If you stuck it out through the highs and lows of The Walking Dead then, like me, you were probably an emotional wreck by the end of it. Truthfully, the series was an emotional rollercoaster throughout its run, making us feel all of the emotions on a regular basis across each of those eleven seasons. That's why, in some ways, it's shocking that the stories in the TWD Universe are still being told 16 years after the show premiered.
The spinoffs continue to take fans on all kinds of journeys, with franchise veterans Melissa McBride, Norman Reedus, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, and Lauren Cohan doing that for 6 - 8 episodes a year on Daryl Dixon and Dead City. However, some of those moments in the original series really hit hard - even after all these years.
That's why March 16, in particular, is a day that still resonates with the TWD fandom.
March 16 is the day that Carol told Lizzie to Look At The Flowers
If you're a Walking Dead fan, you'll know the importance of March 16. That date marks the anniversary of one of the series' most haunting, heartbreaking episodes, and it's an occasion that fans dread the reminders of each and every year. See, on March 16, 2014, "The Grove" aired on AMC and, well, we're still thinking about that episode 12 years later.
The fourteenth episode of season 4, this one was set in the aftermath of the prison attack by The Governor, which saw the survivors forced to separate as they retreated to safety. Carol Peletier and Tyreese ended up together, along with Judith, Lizzie, and Mika. However, their safety soon turned into an unexpected danger.
Lizzie harbored a dark secret. As her mental health began to fail, she believed that the undead were actually their friends. Carol and Tyreese tried to convince her otherwise, but the sight that they found shortly afterwards broke both of them: Lizzie had killed her little sister Mika in a bid to prove that she would "return". She then pulled a gun on Carol to prevent her from ensuring she didn't reanimate. She also revealed that she was considering doing the same to Judith, completely unaware of the gravity of her actions and what she had just done.
Carol, torn over her previous actions and lost over what to do in this moment, managed to ensure Mika didn't return as a walker and, eventually, took Lizzie on a walk. Lizzie thought Carol was mad at her for pulling a gun on her so she walked off to look at the flowers nearby: The beautiful, serene flowers. An emotional Carol told her that she loved her and to "Look at the flowers". She then pulled a gun and shot Lizzie, ending her unexpected spiral then and there.
This was undoubtedly one of the most heartwrenching episodes of the whole Walking Dead franchise. Not only was it completely unexpected, the writing here was so strong that it received acclaim from both fans and critics. "The Grove" currently holds a 9.2 star rating on IMDb - and for good reason! It's a moving, emotional, powerhouse of an episode that really drove home what this show was capable of when it was at its best.
It also highlighted how incredible a character Carol is. Prior to this, she had been excommunicated from the prison due to the fact that she killed Karen and David due to the their illness - an illness that could have turned them into walkers overnight and resulted in them killing everyone else. Her cold actions weighed on her ever since, which is why she struggled so much with killing Lizzie. She didn't want to be the person who made the hard decisions because they were also the cruel decisions. But here, she felt that there was no way back - Lizzie was a danger to others and herself. And this struggle ultimately led Carol to reveal to Tyreese that she was the one who killed Karen - the woman he had started a relationship with.
The struggle that she faced also went a long way in differentiating her from the villains that they faced; she had indeed gone too far, but the realization of that, the guilt that she felt, and the grief over all of those losses showed everyone that in a world full of walkers she was, in fact, still human.