The Walking Dead: Seven Predictions For the Rest of Season Four

With only a handful of episodes left, it seems that AMC’s The Walking Dead is getting further away from anything resembling a conclusion to this year’s issues, rather than closer.Between the dwindling time remaining in the season and promises of some kind of “happy ending” from the Powers That Be, fan expectations for certain events to take place and particular locales to make their debut may or may not happen by the end of March, when the show’s season finale is expected to take place.There have been some hints dropped, though, and there’s at least one supposedly-major player out there that hasn’t yet appeared on-camera. What can it all mean? We’ve got some projections for the rest of the season, beginning with tonight’s “Alone,” which airs at 9 p.m. Eastern.

And, yes, not only did they take one of the principal cast, but that character got one of the most memorable deaths in The Walking Dead history out of it. That was Dale Horvath, though, and on the TV show, he’s been gone for quite a while. When he died, I vaguely remember producers saying that they had another character in mind who could “take” his death to make it work, but it would be difficult to speculate who that would be, if indeed it happens.That said, we do have a whole batch of survivors who were either dead at this point in the comics, or didn’t exist at all. Carol, Tyreese, Daryl, Lizzie, Mika and Beth could all die and not impact future storylines at all, assuming (which of course you can’t really do) that the show plans to follow the comics faithfully.Again, the comics aren’t necessarily a foolproof indicator of future storylines, and some of those characters are not likely to die anytime soon. Nevertheless, having all of those people collected into a pair of groups traveling together seemingly makes one or more of them vulnerable.

Around the same time Rick’s group was dealing with The Hunters in the comics, a pair of recently-orphaned twin boys named Billy and Ben stepped to the forefront back at the survivors’ own encampment.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 on the road with Carol, Lizzie and Mika–a perfect opportunity for viewers to learn the truth in dramatic fashion.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.