Gem Seddon and GamesRadar present 16 Unbelievable The Walking Dead Fan Theories. Below are three of my favorites with my comments to follow…
14. The show is being told by Old Man Carl
What it means: Rick’s a troubled hero. He’s more beards than a hipster convention, and dodged a gajillion bullets, wire-wrapped baseball bats and the hungry, gnashing teeth of thousands of walkers. Why is he the centre of attention? What makes Mr. Grimes so darn special? Simple: because Carl idolises his father and it’s Carl who’s telling the entire story of the show.
The series will end with a major time skip where we see a much older Carl, with an eyepatch, recanting the story of how he grew up in the zombie apocalypse to someone offscreen. As he wraps up his tale, a walker shuffles nearby. “It’s time go Judith,” he says, as the camera pulls to back to reveal the young woman he’s been talking to – his teenage sister wearing Rick’s old Sheriff hat. She slays the zombie and the pair trot off into the distance.
12. Eugene is responsible for the outbreak
What it means: Eugene is actually who he says he is. Sort of.
Way back when we first met Eugene, we learned that he worked on the Human Genome Project and knew of a virus cure. The mulletted oaf told a massive lie to keep himself safe. Then the truth emerges in season 5. He confesses, revealing that he’s not a scientists. BUT he does say that he “knows things.”
This makes sense when you consider the fact that he also admits to being a “very good liar.” If that’s true then it’s impossible to tell when he’s telling the truth and when he’s making stuff up. The reason this theory has gained momentum is down to what Eugene told Negan this past season: the same damn thing. He worked at the Human Genome Project weaponizing diseases as a way to fight other military forces.
Eugene acts like he’s not exactly the sharpest tool in the shed. But when you think about it, what he’s accomplished reeks of a science background – he made bullets and a poison pill. The way he talks about his “fake backstory” has a ring of authenticity to it. It’s detailed and in-depth. So what if he really was involved with the creation of the virus and it’s his fault that it was unleashed? While he was telling the truth that he doesn’t know of a cure, he’s not coughed up the biggest truth yet: that everything that’s happening is completely his fault.
11. The US is quarantined – because the virus is a botched military weapon
What it means: The USA is the only country to have fallen under the zombie regime, according to this theory. The reason? A military experiment that went horribly, horribly wrong. Fans suggest that a biological weapon was either intentionally or accidentally released, it infected the public, and the US had no way of controlling the subsequent outbreak of flesh-eating groaners. North America is quarantined to prevent the spread to other continents.
That would make for a killer ending of the show: to discover that the entire time the remainder of the world has been happily ticking along, letting North America fall. Sonequa Martin-Green, aka Sasha, even has a concept for how that would play out in the series finale: “How about last shot, last everything, whoever’s there, we get to the coast, you pan out, and you see all this ships blockading, in which you find out that it’s just America.”
Military shenanigans a la the X-Files? This shimmers with a hint of truth. Especially as sister show Fear the Walking Dead kicks off with a bold military presence, as if to imply that the government knew what was happening all along…
My favorite fan theory is that we discover that Carl is the one telling the story of the zombie apocalypse. It makes a lot of sense, would give a fitting ending to the series and we get to see a hero develop from a small child to full-blown apocalyptic leader.
It would be a surprise to find out Eugene was behind the accidental release of the cause of the zombie apocalypse and that could even be tied in with the idea that the zombie outbreak is confined to the US. (Although I find the second part hard to believe.)
