Ever since last month, major speculation about the fate of Jon Bernthal’s character of Shane on The Walking Dead has been a major priority. With Frank Darabont developing a new TNT series, rumors that Bernthal will join the cop drama called L.A. Noir have fueled whether or not his role on The Walking Deadwill be coming to an end before the season ends next month. With the character’s fate long known within the comics, and Bernthal becoming an acclaimed actor due to his performance this year, it’s definitely a toss up as to what will become of Shane. Now, a major spoiler has surfaced that reveals whether or not Shane will indeed make it to the end of the sophomore year.

*POTENTIALLY MAJOR SPOILER BELOW*

Roamers and Lurkers forum (via STYD) revealed the following from an alleged upcoming episode that the contributor apparently worked on the production of:

Shane does not make it through the season, essentially Lori puts into his head that if Rick wasn’t around they would still be together. This makes Shane change AGAIN, (he had finally made peace and Lori [frick]ed him up again). Anyway he decides to kill Rick and lures him into the forest chasing after someone you will meet in “Nebraska”. Of course Rick isn’t stupid he realizes nothing is adding up and tries to give Shane a chance to abandon his plans. Believe it or not Rick loves Shane like a brother, anyway he finally calls Shane on it and Shane basically tells him how Carl and Lori will get over his death. Shane has a gun pointed at Ricks face and seconds away from shooting, when Rick starts to negotiate his way out of it, all along pulling a knife out. Long story short he lunges at Shane and buries the knife in his chest.

The contributor goes on to say that Shane returns later as a zombie, and is taken out by Carl with a gun (which is somewhat poetic given that Shane taught him how to shoot).

It should be noted that though this could very much happen, we all need to take this as simply rumors for now. That being said, this is a major spoiler on how the series will take shape from here. It does call back to the death in the comics, where Carl shoots Rick much earlier on in the series. But, there’s A LOT to throw into question here.

Let’s ignore the whole “bringing a knife to a gun fight” equation first. If, and this is a big if, Rick kills Shane, which is sure to be a heartbreaking moment, how does Shane get infected to the point where he becomes a zombie? Walkers aren’t exactly known for leaving dead bodies just lying around, mind you. But, we’ve seen the zombies eat up entire corpses. So, it’s not like Shane would be bit after death, wake up as a zombie, and then be eaten. The pieces in that regard really don’t add up. Unless, however, Shane is biten by a zombie first before this final journey into the woods, there’s plenty of questionable angles as to the additional “comes back as a zombie” tidbit.

The initial death sounds a bit questionable as well. Could Shane be so whacked out of his mind that he would notice Rick pulling out a knife, despite the fact he could kill him in one trigger pull? It’s very possible it could happen, but it just doesn’t sound incredibly believeable.

The Walking Dead returns this Sunday at 9PM, only on AMC.