The Walking Dead: Is Lizzie The Real Killer?

One of the most persistent rumors to circulate over the last few months about AMC's The Walking [...]

The-Walking-Dead-Lizzie

One of the most persistent rumors to circulate over the last few months about AMC's The Walking Dead is that Carol Peletier is serving an "exile" for crimes she didn't commit. That is, that Lizzie--the elder of the two girls in Carol's charge--is actually the one who killed Karen and David back at the beginning of the season, and that Carol had taken the rap for her because she's a kid. If you head over to any Walking Dead fan forum or to Reddit, it doesn't take long to find a number of such theories, revolving around not only her attachment to a walker early in the season but also comments made by her sister from time to time about the fact that she isn't stable.

The Walking Dead Internment Lizzie

Most theories, especially by those who have read the comics, revolve around a pair of characters from the books: Billy and Ben. The pair, twin brothers, became a focus of the book for a while after their father died from a walker bite. Ben started torturing and dissecting animals and, ultimately, killed his brother Billy. When confronted about it, he told his fellow survivors not to worry--that Billy would reanimate, since Ben had not damaged his brain. It's the epitome of "creepy kid" stories from Kirkman's comic, and while it's not yet totally clear that Lizzie is a danger to others, she's definitely a creepy kid. Tyreese has been thinking all along that whoever is killing the animals and feeding the walkers is a threat to the group, and probably the one who killed Karen and David. Nobody has yet told him that Carol is gone because she confessed to the deaths. And now, he's apparently on the road with Lizzie and Mika--a perfect opportunity for viewers to learn the truth from Lizzie's perspective. That perspective, by the way, will likely implicate Carol somewhat, too. Why? Well, because even if Lizzie could overcome a couple of adults (plausible, since she has survival training from Carol and they were sick), the bodies being burned suggests somebody who could carry those bodies to a remote location to set the fire. That's probably not the 100-pounds-when-soaking-wet Lizzie. It's plausible enough that Carol could have noticed that Lizzie was gone in the middle of the night and, out trying to find her, spotted the child trying to drag a corpse around and decided that helping her dispose of them was, at that point, the lesser of two evils. That might even explain why she allowed herself to be exiled and to leave the children unprotected from the rest of the group, should the truth come out: she felt guilty for her role, however small. This week's episode, without getting into spoilers, has a brief story beat that will likely throw some fuel on this particular fire. It's hardly conclusive and so small it's easy to miss, but anyone who was already sold on this idea isn't likely to back away from it and anyone who was on the fence might be nudged in one direction.

walking dead lizzie mika

Should Lizzie turn out to be a substitute for Ben, as many people have projected, the question becomes how that story will end. In the comics, it's Carl who kills Ben, secretly and under cover of night, while the adults struggle with what to do about a killer in their midst who is both psychotic and a child. It's a cold and calculated decision that he makes, but he makes it for what he believes to be the good of the group and he makes it without hesitation. The initial discussion about whether to kill Ben actually evoked a similar debate to that one in season two, when Dale tried to talk the group out of killing Randall because it's not what they would have done before the apocalypse, and several members of the group telling him that this isn't that world anymore. In the TV series, it probably depends on when the truth about Lizzie is revealed, and how it's revealed. It's not a stretch to imagine Carol meeting up with Tyreese and the girls before she meets up with Rick, Carl and Michonne. Could Carol--whose focus all season long has been to teach these kids how to live in this dark and violent world--be the one to kill Lizzie for her crimes? If Lizzie were to kill Mika, it certainly isn't outside of the realm of possibility, and the  psychological and karmic punishment that Carol would have to undergo after all of that transpired would leave her a radically changed character, and one Tyreese could hardly debate keeping out of the group when and if they all reassemble.

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