The Walking Dead: Conspiracy Theories Endure

In spite of a fairly unequivocal assurance on the part of series creator and writer Robert Kirkman that Lori won't be staggering around the prison anytime soon, there's a fairly sizable number of fans who continue to believe that Carl may not have shot his mother. That first night, we mused on the possibility--not necessariliy because we thought it was likely but because we knew that anything that happens off-camera in a show like The Walking Dead is going to be doubted by the fans. Within minutes of when our speculation was published, though, comments Kirkman made to Entertainment Weekly also went live, in which he poo-pooed the notion. "I think the bad version of this show would definitely have a half-alive, half-zombie Lori living in the prison doing all sorts of nefarious things in the background," Kirkman told EW. "But, no, that poor child did shoot his mother and, yeah, we're going to be dealing with that." Granted, he doesn't use the words "shoot his mother in the head and watched her die," but it's likely implied since Carl wasn't going to miss from that distance. The most popular theory floating around online seems to tie into one of the other unresolved issues of the same episode: the disappearance of Carol. They're both alive, the logic goes, with Carol secretly caring for Lori. At face value, this seems to make a kind of sense if you discount Kirkman's denial. After all, Carol was training to midwife for Lori before it turned out that no such plans were necessary or plausible. Certainly discounting it wouldn't be totally out of line--it's not as though creators never lie in order to keep the suspense in the story if someone guesses their twist. The lack of a visible body in either last week's or this week's episode would seem to lend credence to that, as would the fact that Sarah Wayne Callies became one of the only actors ever to not appear on Talking Dead the night her character was killed. All of that is offset, though, by the bloated walker seen this week; who else would he have gorged himself on in that boiler room?