Sugar clues¶
The sugar clues are the trail of sweets, from Doug's Jell-O to the mayor's lemon candies to a padlocked fridge of sugar at Ballard City Hall, that gives away the skinwalkers of The Walkers in Skin long before the party understands why.
| Type | Clue trail |
| Aliases | Sugar sample and fridge; the mayor's candies; Jell-O hoard |
| Explained by | Pilot and host biology |
| First appearance | Walkers 04 |
Doug's Jell-O¶
The cold open of Walkers 04 shows a pale, morbidly obese man in a wife-beater walking through the desert with a shovel to a trailer. He passes a large cross and a mirror in the entryway, gets something from the fridge and sits in a recliner, with a human-shaped figure wrapped in something shiny propped in the other chair. He lifts a large plate of Jell-O to his chin and fine gray tendrils spool out of his mouth onto it while his dead eyes stare ahead at the muted TV (Walkers 04).
The cold open of Walkers 06 returns to the trailer. A woman takes the spare key from under a ceramic frog and finds a pile of mail. The cabinets hold hundreds of packages of Jell-O and the fridge holds several big plates of it. She says, "What the fuck, Doug." The man is Doug, and the episode does not explain his connection to the Ballard events (Walkers 06).
The mayor's candies¶
In Walkers 06, Wilford Hiram, the mayor of Ballard, nervously takes a lemon candy from his pocket and chews it. As the party leaves, Rita (as Howard) asks where he gets his candies, and he replies, "Special order. They're from Spain." Dante (as Kurt) notes that the mayor is "popping lemon balls all the time" and being dodgy. Howard's theory is that the mayor has been replaced by a tooth troll, one of the Scandinavian folklore creatures that feast on sugar (Walkers 06).
The sugar fridge¶
In Ballard City Hall, a double-wide converted to offices, Zack (as Huell) finds a ring of keys in a desk and opens a padlocked fridge. It holds bags of large white granules, with a nostalgic smell like an ice cream store. Kurt dips a pinky and tastes it: extremely sweet, and not a drug. It is sugar, and he takes a sample in a vial. Huell checks that nothing is hidden inside a bag. Elsewhere in the building, one desk is full of New York Post issues that stop about three months earlier, with hundreds of Tootsie Roll wrappers on top. The party's theories include a giant fly (Kurt, since they had already fought a giant moth) and the tooth trolls (Walkers 06).
Roosevelt¶
In Walkers 08, mechanics in Roosevelt tell the party that cars have been sabotaged: batteries taken, wires and belts cut, tires slashed, and, they think, sugar put in the gas tank. At the police station, while looking around the break room, Andre notes that a bag of sugar from the coffee setup has been taken, and Dante (as Kurt) reports that the sugar in the break room is missing (Walkers 08).
The explanation¶
During the autopsy, Donald McManley says that with so little digestive tract, any protein or complex carbohydrate would be a real problem for the pilots, and that they could conceivably digest only simple starches and sugars. Dante (as Kurt) asks whether "mainlining bags of sugar would make sense," and McManley answers, "Assuming it works like a human does." Rita observes that it explains why the party keeps finding raw sugar, or in the case of the emptied break room, not finding it. The clues thus make sense as the diet of the pilots (Walkers 08). After the session, Rita revealed that her character, the replica Andrew, was the one who had taken the break-room sugar, since it is all he can eat; see Replication (Walkers 08).