All fans of The Walking Dead remember the epic feud between Rick Grimes and Shane Walsh that ended with Rick killing Shane in “Better Angels” at the end of season 2.
Long before that, it was Shane’s sacrifice and quick thinking that made Rick’s journey possible.
In The Walking Dead season 1 finale, “TS-19,” we see a flashback to the beginning of the end of the world. Shane (Jon Bernthal) sneaks into the hospital to save Rick (Andrew Lincoln) as the military is executing sick patients to prevent them from spreading the infection after they die.
Quickly, the hospital becomes overrun by walkers. Shane realizes that there’s no possible way to sneak Rick out without being killed by the military or the walkers, so he makes a huge, series-shaping decision to blockade the door with a hospital bed, saving Rick from the soldiers and the walkers in the process.
This is the moment that changes everything. When Rick was at his most vulnerable, his friend stepped up and saved his life.
Sure, he also started sleeping with Rick’s wife and lying about Rick being dead, but I believe in this moment, Shane did have Rick’s intentions at heart. He just tried to help Lori (Sarah Wayne Callies) and Carl (Chandler Riggs) get to safety, and that might not have been possible if he revealed that he left an alive Rick inside the hospital with a horde of walkers. Lori could have tried to get to the hospital to save Rick herself, but we know what would have happened then.
Some might view Shane’s choice as selfish. He sure makes a lot of selfish decisions after this moment of clarity. He could have tried to carry his friend who was in a coma out of the hospital, but it’s likely that would have been the end for both of them. There was just no way that Shane could have snuck out of the hospital. He also might have stopped Rick from getting the help that he needed from those drugs at the hospital. It's possible that the bag keeping Rick satiated is what actually kept him alive long enough to wake up.
Instead, Shane chose to give Rick a fighting chance to save his own life by ensuring, to the best of his ability, that Rick wasn’t killed by walkers or the military.
Without that decision, Rick doesn’t survive, doesn’t find Morgan (Lennie James) or Glenn (Steven Yeun), and doesn’t reconnect with his wife and child.
There’s a strong argument that this is one of the last good things Shane does for Rick. Pretty much everything Shane does after saving Rick’s life and protecting Lori and Carl is not exactly what you would expect a friend to do. He even tries to leave in the season 2 premiere, "What Lies Ahead," when they become stranded on the interstate when Sophia runs off with the walkers chasing her. Of course, that leads the group to Hershel's farm, which continues Shane's downward spiral when he realizes there's no going back to how things were with Lori when she thought Rick was dead.
Rick and Shane team up and work together a number of times after that moment in the hospital, of course, but Shane nearly shoots Rick almost immediately after Rick returns from Atlanta looking for Merle (Michael Rooker). When Shane had Rick in the crosshairs and Dale (Jeffrey DeMunn) caught up with him, there was no coming back from that.
Still, Shane did save Rick’s life, and that means something, even if Rick didn’t know it at the time. That decision made everything else that happens in this story possible.
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