Rick Grimes

Rick wakes in an empty hospital full of bodies. At home he runs into Morgan and his son Duane, who explain what happened: anyone who gets bitten dies and comes back. Rick heads to Atlanta to find his family, gets trapped by walkers inside a tank and is rescued by Glenn. On a department store roof he handcuffs the violent Merle Dixon, who ends up left behind.

At the camp outside the city, Rick reunites with Lori and Carl, and with his partner and best friend, Shane, who got involved with Lori believing Rick was dead. The group reaches the CDC, where Dr. Jenner tells them there is no cure and whispers a secret to Rick before the building blows up.

On the road, a hunter accidentally shoots Carl, and the group takes shelter at Hershel Greene's farm. Lori finds out she's pregnant. The search for little Sophia ends at Hershel's barn, which is full of walkers: Sophia is one of them, and Rick is the one who shoots her. Shane grows more unstable and lures Rick into an ambush in a field. Rick kills him with a knife, and Carl shoots Shane when he comes back. With the farm overrun, Rick reveals Jenner's secret: everyone is already infected and turns after death, bite or no bite. And he tells them the group is no longer a democracy.

The group clears out a prison and makes it home. Lori dies giving birth to Judith, and Rick spends weeks taking imaginary phone calls and seeing his wife around corners. Meanwhile Woodbury, the Governor's town, enters the picture, and the Governor kidnaps Glenn and Maggie. The war between the two sides ends with the Governor's failed assault on the prison, and Rick takes in the people of Woodbury.

Rick steps down as leader and becomes a farmer, but a flu kills several residents. When he learns Carol killed two of the sick, he banishes her. The Governor returns with a tank, kills Hershel and destroys the prison. Separated from everyone, Rick moves on with Carl, reunites with Michonne and, when a gang attacks them, kills its leader with his teeth. The group reaches Terminus, which promises sanctuary, and ends up locked in a boxcar. Rick says they're screwing with the wrong people.

Carol blows up Terminus and frees the group. Rick finds Judith alive and kills Gareth, the cannibals' leader, in a church. After months on the road, Aaron brings them to Alexandria, a walled community near Washington. Rick becomes the town's constable but doesn't trust the residents. In the S5 finale he executes Pete, who had killed the husband of the leader, Deanna.

Rick takes charge of Alexandria. A herd breaks through the walls, Carl loses an eye, and Rick and Michonne start a relationship. At the Hilltop colony he agrees to take out the Saviors in exchange for food and raids one of their outposts. On the last night of S6, the group is surrounded and forced to kneel before Negan, who picks someone to kill with his bat, Lucille. The season ends without showing who.

Negan kills Abraham and Glenn in front of everyone and breaks Rick: he orders him to cut off Carl's arm and stops him at the last second. Rick submits and hands over half of everything to the Saviors. Michonne and the others convince him to fight. He brings Alexandria, the Hilltop and Ezekiel's Kingdom together, and S7 ends with the first battle.

In the all-out war of S8, Carl is bitten while helping a stranger, Siddiq. Before he dies, he leaves letters asking his father to imagine a peaceful future. In the final showdown, Rick slits Negan's throat but orders Siddiq to save him. He announces that Negan will spend the rest of his life locked up, as proof that the war is over.

A year and a half later, Rick is leading the construction of a bridge to connect the communities, but Maggie wants Negan dead and many think Rick protects the Saviors too much. He and Daryl get into a fight and fall into a pit, where they have to work together to get out.

Racing to stop Maggie from killing Negan, Rick is thrown from his horse and impaled on a piece of rebar. Wounded and hallucinating Shane, Hershel and Sasha, he leads a herd onto the bridge and sets off the dynamite with a gunshot. Everyone believes he's dead. Jadis, who once led the junkyard group, finds him on the riverbank and calls in a helicopter that takes him away. The story then jumps ahead six years.

Rick has spent years held by the CRM, the Civic Republic's army. He has tried to escape several times, and once cut off his own hand. Out of hope, he agrees to serve the CRM alongside Lieutenant Colonel Okafor, who wants to reform it from within. Their helicopter is shot down, and the attacker pulls off her mask: it's Michonne.

Jadis, now with the CRM, warns them that any escape will cost the lives of everyone they love. Michonne throws herself and Rick out of a helicopter in the middle of a storm, and the two get married after Jadis dies. They decide to end the threat at its root. Rick learns that Major General Beale plans to wipe out Portland with chlorine gas and kills him with a sword. Rick finally goes home, where he reunites with Judith and meets his son, RJ.

In Robert Kirkman and Tony Moore's comics, first published in 2003, Rick is the lead from issue one and the center of the story for almost the entire run. Andrew Lincoln, who is English, played him with a Southern accent.