20 game-changing moments from The Walking Dead
Ahead of The Walking Dead's series finale on Sunday, we're revisiting the show's most powerful, shocking, and downright jaw-dropping scenes
TV Features The Walking Dead
Remember when everyone was watching The Walking Dead? At the height of its popularity, way back in the early 2010s, it was the one of the most-watched, and probably the most talked-about, shows on television. Every twist and turn was a collective experience, and if you cared about it you had to watch the episodes live or risk being spoiled.
Now, as the series finale approaches, those conversations are still happening, just with fewer die-hard fans in the mix. There’s enough interest to ensure the surviving characters will live on through a seemingly unending stream of spinoffs and movies (and books and games and merch). Because The Walking Dead isn’t just a TV show based on a comic-book series anymore; it’s a global brand.
In honor of Sunday’s conclusion of the groundbreaking AMC, we’ve put together a retrospective on the show’s most jaw-dropping moments—the ones that shocked us, made us cry, and made us question everything we thought we knew. We’ve even included some bombshells from recent seasons, because it’s nice to know that the show can still surprise us, even after all this time.
54 Comments
Oh you mean the show. When I read “The Walking Dead” I think of the comic.
Telltale Games for me
I would have put Rick biting a man’s fucking neck and killing a bunch of rapist on this list. That was the best “Rick will fucking kill the world moment”.Funny enough, as you said, Shane was nuts but he was right about not trusting human’s as they are so fucking gross.
Yes feral Rick is the BEST Rick.
yup!
My buddied used to just about Furl Duryl and Furl Curol
I can never hear anyone say Carl anymore without hearing it the way Rick Grimes says Carl.
LOL yeah its less Carl and almost more Curl
korl!!!!!
I always remember that as why censoring swear words is fucking pointless on this show. Bites mans throat out blood and gore a plenty. Ten minutes later Rick says “they’re messing with the wrong people” and in the comics it was “fucking with the wrong people.” They even filmed a version with him saying it.
Seriously, him saying Fuck is somehow worse than watching him bite a man’s neck off (who deserved it) and stabbing another fucker over and over (who deserved it). Like good lord, words and sex in this country are worse than violence.
Honestly one of the biggest missteps of the early show, IMO.
It makes me wish they didn’t undercut the train car cliffhanger with Rick’s whole “They’re screwing with the wrong people.”
Totally neutered that line. If they’d have actually let them go with “They’re fucking with the wrong people,” it would have carried so much more weight and really sold Rick as a total badass.
100%.
To this day, I still feel that Lori’s death was a cop-out. In the books, she and the baby were torn apart by walkers during the prison escape.
Also, all of the idiots who went nuts over Glenn’s death. It was in the books, forfucksakes!
Every season, there was something where people here would be saying that they weren’t going to watch the show anymore. That is, until next season when they would comment, again, and say they weren’t going to watch the show anymore because of something else. It happened every season with the same people.
Yeah every season people swear they wont watch it anymore, just to tune in next season. I haven’t watch this or the prior season, but I will catch up with it eventually.
In the comics Lori and the baby are shot during an attack by the governor.
Wait I thought in the book she gets shot during the Governor shootout and crushes the baby.
Well to this day that episode has traumatized me. My daughter was born the next day via C-section. Granted it was actually done in a hospital and with an experienced doctor but gee.
Reminds me of this story: My wife was in the hospital with preeclampsia while pregnant with our son. A nurse recommended Downton Abbey as a good show to pass the time. “It’s such a lovely show, and there’s a new episode on tonight,” she said. So with nothing else to do, we watched it. It turned out to be the episode where (spoiler alert but it’s almost exactly 10 years ago): A main character DIES from eclampsia as a result of giving birth. The next day the nurse came in and was very apologetic. Everything worked out with our son but it definitely made us very nervous. I remember having to show my wife charts on how deaths during childbirth had dropped over the decades…
Lots and lots and lots of people moved on and stopped watching. I’m one.
Yeah, I checked out somewhere between 14 and 15 on this list.
me, too. wish i still liked it, it started out so well. it just got too confusing & boring. the high point for me was carol killing lizzie – a real gut punch.
Yeah, that was the one I’d actually forgotten from this list, and made me think “shit, this show was better for longer than I remembered”.I checked out between 15 and 16, but Carol kills Lizzie is the last of these game changers I remember with anything other than annoyance and or disinterest.
I stopped after the Season 1 finale solely because of the ridiculousness of the CDC headquarters with the talking computer, pitch black office space/war room with neon terminals and glass Star Wars-esque screens, “smart” building with automated blast shielding, etc. I didn’t understand why we needed an over-the-top government building a la James Bond and if that was going to be the tone of the series then fuck that shit. I do have all the comics though. It’s fine enough. Not the greatest long running series but fine. I like the art a lot.
Also, all of the idiots who went nuts over Glenn’s death. It was in the books, forfucksakes!Didn’t stop Game of Thrones watchers from freaking out over the red wedding episode.
I read and enjoyed the comics when the show was only about 3 seasons long so I knew the Glenn death was probably coming eventually (was actually annoyed at first that it was taking so long) and yet when it finally, finally happened that’s when I checked out. I was already on the final straw with the show, but there’s something about the way the show handled that scene just rubbed me the wrong way. In the comic it was sad and shocking but well (lol) executed, on the show it was just nihilistic torture porn that just summed up how soulless and pointless the tv version had become.
My replies have gotten totally Kinja’d.
The problem with the Glenn death is twofold.
First, it came right after they had just done a very poorly conceived fakeout about his death with the whole under the dumpster incident. He didn’t crawl under the cockadoodie dumpster!Second, the totally cynical viewer baiting way they didn’t reveal who Negan killed in that cliffhanger. Totally killed the momentum of the show. Had the Abraham / Glenn two hander been the actual season finale and not the next season premiere it would have actually landed much better.
That 1-2 combo of dumpster fakeout plus the non-reveal in the finale was the last straw for me, too. Stopped watching after that because it felt like the showrunners were intentionally jerking the audience around. I’ll check out threads like this that mention earlier seasons, but I don’t particularly care what happened after I stopped watching, and I don’t miss the show.
And in the books, Michonne got used like a blow-up doll by the Governor and his pals. Should gang rape have been in the show, too? I checked out when I knew Glenn was going to die. Reading the description of the episodes I missed, it doesn’t seem like there was anything worth sticking around for, frankly.
Every season, there was something where people here would be saying that they weren’t going to watch the show anymore. I was in that club kind of. I was coasting along on inertia around season 5 or so (where we had the season of characters alternating walking and complaining about how much life sucks, finding a place to shelter, bad people taking the shelter away, then more walking and complaining about how much life sucks) when I started thinking why I was wasting my time without any real enjoyment. It wasn’t until the fake death with Glen, the brief moment of “Wow, they actually decided to give the show some teeth and kill a lead!” before instantly walking it back when I decided to put thought into action.I’ll drop in on the occasional snark filled recap here or there, but generally I was able to tap out successfully.
I’d have put Beth dies on the list, just cause I loved Beth.I think there’d be more singing in the apocalypse, especially around the fire like that, just to comfort each other. I think that’s probably why music started.
I guess you have to google the videos. I know that part of kinja’s broke, but maybe they’ll show up at some point.
this is when I checked out
Her last line was “Are we out of toilet paper?”
Alexandria really could’ve been a great endgame story for this show. The storyline of our group being practically feral and having to learn how to assimilate back into society was unique — and it could’ve wrapped pretty neatly showing them fend off that huge zombie horde that broke through the gates.
A lot of people were upset with the whole head-bashing episode — but honestly it was the absurdly slow-paced plotting of the war with Negan that felt like the greatest sin to me.
Sounds like the show does have more going for it in the past couple years… meh. I’m happy to reminisce on how much I enjoyed the first 6ish seasons.
I forget when I stopped watching, it was around the time Negan was introduced, but randomly read a review on AVC a couple of years later and they were STILL talking about him like the story hadn’t progressed at all. Doesn’t sound like I missed much.
I watched a few episodes with Negan.He’s a bore.
Sasha’s death should be on here. I checked out after that and the ratings indicate many others did as well.
I don’t even remember who that is
See..I’m not a fan of the Walking Dead show , I mean , in a nutshell , “people are the real monsters “, and “the real walking dead were really the people we met along the way” .And most of the time it just peddled grimdark misery, so about one season was enough for me.Howeve ..I ended up reading the reviews on Io9 , where Rob Bricken , who seems to like the show about as much as I do (i.e. not at all), just gravely plods along , chewing up each episode and leaving behind reviews that are at least entertaining.BUT!! after some spinoffs of various kinds , the powers that be made Tales from the walking dead . Which was , completely ignored here . And it (for a few epiosdes ) was something the regular TWD isnt ..it was FUN!Terry Crews and Olivia Munn in a fun! roadtrip.Parker Posey and Gillian Bell are stuck in a zombie sorry walker based groundhog day .YES straight up scifi/fantasy fun! in a show about how you should kill your loved ones to save them from a worse fate etc etc .
Goose from top gun as a scientist years into TWD’s future in what is pretty much a nature documentary about ZOMBIES! (screw calling them walkers)A whodunnit mystery! A spooky witch episode! It was different!..the rest of the series varied in quality , from what I can tell the regular ‘walking’ fans on reddit absolutely hated them all , except one that was a prequel to the whisperers , and more like a regular episode.*So it’ll probably be cancelled.Here’s a trailer that wont play for anyone because kinja is completely beyond broken at this point.Anyway lets all remember , that despite the grimdark , this is TWDs comics true and completely canon ending is about superhero cyborgs fighting aliens :(*to be fair most of them seemed to be ultra serious 14 year old neckbeards who mocked the characters “lack of discipline “, but would literally be zombie chow 15 minutes into the first episode . )
Before I click through I’m going to guess at least 75 percent are a variation on “Rick’s decisions result in someone’s death.”
He doesn’t even have to do anything – there was one episode where Rick drives past a guy with a backpack, who presumably had the skills to survive up to that point, and on the way back he’s dead. At that point I decided it’s just that everything that comes near Rick dies.
It started chasing its tail pretty quickly I felt, but the scene from the pilot featured here suggested something pretty great between bicycle woman and his friend battling whether to shoot his zombie wife. It should have lasted about four seasons though.
This horse has been beaten to death.It’s way past time to put it out of its misery.
I would have hit the initial showdown with Negan’s crew, that resulted in that exploding truck out of nowhere. It had my wife convulsing and pumping her fists on the subway, and a few years later when I watched it, I knew exactly what scene had caused her to freak the fuck out.
To me the main game changer was season 2 and the reveal that the little girl they were looking for was in the barn. This was so damn obvious from the first few moments that they arrived at the farm and were told to keep away from the barn. This showed me the show actually had no game and was the beginning of the decline. How it got this far is beyond me, i gave up before the Terminus arc.
Um…it wasn’t Carol that delivered Lori’s baby, it was Maggie. Carol had been preparing to deliver the baby, but when the walkers got in, Lori ended up hiding with Maggie and Carl, and Carol was nearly killed by walkers but was saved by T-Dog who sacrificed himself to save her. Maggie performed the C-section, and then Carl shot Lori before she could re-animate.
I watched this show up to the first couple episodes of season eight, and then decided it would just be easier to read the books, which were ultimately more satisfying. Re-watching the first few clips here reminds me of how the good show could be in its early seasons before it began to stretch everything out indefinitely. (Although finally seeing how they filmed the ‘heads on pikes’ scene in season nine here was pretty cool.)
I can’t recall which season I dropped out at, but it was pretty late – the Whisperers were a thing, and Negan was locked up. The one good stomach-clench came for me around the middle, when everybody doused themselves in guts so they should shamble undercover through the horde, but this one poor panicky kid who might’ve been autistic started stammering “Mom…Mom!!” and the episode ended.Next episode, that kid and his mom totally got fucked up immediately, as expected, they didn’t have the plot armour of the longtime leads. But as an episode break, it worked.
Can’t wait for Rob Bricken to not pay attention while watching the finale and be confused by things that have been explained in the episode.
Germain is way, way worse about it.
Negan was my quitting point. His overacting was terrible, the writing surrounding him was terrible. I couldnt get through any more of that.
The Sophia in the barn bit was where i started to realise the show was just getting worse. As soon as we knew there was something about that barn i knew she was in it along with other walkers. It was obvious. And that theme just kept on rolling. You knew what the show was gonna do before it did it, nothing became a surprise. I watched for a few more seasons but had to dump it at Terminus.