The Walking Dead Season Five: Ten Spoilers and Rumors We've Heard So Far

With a preview weekend coming up in two weeks and Comic Con International: San Diego slated for the end of next month, The Walking Dead will have to lift some of its veil of secrecy soon.

The AMC series has done a pretty decent job so far not letting fans figure out any fo the big, key stories they're adapting or plot points we'll see right away...but with whole websites dedicated just to following the production around and finding things out, a few things are bound to leak.

...And they have! What do we know, or think we know, so far? Read on...

Cannibals!

There hasn't been much movement on the cannibal front since the end of Season Four, but one casting notice raised some eyebrows: the studio is apparently looking for a single-leg amputee.

No problem, right? I mean, Hershel was a single-leg amputee before he died and there are plenty of amputees in the comics. It's a thing they do on The Walking Dead.

Well, it's probably worth mentioning that during the storyline that featured The Hunters in the comics, they captured and began to eat Dale. They rendered him unconscious , amputated his leg and then applied a tourniquet to keep him alive so that he wouldn't turn and their "meat" would last longer.

Just saying.

The military

There have been a number of military vehicles spotted around filming locations this season, leading some to question whether there might still be some active elements of the government in the zombie apocalypse. That obviously never happened in the comics, but the show has never been slave to the comics completely

That said, it's equally likely that the survivors are just searching for supplies at abandoned survival depots; Spoil the Dead reported that a military camp with tents and vehicles like the one seen in the Season Four premiere was set up near an abandoned hospital, and that the show had gone on to film at (in and/or around) that hospital for a couple of days.

And before you think "Oh, well, the group is obviously there because they've escaped Terminus and are looking to replace Eugene and Abraham's ride," consider this: there were shipping containers like the ones Rick and company are currently trapped in, spotted at the hospital as well.

Walkers

There has been persistent rumor, seen on spoiler pages and even passed along to us directly, that the walkers themselves would play a key role in at least one big battle (maybe "the" big battle) at Terminus, with the suggestion that the zombies might play a role in helping Rick and company escape.

Since we saw a massive herd during Season Four, and since everyone who watched the show noted that Terminus is not all that well fortified against walkers, it all kind of makes sense...

Missing characters' "fates" revealed

Word is that the Season Five premiere will let fans in on the fate of Beth Greene, Carol Pelletier, Judith Grimes and Tyreese. None of them are at Terminus yet, and Beth had been kidnapped last we knew, so there's certainly a lot of question marks there.

Even though the premiere bit is really just a rumor, showrunner Scott Gimple had confirmed that Beth's fate would be seen onscreen in Season Five.

Father Gabriel arrives

It certainly looks as though he's here, anyway.

The Wire's Seth Gilliam, who has been assumed for some time to be playing Father Gabriel Stokes in the upcoming fifth season of AMC's The Walking Dead, has been spotted on the set of the hit drama wearing a clerical collar.

You can see the shot on Imgur, via the Spoil the Dead forums. Registration is required for the latter, but the former popped up on our Google News feed's image search.

The car that took Beth

Speaking of Father Gabriel, is he the one who kidnapped Beth Greene in Season Four?

Many fans believe that the car that kidnapped Beth Greene near the end of last season had a cross in its back window, pointing to Stokes as the obvious choice for who had taken her.

That same car or one very much like it arrived on set earlier this month, again suggesting that news about Beth was coming soon.

Carol at Terminus

According to various spoiler communities and the entertainment news sites that have picked them up, Melissa McBride (who plays Carol) was spotted in or around Terminus during filming for one of the first episodes of the season. Tyreese and Judith weren't wtih her, although most of the speculation online revolves around them hanging back to stay safe, since Tyreese is injured and Carol is a badass. There's of course some mumbling that they could be dead, but there's nothing to substantiate that.

Somebody dies

There were actually rumors that Glenn Rhee had died during the filming of an action sequence earlier this month, but when he arrived on set this week in wardrobe and appeared at a location and with a group of characters unlikely to be a flashback, Robert Kirkman's dismissals of those rumors seemed pretty well-founded.

Still, big action scenes on The Walking Dead rarely pass without incident and there are some characters, including Tyreese and Bob Stookey, who seemed like they should have been with that group (which included Tara, Glenn, Maggie and Sasha) but were not. Tyreese may not have joined the survivors yet (although how long they can keep up the "everyone's apart" storyline without it straining credulity when they all come together is anyone's guess) but Bob? Hmm...f

Terminus goes away quickly

It's been a month already since members of the community reported seeing that the letters in the windows of Terminus had been removed, indicating perhaps that the location was wrapped for the season -- and that at a minimum, they were likely done with external location shots. There was a series of explosions there and some charred bodies that has alternately been considered the climactic battle between Rick's survivors and the Termites, or a flashback to what it is that made the residents of Terminus so cold and created the need for their memorial room.

Beth, Rick and Daryl reunited

Word is Daryl Dixon, Rick Grimes and Beth Greene will reunite in a residence -- possibly that of Father Gabriel. No photos were taken of that, or of Emily Kinney, who plays Beth, at all yet this season so treat this as speculation.