25 most polarizing The Walking Dead characters

13. Randall

Back in The Walking Dead season 2, the decision of what to do with Randall was what finally broke Shane and Rick’s relationship for good. Rick, Hershel, and Glenn ran into Randall and some of the group he was with in a tense exchange in the bar where Hershel was drowning his grief and trying to process the events that occurred in “Pretty Much Dead Already”.

When things went bad inside the bar Rick, Hershel and Glenn escaped only to find Randall stationed on the roof opposite the bar with a rifle. The remaining members of his group left him for dead after he fell off the roof. And in one of Rick Grimes’ biggest blunders, he decided that the would save Randall after they realized Randall had fallen directly on an iron fence post.

Bringing Randall back to the farm kicked off a several episode arc where they tried to decide what to do with him. Shane wanted to kill Randall and be done with it, but Rick was concerned that killing him would send the wrong message to Carl. However, Randall and his group were a real threat to the farm community.

For several episodes, Rick and Shane fought, and Randall tried his best to manipulate every person he came into contact with to free him. The group had almost decided that killing him had to be done when Dale intervened and begged them to have some humanity and leave Randall alive. Ultimately, Shane took it upon himself to solve the problem when he took Randall out to the woods and snapped his neck.

The entire Randall storyline dragged on way too long and while it was very wrong of Shane to use Randall to try and set up a scenario where he could kill Rick it was good that someone finally just killed him because Randall was a burden on their resources and the storyline was going nowhere fast.