Over on Reddit, a user floated a The Walking Dead theory that I didn’t give much consideration to at first, but the more I thought about it, the more I wanted it to make sense. This is the danger of theories, of course: Being able to put together a narrative to support an interesting theory doesn’t mean that the narrative is right, and it’s easy to feel disappointed when the conclusion doesn’t meet the expectations of our own narrative desires. Still, this one is fun, and kind of makes sense, and would add a really fun wrinkle to the series’ mythology.
Here it is, from user DrGreenlove:
So my dad sent me this and I thought it might have some truth to it: “Bob is immune to zombie bites. He had a pretty significant bite and said it was on the bandage. He’s always the last survivor of every of group.”
OK, the initial response is, NO WAY, right? But think about it. Did anyone else, at the time, try to work out how someone survives, even if they’re bit on the bandage? That didn’t make a lot of sense to me.
Someone else added: “As an army medic, he may of injected himself with many so called ‘cures’ and therefore one of them may have worked.”
Interesting, but here’s where it starts to coalesce a little: We still don’t have answers about the infection and how it started in the first half of the season. What if Bob caused the infection by trying to experiment on a cure. What if he were using those rats to experiment? What if he put the “cure” in the water system, and it worked on some who were exposed (Maggie, Hershel) and not on some of the others? We still don’t have a definitive answer on who was responsible for feeding the rats to the zombies. Maybe that’s another reason why he sought out the bottle during the first half of the season.
Look at this again. Does it look like a rat cut up by a psycho like Lizzie? Or a rat carefully dissected for by a medical professional for experimentation reasons?
Cmal3 adds this thought to the theory:
Lizzie is too obvious, and the rat was perfectly dissected, as others have pointed out. To extrapolate on the theory: what if the flu was somehow Bob’s fault too? Like this cure had nasty side effects that made everyone sick, and that’s how his other 2 groups died. And maybe the alcohol was to sterilize instruments so he could run his experiments. Maybe he’s so gungho on sticking with Maggie because he believes he’s somehow passed the cure onto her and he wants to be sure.
Look: I’m not saying that this theory is in any way right, and to think so may be giving way too much credit to the writers for planning the series out so far in advance, which is not something they’ve done particularly well (they typically plan from half season to half season). I give it maybe a 7 percent chance of panning out, but it would help to redeem the first half of the season, it would make Bob a far more interesting character, and it might provide some hope on an otherwise very grim series. I don’t think it will be true, but I kind of wish it would be.
Hey! Take it easy sister, it’s just a theory.