Beth Greene (Emily Kinney) has been missing since The Walking Dead Season 4, Episode 13, “Alone.” They should put her photo up on a Terminus map, or at least a moonshine jug, asking if people have seen her. When that car with the white cross on the back first sped off, we came up with three theories on who might’ve taken her. Two of those theories were Gareth and Chris/one of The Hunters. Now we’re thinking Gareth (Andrew J. West), who appears to be the leader of Terminus, might be the TV version of Chris.
The third theory still sounds like the best one, and that’s included below in the six theories on what happened to Beth. Robert Kirkman acknowledged that they left “the fate of Beth and Carol and Tyreese and Judith completely ambiguous” but he also added, “We’ll deal with [their whereabouts] fairly quickly when we come back for Season 5.” So we’re looking for relatively quick fixes here, nothing related to, say, Negan or The Saviors, who probably aren’t showing up anytime soon.
Here are our running theories so far:
1. She’s With the TV Version of Father Gabriel Stokes
Gabriel is a preacher who shows up in TWD comics right around this point. He has a church and Rick’s group takes refuge there for a while on the way to Washington, D.C. In the books, he admits he was a coward who locked the church doors toward the start of the outbreak to protect himself, at the expense of some of his parishioners. What if some of those parishioners were the walkers whom Daryl Dixon (Norman Reedus) unwittingly let in the funeral home? It looked like they were set up, pushed out of the home, possibly by whoever was living there. Beth already said whoever lived there took care of the dead, remembering that they used to be people.
So it’s possible the car with the cross on the back belonged to a preacher, and maybe he “abducted” Beth with the mind to help her. If it’s a version of Gabriel, he may have been intimidated by Daryl’s weapon, figuring he could help save Beth from the walkers but leave Daryl to his own crossbow. Maybe we’ll run into Beth again in Season 5 after Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) and company get out of Terminus and hit the road. Perhaps we’ll see her at a church, or that same funeral home, if Daryl tries to retrace his steps. (Maybe Maggie will even help this time, since Beth is her sister.)
2. She’s At Terminus
One of the first theories about Beth was that she got the express pass to Terminus and she was already being served at Mary’s BBQ stand, or maybe she’s in a nearby train car waiting to be saved/served. Does this one feel likely to you or too obvious? The Powers That Be have been trying to move us away from the too obvious, but it could be just to cover their own spoiler tracks. They won’t even confirm cannibalism as a potential storyline.
3. She’s on Her Way to Terminus
Last time we checked, Beth didn’t know Terminus from the pudding house. She and Daryl were never following signs on the railroad tracks. But if she escapes from whoever took her, or gets them to help her, she could try to retrace her own steps and find the Terminus maps. She could also track Daryl using her newfound tracking skills. Maybe she’d head there, thinking maybe that’s where Daryl would go. If she brought backup, she could help save everyone. Maybe she’ll even find the stash of weapons Rick buried outside the Terminus fence, “just in case.” Don’t forget — she’s the new sheriff in town!
4. She’s Somehow Connected to a Car License Plate in the Warehouse
This is where the mystery gets funky. If you check out the license plate of the car that took Beth, it appears to be something like XH6S781, with maybe the “S” being a 3 or something else. It’s a bit obscured, but it appears to be the same plate that’s on a different car in the warehouse Daryl enters with the Marauders in Episode 15, “Us.” Is there significance there? Did Beth and her “captor” head there and change plates? Or does the show just have one license plate to work with?
5. She’s With Carol, Tyreese and Her Old Babysitting Charge, Judith
Wouldn’t it be funny if Beth just happened to come upon the other Team Prison group we didn’t see on the finale? Unlike Beth, Carol Peletier’s (Melissa McBride) group was on the way to Terminus, so it seems more likely for that trio to be seen there. But maybe Beth finds them, the way Glenn Rhee (Steven Yeun) and Maggie Greene (Lauren Cohan) ended up finding each other and how Carol found Tyreese (Chad Coleman) and the girls after the prison battle. The zombie apocalypse is a small world. Last we saw them in Episode 14, Tyreese was thinking he and Carol might be three or four days away from Terminus. Beth could team up with Carol — and the two people least likely to do a dang thing to help anyone in Season 2 could be responsible for saving everyone in Season 5. That would be cool. And it would be refreshing to put Beth and Carol on the same side when there’s so much shipper debate about which one should have a romance with Daryl. Heck with him! Leave Daryl with Rick and the other alpha males, and let the women run the show.
6. She’s Doing Something Else
As much faith as we’re putting in the Gabriel theory (even if TV Gabriel isn’t called Gabriel) it’s just as likely that Beth is doing something we couldn’t even imagine. We never guessed Season 4 would end in a train car at Terminus, hence the title “A,” so after sharing a bunch of other theories we have to accept that it’s probable that we’re just not going to figure this out on our own.
