The Walking Dead: Who Is Gareth?

Andrew J. West, best known for his role on Greek, will finally join AMC's The Walking Dead tonight as Gareth, a character promised at the time of his casting announcement to be a major player in the show's fourth season. Warning: What comes next is a mix of speculation and actual spoilers. If you don't want to be spoiled, don't continue down the page. Because of the "major player" thing combined with the "nobody has seen him yet" element, most fans have figured that he will be a fairly major figure at Terminus, where we've been headed for the entire second half of the season. It appears they're right, as an overseas TV spot for the episode features Gareth greeting Rick, Carl and Michonne at Terminus -- although not everything goes well (shocking, of course). We don't know a whole lot about his character, but we'll go on what we do know here, and try to make some educated guesses.

A TV version of Chris (leader of the Hunters) There is at least one armed gunman atop a building in Terminus, who fires down at Rick, Carl and Michonne when Gareth drops his hand (from the wave/salute shown above). This not only suggests generally that he's set a trap, but more specifically some fans have suggested it's reminiscent of something that Chris, the leader of The Hunters, did in the comics. The group, a roving band of cannibals, were headquartered out of an isolated, rural house in the comics. They would stalk, trap and kill other survivors for their meat, eating them slowly and putting tourniquets on their wounds so that their victims would last longer in a world without refrigeration. Keeping their victims alive as long as possible also had the added benefit of preventing them from reanimating before the meat was off the bone. The Hunters first appeared in the comics at around the same time that Billy and Ben died (characters who have TV counterparts in Lizzie and Mika, who were killed in "The Grove" two weeks ago). As such, each new group to pop up has been greeted with "will they be The Hunters?" questions from fans...but in fact it seems likely that The Hunters will be merged with the St. John Dairy Farm cannibals from the Telltale Games series and allow the TV series to have a version of the story all their own that can incorporate the best elements from each of the two previous "cannibal" storylines.

Andrew or Danny St. John Of course, that being said, he could just as easily be a take on one of the St. John boys (cannibals from the St. John Dairy Farm and sons to Brenda, who many fans think could be the physical inspiration for Mary's character design), or the TV version thereof. Like Terminus, the St. John Dairy Farm has more creature comforts than most locales in The Walking Dead, including a generator to give some electricity. The brothers are essentially farmhands, helping their mother since their father isn't around (probably dead) and, well, zombie apocalypse and all. Cuts down on career prospects. Again, though, even if he's intended to be one of these guys, or an amalgam of the two, he may not be named St. John or he may have characteristics of Chris or other characters.

Alexander DavidsonThe Hollywood Reporter suggest that he could be a version of the founder of the Alexandria Safe-Zone -- and because of the hopeful messages being sent out by Terminus all season long, it has drawn inevitable comparisons to Alexandria. One of the few genuinely good areas Rick and company have encountered in the comics, Alexandria was formed by Davidson, who was a bit of a cad. A former Security Liaison For The White House, he was the former best friend of Douglas Monroe before Douglas unseated him and exiled Davidson for crimes against the community, condemning him to die at the hands of zombies (his death is never specifically dealt with in-story, but Robert Kirkman is on the record as saying the character is gone and that leaving some unresolved stories from time to time is more like real life). The same THR story also suggest that Gareth could be a proto-Negan, but that's very unlikely. Besides the fact that Negan requires a lot of setup that they haven't yet done here, producers have said that they have a general plan to introduce the character way down the line. He's also so Governor-like that it would be difficult to do the two of them back to back with many of the same characters and not have it seem like a bit of repetition. The gulf between the last appearance of The Governor and the first appearance of Negan in the comics allowed a lot of new characters to be introduced, a handful of characters to die, etc., and it meant that the group going up against Negan's siege in "All-Out War" is materially different from the one that battled The Governor at The Prison.

Paul Monroe (Jesus) This one's a way-outside chance but not impossible. Paul Monroe is a strong character, very badass and potentially quite dangerous. He's very friendly and has never presented a serious challenge to Rick and his group, but Rick didn't trust him when he first appeared and he did have to (gently) defend himself to prevent himself being killed or abused. He surrendered himself to their custody as a sign of good faith. Could the brief show of force we've seen in the ads be more about establishing ground rules than actually trying to hurt anyone? If so, a remix of Jesus is a (very remote) possibility.