Walking Dead Season 5 Spoilers: Who Is Gareth and What's Going on at Terminus?

AMC's The Walking Dead ended its fourth season in brutal fashion this week, leaving fans chomping at the bit for any scrap of news regarding Season 5.

*** Warning: Season 4 Finale Spoilers Follow ***

Following the battle against the Governor that left the survivors unable to stay at the prison they had called home, they ventured their separate ways with a similar goal in mind: to reach Terminus, whatever that might be.

Terminus lies at the end of the railroad and it's a community of people whose intentions may have already been guessed, but which weren't made clear in the final episode.

Viewers were left with Rick, Carl, Michonne, Maggie and Glenn being held prisoner by the people of Terminus. Rick's final line, "They're screwing with the wrong people," implies a battle between the two groups. So who could the residents of Terminus be? And what of Gareth, the character some have speculated will be next season's villain?

The Hollywood Reporter report that the man playing Gareth – Andrew J West – will be a series regular in Season 5, and later reported that his character is a "remix of sorts of an unidentified character from the series". By which it means the comic series on which the TV show is based.

The Walking Dead's creator Robert Kirkman however has made it clear to TV Guide that the new character is "definitely not the villain of Season 5".

Of course you can't always trust those in charge, as misdirection may be in their best interests. That said, let's move on to the Terminus group on the whole and then get back to Gareth later.

As soon as Terminus – a locale invented for the TV series – was revealed a lot of fans guessed that it would be a community of cannibals. While it wasn't stated clearly by the show, we can certainly infer that they were correct. First there's the shot of someone from Terminus, a woman behind a grill. It's a shot meant to mirror a shot last season of Carol behind a grill at the prison – a grill which was cooking animals rather than humans.

The contrast makes sense, of it could just be another tease. However the most conclusive proof shown comes in the finale, when we see a pile of bones and organs in the grounds of Terminus. Among them viewers were able to spot what appears to be human skulls and spinal cords.

In the comics the cannibals that cause our heroes grief are called The Hunters. Driven to cannibalism following the undead outbreak, they were eventually driven to eating their own children before deciding to hunt survivors.

This brings us to the leader of The Hunters. Called Chris, he shares some similarities to Gareth, but vague ones. His pre-apocalypse life is a mystery and his physical appearance and age are similar to the character that's been introduced.

The Walking Dead will return for its fifth season later this year.