lydia found a welcome in a community that sails on a riverboat. Here, life seems to flow as before, between costume parties and refined dinners, under the careful supervision of the group leader Brooke, a former gymnastics teacher. 
Dee can not stand the deep bond that has been established in the over a year of stay on the boat, between her daughter Lydia and the woman, who has entered the girl’s life as a sort of alter ego of her real mother.
September 18th, 2013
When the boat is attacked by an outside group and all passengers are killed, Dee manages to bring her daughter to safety ashore, where she also finds Brooke.
In the final confrontation between the two women, Dee will come to scar Brooke’s face, guilty of having instilled in Lydia’s mind false hopes for a different future.
Exhausted by desperate adverse conditions, Dee decides to end it with her daughter, when the two are surrounded by a group of Whisperers, whose leader is a woman named Hera.
Dee, now Alpha, will end up killing Hera and establishing herself as the new leader of the Whisperers.


PS: the dates of the timeline are approximate but more or less it all happened in those days.