The Walking Dead: 30 most heroic moments of all-time

17. Daryl Finds Sophia’s Doll

Season 2, “Chupacabra”

Daryl almost didn’t survive his solo trek into the woods to search for Sophia. While the others were occupied with other matters back at the farm Daryl was the only one making it a priority to search for Sophia. However, when he borrowed a horse from Hershel to make his search go more quickly, he almost didn’t come back. The horse threw him when it spotted a rattlesnake. And that was just the beginning of his troubles.

First he fell from the high ridge above the creek all the way down to the creek. And when he tried to climb back up he fell again, this time onto one of his arrows that went right through his body. He passed out and when he came to there were walkers just inches from him. He pulled the arrow out of his body to use against the walkers and barely managed to survive.

It took an enormous effort, but he was able to slowly climb back up the ridge. He even was hallucinating seeing Merle who taunted him and drove him to climb out of spite. Apparently that’s what it took to get him motivated enough to get to the top. When he reached the top finally the hallucination of Merle disappeared.

Daryl had managed to grab Sophia’s doll from the creek and climb with it. But as he limped back towards the farm bloody and gray from shock, trauma, and effort Andrea fired at him thinking he was a walker because of his stilted gait and deathly appearance. The bullet didn’t kill him, but did graze him.

Daryl endured an enormous amount of pain and suffering all to try to find Sophia. Finding the doll spurred him to keep looking thinking that she must be close by. Too bad he didn’t know, and that none of them knew, how close by she really was at that time. By then, Sophia was already dead and had been put into the barn, probably by Otis before Carl was shot.