The Walking Dead’s Biggest Moments: Numbers 10-6
7 min read
Man oh man, We’re in the top 10! It’s been a rough road narrowing the list down to 20 moments, but the following are what I think are the single biggest 10 moments from the past 3 seasons of The Walking Dead. Theses are the moments that I felt were most pivotal in the series, and helped further push the envelope as well as help develop a more solid story line. Without further delay, enjoy the rest of the countdown.
10) The Misadventures Of The Dixon Brothers: After Glenn and Maggie are kidnapped by Merle, and Michonne winds up at the prison to inform Rick of their fate, Rick puts together a rescue party to go to Woodbury and free them. Upon reaching Woodbury, and subsequently freeing Glenn and Maggie, Daryl learns that his brother Merle is alive and well inside of Woodbury, and Daryl instantly decides he wants to see his brother. After a gun battle ensues, Rick ends up escaping with Michonne, Glenn, and Maggie, but Daryl gets captured by some of the Governor’s henchmen. After the dust settles, the Governor manipulates the residents of Woodbury into thinking that they had been attacked by terrorists, and one of the terrorists is none other than Merle’s own brother Daryl. The Governor then makes the two brother fight each other surrounded by walkers, and just as things begin to look their bleakest, Rick returns to rescue Daryl. The group, once again successful in their rescue mission, return to their rendezvous point, with Merle and Daryl, and upon noticing that Merle has escaped with his brother Glenn and Michonne argue that he needs to leave. Forced to make a decision, Rick decides that Merle may not be best for the group and upon hearing this Daryl decides to leave with his brother. The Dixon brothers wander the woods, searching for supplies and food and this is a pretty big moment as this is the first time that we get to see them interact ever. This is where we finally get to see that Daryl has become an entirely different person under Rick’s tutelage, while we see that Merle is still very much the same person from the rooftop. The dynamic between the two brothers is undeniably big, and Daryl’s change of heart will affect Merle in a way we’d not know until later on in the season.
9) Farm Ambush: After the events of Shane Vs Rick, Carl shows up and shoots a reanimated Shane in the head, saving Rick once again from Shane’s vengeance. That gunfire draws a large herd of walkers towards the farm, and directly into a group that’s already in disarray. Upon Rick and Carl’s return to the farm, the walkers are already hot on their tails, and thus begins an intense 45 minutes of TV goodness. The farm gets completely overrun by walkers, and the group goes into full blown desperation mode. Hershel is trying to protect his house, and everyone else is in a mad scramble to get off the farm. The barn, which is such a huge symbol of season 2 is set ablaze, and watching it burn down with hundreds of walkers in the background is somewhat poetic, and is an awesome image to end the carnage of that night.
8) I Hear Nebraska’s Nice: Glenn and Rick have to go into town to find Hershel, who’s left the farm after finding himself unable to cope with seeing all his undead friends and family slaughtered. They happen upon Hershel in a bar, and try to talk him into returning to the farm. It looks like they’d accomplished their goal, but before they could head out, the bar is intruded upon by two boneheads who reveal themselves to be a couple of drifters named Dave and Tony. Dave and Tony proceed to tell their survival story, and reveal that they are looking for shelter. They then begin to interrogate Rick, Glenn, and Hershel about their background, and whether or not they have a camp setup near by. It’s not until Dave specifically mentions a farm that Rick senses that these guys could be dangerous, and once the conversation started to get abrasive, we get our first glimpse of the “Ricktator”. Dave pulls out a gun, and in an instant Rick kills both Dave and Tony, making sure to double tap Tony(perhaps foreshadowing a fear of him reanimating?)
7) Shane Kills Otis: I was actually a pretty big fan of Shane, as it’s my personal belief that his character embodies what many of us would be like in reality if faced with the decisions he was faced with. Shane, up until Rick’s return seemed to be a pretty solid minded dude, with his, Lori’s and Carl’s best interests in mind at all times. This is never more apparent than when, after Carl gets shot by Otis, and Hershel reveals his need of a respirator to operate on Carl, Shane volunteers to go and retrieve the equipment. Otis wants to accompany Shane and the two set off for a nearby school that housed medical supplies. Everything goes as planned until Shane and Otis happen to get pinned down by a large group of walkers inside the school. After making a daring escape from the school, Otis confirms to Shane that he has everything they needed and the duo continue to try to escape the ever growing number of walkers, Otis tells Shane he’s almost out of ammo. Shane, knowing it would be highly unlikely that they’d both make it out alive, shoots Otis in the leg and steals the supplies, in the process leaving Otis as walker bait while he made his grand escape. This is where we officially see the beginning of the unraveling of Shane.
6) Shane Vs Rick: We all knew this was coming. This was one of those perfectly executed, slow burn confrontations that we waited for and when it finally happened, it was amazing. Shane, assuming the role of caretaker of Rick’s family after leaving him behind in a hospital, was left steaming after Rick made his triumphant return to Lori. After all, it was Shane who got Lori and Carl to safety, it was Shane who cared for them during Rick’s absence, and it was (most likely) Shane who’d fathered the child that Lori was now carrying. Lori, being ever manipulative slowly started to turn the two against each other, showing sympathy for Shane at times, but also planting the seed in Rick’s head that Shane had gone stark raving mad, and needed to be taken care of. We first see tensions arise shortly after Rick returns to camp, and after investigating a noise, Rick and Shane head into the woods where, without his knowledge Shane actually lines Rick up in the iron sights on his shotgun.From there, things seem to ease off until the camp gets to Hershel’s farm and Shane begins to question every move Rick makes. After Rick goes into town on a run and comes back with yet another mouth to feed, without so much as asking the rest of the group, Shane finally decides it’s time for Rick to go. First, the two settle on taking their new prisoner into town, 18 miles out from the farm and leaving him. They take the young man to a secluded building and plan on leaving him, but he reveals he knows Maggie, as well as the location of the farm. Shane decides right then and there to kill the prisoner, but Rick wants to think about it. Shane and Rick end up getting into a fight, breaking a window on the building, and unleashing a horde of walkers upon themselves. They escape that situation, get back on the highway and Rick tells Shane he still has love for him, but he needs to stay away from HIS family. Shane nonchalantly agrees, and the pair, along with the hostage, returns to the farm. In a last ditch effort to dispose of Rick, Shane hatches a plan to lure Rick into the woods, where he’d kill him. Shane takes the hostage away from the farm under the guise that he’d take him to safety, and instead snapped his neck, killing him. Shane then rams himself head first into a tree and returns back to the farm saying that the prison had attacked him and escaped. Knowing Rick would want to find him, Rick and Shane, along with Daryl and Glenn head into the woods to find him. The 4 split up with Glenn and Daryl going one way, while Shane and Rick went another. After getting deep into the woods Rick admits to knowing Shane wants to kill him, and Shane acknowledges his feelings of Rick’s weakness in this new “kill or be killed” world. Shane pulls his side arm on Rick and argues the point that he’d be a better father to Carl, and better husband to Lori. Rick, ever the negotiator, talks Shane into lowering his weapon and then stabbed him right through the heart. A fitting end to an awesome internal conflict.
