Last night’s episode of The Walking Dead helped throw fuel on the fire of a popular fan theory that’s been circulating since last week, when Rick infiltrated a Savior base and accidentally orphaned a little girl.
Spoilers for the current episodes follow, and if you believe this theory, it might spoil a future plot point if it comes to pass.
Walking Dead fans have been trying to make sense of some weird scenes we saw in the premiere, a pair of flash-forwards where a red-eyed Rick appears to be mourning a grave, and then one years later where Rick has a bushy grey beard and lives in an idyllic farming community. We see how much time has passed not just because of Rick’s age, but because Judith has grown from a toddler into a child who looks about 7 or 8.
But…what if that’s not Judith?
Here’s the crux of the fan theory: Somewhere during the Negan war, Judith is killed, probably by accident. That’s who Rick is mourning in the one flash-forward, and then the little girl seen in the far-future vision is instead Gracie, the now-fatherless child that Rick apparently takes to raise as his own. This theory has been amplified by the fact that the girl in the vision is clutching a stuffed rabbit, and there is also a stuffed rabbit in Gracie’s crib when Rick finds her.
The comics are not at all reliable when it comes to figuring out if this is true or not. Yes, Judith is dead in the comics, but she was killed as an infant by the Governor’s Woodbury squad along with Lori years earlier. The show never really follows the comic path at all when it comes to kids. Comic Sophia survived, and never became a zombie. There was a Mika/Lizzie-type situation, but it was a crazy boy, not girl, and young Carl killed him, not Carol. Enid and Beth never existed at all in the comics.
So really, there’s no blueprint here. Trying to think this over, I’m actually of two minds on whether or not I believe this tragic turn is coming. And this week’s episode didn’t exactly clear things up.
We did see Rick go back for Gracie. I mean, he had to, as brutal as his group may be these days, he wasn’t going to let an infant starve to death in a random outpost. For this theory to work, Gracie has to be raised by Rick’s group, and that’s now apparently going to happen.
However, a few things:
- When Rick leaves with Gracie, there’s no stuffed rabbit with her. It seems extremely unlikely that they go back and raid that room for a stuffed animal later.
- Rick passes off Gracie to Aaron. We don’t know if Aaron will end up raising Gracie himself as a daughter, but it seems possible that he could try and cope with the loss of Eric by doing so.
- The entire idea that Rick would lose Judith and immediately replaced her with another white, blonde surrogate daughter around the same age seems a little too on the nose for me. But I suppose The Walking Dead isn’t exactly known for its subtlety these days.
But I don’t know, I can see it. We’re going to need some sort of “Road to Damascus” moment for Rick in the future, one where he decides what kind of group his people are going to be. Brutal executioners like the Saviors, or one that tries to return to a more civilized society. We’re already seeing a huge rift in Rick’s group regarding those two philosophies, with Daryl and Rick in particular seeming poised to butt heads about who should or shouldn’t be spared, and whether honor and truth means anything in this world any more.
I previously thought that Morgan’s death might lead Rick to consider mercy, but given how distraught Rick looked in those future scenes, it very well could be Judith somehow taking a stray bullet in this insane war, and that’s what makes him finally turn the corner and be able to pursue peace to make that idyllic future a reality. And maybe Gracie is his second chance.
Will The Walking Dead really kill off a toddler? It seems extreme, but it’s a pretty extreme show, and three seasons ago we watched Carol execute a pre-teen in cold blood, so anything’s possible. My hunch is that something devastating happens to Rick, and even if all the pieces don’t add up quite yet, I can definitely buy that this is at the very least, a possibility. We’ll have to keep our eye on Gracie this season for further clues.
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