The world of The Walking Dead went to hell real fast. One day, Rick Grimes is a deputy sheriff of a small town trying to do the right thing, and the next, he wakes up in a hospital to find society completely collapsed and the world overrun by zombies. What’s left of humanity is fighting the zombies and each other for survival. There’s no right and wrong anymore, only alive or dead. So when we talk about Rick and his crew, they weren’t heroes in the traditional sense. But they also weren’t the villains. They were just a bunch of people trying to survive the best way they knew how, and in a world gone mad, that means making some ugly choices.
Back in season one, there were still shreds of the old world clinging to people. Rules, morality, community. These were the things they took for granted when the world still functioned. But as the series went on, they realized that morality doesn’t survive the apocalypse. People do… if you’re lucky.
Rick’s group started out trying to cling to those ideals. Remember in season two, episode eleven, Judge, Jury, Executioner, where Dale, trying to save Randell’s life, appeals to everyone’s humanity? He asked the question, “So the answer is to kill him to prevent a crime that he may never even attempt? If we do this, we’re saying there’s no hope. Rule of law is dead. There is no civilization.”
Fast forward a few episodes, and Rick just killed Shane, his best friend. That’s not exactly in the sheriff’s handbook, but in context? You totally get why he did it. It was either kill or be killed. Rick killing Shane is almost symbolic of the death of civilization.
That’s the beauty and the horror of The Walking Dead. It forces us to ask, what would you do if you were in Rick’s boots? Could you make the hard choices? Could you do what it takes to protect your family and your people, even if it meant crossing lines you never thought you’d cross?
The Walking Dead never asked us to pick sides between “good guys” and “bad guys.” Instead, it asked us to imagine how we would survive. Every villain, whether it was Shane, the Governor, Negan, or Alpha, had reasons. Twisted? Maybe. But grounded in something real.
Rick and company weren’t special. They just lasted longer. They got smarter, meaner, and colder. They became the thing others feared, and that’s why they survived. But they also protected each other. They built families out of strangers. They found love, raised kids, and made hard calls no one should ever have to make. And somehow, they didn’t lose themselves completely.
Not everyone made it, and plenty fell along the way, both mentally and morally. But even at their worst, Rick and his group tried. That’s what made them different from the truly bad guys. They still hoped. They still dreamed of a better world, even if they knew they might never live to see it.
In the end, Rick and his people were never “the good guys.” But they weren’t “bad” either. They were something way more terrifying… realistic. They were us, stripped bare in a world where every day could be your last and every stranger might be your killer. Being “not the bad guys” was maybe the best anyone could do.
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