The five best deaths from AMC’s The Walking Dead

Sophia

The first of what I consider the best deaths has to be one of the earliest major deaths in the show: Sophia.

Sophia, if you don’t remember, was Carol’s daughter. Her actual daughter. And, as season 2 began, while getting out from under a car she hid under to avoid a herd of walkers, she got spotted by two stragglers, who chased her into the woods.

Rick followed, caught up with her, brought her to a small creek, and lured the walkers away, after instructing Sophia how to get back to the highway the group was stuck on; That was the last time we saw her alive.

When we saw her again, it was in the season 2 midseason finale, “Pretty Much Dead Already”, where, after Shane broke open Hershel’s barn to reveal the walkers of Hershel’s friends and family (Whom the group summarily gunned down), one last walker slowly made its way out of the barn: Sophia.

With a bite on her left shoulder, Sophia’s walker staggered out of the barn, whereupon Rick put her down.

What makes this death so good, you might ask? Impact.

Think about this: All of the badass aspects of Carol that we love today, were born out Sophia’s death. Her death changed Carol, slowly hardening her, making her both braver, but also, more violent. Basically, from season 3 to about season 7, we watched Carol, who started out as just a very nice, if timid, lady, become a pragmatic survivor and, to a certain degree, a hardened killer. That probably wouldn’t have happened without Sophia’s death.

But, it was more than just Carol Sophia’s death impacted: It was everyone.

Sophia’s death was sort of a loss of innocence for the group. It confirmed for them that things were never going to go back to what they were, and confirmed for us that The Walking Dead was not going to pull punches. Where other shows might have avoided it, The Walking Dead showed that people, even the kids, were going to die, and, it was not going to be pretty.

From this point forward, the show, which had kind of felt like it was dragging along, began to pick up the pace. In story, Sophia’s death only served to accelerate Shane’s mental decline, as more and more, the world was becoming too much for him to adjust to. Rick, meanwhile, now forced to put down the walker of a little girl he’d tried so desperately to protect, had crossed a threshold, where he realized just how brutal the world was, and just what he would have to do to ensure that he, his family, and his group would survive, as evidenced by how quickly and brutally he dealt with Dave and Tony only one episode later.

Sophia set so many standards for how death should and would be handled in The Walking Dead: Raw and devastating.