Rick Grimes

• 1. Introduction

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  Rick Grimes is a small-town sheriff's deputy who is shot in the line of duty, falls into a coma, and wakes to a world where the dead walk. He is the central figure of The Walking Dead, a post-apocalyptic story that began as a comic book and grew into a television series and a wider franchise. Writer Robert Kirkman and artist Tony Moore created him, and he first appeared in The Walking Dead #1 in 2003. On screen, Andrew Lincoln plays him. In the comic, the series ends with an epilogue set decades after his death.

  Before the collapse, Rick is a husband to Lori and a father to Carl. Over years of survival, he is forced to answer a hard question. When protecting the people you love means doing terrible things to strangers, how much of yourself can you keep? Friends become rivals, and rival communities become enemies. The documentary follows how his answer changes, and then asks what becomes of such a man when he seems to vanish altogether.

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• 2. Playing the Everyman

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  Richard D. Grimes is the name on television, while the comic book calls him Richie. Andrew Lincoln won the part in April 2010. Robert Kirkman felt the actor was an "amazing find".

  Lincoln went looking for models before he began. He drew inspiration from Gary Cooper in the American western High Noon, released in 1952. He also looked to the television drama series Breaking Bad.

  The character himself has been described as an everyman, an ordinary person who stands for moral codes and values. That ordinariness is what makes his hardening so costly. Critics and audiences received Lincoln's portrayal warmly, and he earned several award nominations. He won the Saturn Award for Best Actor on Television in 2015 and again in 2017.

  On screen, Lincoln's first scene as Rick, in the premiere "Days Gone Bye", is a gun battle with escaped convicts beside his best friend, Shane Walsh, played by Jon Bernthal.

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• 3. Atlanta and Shane

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  A child named Duane Jones swings a shovel at Rick's head, certain that the stranger staggering down the street is a walker. Duane's father, Morgan Jones, takes the dazed deputy in and explains what has happened to the world. Rick then sets off for Atlanta, where he has heard that survivors were taken for protection.

  Atlanta nearly kills him. On television, a horde of walkers corners him downtown and he hides inside a tank. Glenn Rhee, played by Steven Yeun, rescues him and leads him to a group of scavengers. In the comic, Glenn also pulls him from a mass of walkers and takes him to a camp, where Rick finds Lori, Carl and Shane waiting.

  The reunion has a shadow over it. In the comic, Rick and Shane clash over who leads the group and over Lori's affections, and the fight ends when Carl shoots Shane to protect his father. On television, Lori admits she is pregnant and that she and Shane had been together after she believed Rick was dead. Shane eventually tries to kill Rick, and Rick stabs him in the heart in self-defense. Shane returns as a walker, and Carl is the one who kills him.

  Between those moments comes a farm. Carl is accidentally shot by a man named Otis, and the search for help leads the group to the veterinarian Hershel Greene. On television, Hershel saves Carl with a transfusion of Rick's blood. Later the group discovers he has been keeping walkers in his barn, including members of his own family, in the hope of saving them. When one of them turns out to be Sophia Peletier, the missing daughter of Carol, Rick has to shoot her dead.

  At the Centers for Disease Control, a doctor named Edwin Jenner had whispered something into Rick's ear before the building self-destructed. Once the farm is overrun, Rick reveals the secret to the group: everyone is already infected. He then coldly dares any would-be traitor to leave the safety of the group.

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• 4. Prison and the Governor

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  In the comic, the prison arc runs from 2004 to 2008, and its safe haven cracks almost at once. Rick and Tyreese find Tyreese's daughter Julie dead in a suicide pact with her boyfriend. Julie reanimates, which proves that every survivor carries the infection, bitten or not. Soon afterward, an armed clash with the former inmates leads Rick to his first murder, that of the inmate Dexter.

  Weeks later, Rick, Glenn and the katana-wielding Michonne follow a crashed helicopter to the town of Woodbury, Georgia. Its leader, known as The Governor, rules through manipulation and ruthlessness. He has Rick's right hand severed to force him to reveal where the prison is, and Rick never does. Michonne takes her revenge on The Governor, and the group escapes with a new ally, Alice Warren. Alice later delivers Lori's baby, and the family names her Judith.

  The happiness is brief. The Governor, horribly disfigured, finds the prison and captures Tyreese and Michonne. During the final assault, Tyreese is executed in front of the group, and Lori and Judith are killed as they try to flee. Carl blames his father, and Rick begins to see hallucinations of his dead wife.

  Television stages the same collapse differently. In season three, eight months after the farm, the group settles in an overrun prison. Prisoners try to assassinate Rick and unleash walkers, and Lori dies in the chaos. Rick spirals, answering imaginary phone calls and seeing Lori in the courtyard. The visions stop only when he realizes that his own ruthlessness is the reason they appear.

  Season four opens with Rick trying to live as a farmer, growing crops and raising pigs for the community. An outbreak of illness tests him, and he sacrifices the pigs to lure walkers away from the fence. He exiles Carol after she admits killing two infected people to protect the others. Then The Governor, played by David Morrissey, returns with a militia and a tank, and he decapitates Hershel. Rick finds Judith's cradle empty and flees with Carl, believing his daughter is dead.

  On the road, a threat to Carl drives him to violence in both versions of the story. In the comic, he bites into a bandit's jugular vein. On television, he bites the neck of a man named Joe, the leader of a group called the Claimers. The survivors then reach Terminus, a supposed sanctuary, and the citizens trap them in a boxcar. Inside they find Glenn, Maggie, Sasha and Bob Stookey already waiting.

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• 5. Hope in Alexandria

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  A man named Eugene Porter promises the group a cure in Washington, D.C., and in the comic the promise turns out to be a lie. The capital is as overrun as every other city. Even so, a recruiter named Aaron invites the survivors to the Alexandria Safe-Zone, a secluded township on the outskirts of Washington.

  Its leader is Douglas Monroe, a former U.S. Congressman, and Rick distrusts him. Rick becomes the town's constable and is forced to kill Peter Anderson, a man who abused his wife and child. Peter later murders Regina Monroe, Douglas's wife, during an attempt on Rick's life. As Douglas loses his grip, Rick takes over leadership.

  Then a scavenging party's attack draws a horde that breaches the walls. Morgan and Jessie are among the dead, and Carl is grievously wounded by a gunshot to the head. Afterward Rick concludes that the undead can be beaten if the survivors set aside their differences. He says it is the first time in a very long while that he has felt hope. When a small insurrection forms, it is defused without bloodshed, and Rick forgives the transgressors.

  Television follows the same path with different names. Deanna Monroe, a former congresswoman from Ohio, leads Alexandria and makes Rick a constable alongside Michonne. Pete, the abusive husband of Jessie, tries to assassinate Rick with Michonne's katana and accidentally kills Deanna's husband. With Deanna's approval, Rick shoots Pete in public.

  In season six, Rick finds a quarry holding hundreds of walkers behind a failing barricade. Deanna eventually concedes that she is no longer fit to lead and makes Rick the leader. He is still harsh with the newcomers, and he scolds Tara for risking her life to save Spencer. When the herd breaches the walls, Jessie's son Ron shoots Carl in the eye. Rick then leads nearly all of Alexandria in defeating the herd, and he tells his comatose son that he has hope for the future again.

  Two months later, Rick and Daryl meet Paul "Jesus" Rovia on a supply run. In the comic, a Hilltop ambassador named Paul Monroe visits Alexandria with a similar offer of trade. At the Hilltop, Rick first hears about the infamous Negan, whom some speculate may not even be a person.

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• 6. Negan's War

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  Half of everything is the price the Saviors demand from the Hilltop Colony, a community of two hundred survivors. In the comic, Rick agrees to end the conflict in return for half of the supplies himself. When Saviors ambush his group, Rick's people kill them. He sends the lone survivor back to Negan with a message to stop terrorizing the Hilltop.

  Negan answers by appearing among the survivors with his men and beating Glenn to death while Rick watches in horror. Rick realizes the scale of Negan's army and gives in, letting Negan take all of Alexandria's supplies. Television builds the same dread into a season finale. Negan, played by Jeffrey Dean Morgan, kills two unseen members of the group. The premiere of season seven reveals them to be Abraham and Glenn.

  Rick submits to Negan's rules, and Michonne eventually pushes him to fight back. He seeks allies in the Kingdom, led by King Ezekiel, who at first declines to fight. He also bargains with Jadis and her junkyard Scavengers. In the comic, Ezekiel lives in a high school and presents Rick with another visitor, Dwight, a Savior secretly working against Negan. Rick forms a wary alliance with him.

  On television, season eight begins with Rick standing before the assembled forces of the Kingdom, Alexandria and the Hilltop and declaring that the world is theirs. He offers the Saviors a chance to surrender but says Negan has to die. A clash at a Savior compound shakes him when he opens a door expecting guns and finds a nursery with a baby inside. His partner Daryl executes a man Rick had promised to let go, and the argument over how to fight ends in a fist fight.

  Carl is bitten while rescuing others from burning Alexandria. As he dies, he gives his father a letter urging him to make peace with Negan. In the finale, Rick cuts Negan's throat, but he honors the letter and imprisons him instead. The comic reaches the same choice by a different road. Dwight is forced to shoot Rick with an infected crossbow arrow, then turns on Negan, and Rick slashes his throat. Rick chooses to lock him in a cell, believing that watching civilization regrow from behind bars is a better punishment than death.

  The mercy comes at a price. Maggie and Daryl both want Negan dead, and Rick's choice strains their friendships.

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• 7. The Missing Years

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  A rebar pipe through his body is what stops Rick on the road in season nine. He had ridden out with Daryl to stop Maggie from killing Negan, and the two men fought and fell into a chasm. Later, Rick is thrown from his horse and impaled. He frees himself and lures a huge herd onto a bridge, haunted by hallucinations of his dead friends. When the bridge holds, he shoots a fallen stick of dynamite and blows it up, apparently killing himself.

  He survives. Anne, the woman once known as Jadis, finds him on the riverbank and persuades allies in the Civic Republic Military, or CRM, to carry him off by helicopter. Six years later, Michonne runs Alexandria and still visits the ruined bridge to talk to him. Judith, now nine, has inherited his revolver and sheriff's hat, and she admits she is forgetting the voices of Rick and Carl. Michonne has also given birth to Rick's son, Rick Jr., known as R.J.

  In season ten, Michonne finds his boots on Bloodsworth Island. A survivor named Virgil tells her they washed up in an abandoned boat, which also held an iPhone engraved with a drawing of Michonne and Judith. She leaves the communities to search for Rick. In the series finale, a flashback shows him on Rat Island, wearing an Alliance of the Three jacket, throwing a message into the water. A CRM pilot calls him Consignee Grimes, and Rick surrenders.

  The spinoff The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live shows what happened. The CRM is based in Philadelphia, a secret city whose residents may not leave. Rick has tried to escape four times, even cutting off his own left hand, and the CRM gives him a prosthetic. Lieutenant Colonel Donald Okafor spares him because the CRM classifies leaders willing to die for a cause as A's, unlike the B's who merely want to survive.

  An artist named Benjiro painted portraits of Rick's family so that Rick could remember them, though he never got Carl quite right. When Michonne arrives, the two fight their way free of the city and shelter in a high-rise called Greenwood. Rick admits that years of imprisonment have left him traumatized, and that he can no longer see Carl's face in his dreams. Michonne gives him a new engraved iPhone with Carl's picture.

  Jadis, dying as Anne, urges them to go home. Major General Beale then gives Rick the Echelon Briefing, which he says he has delivered more than 2,500 times. The CRM's scientists, he claims, believe humanity has only around fourteen years left. Beale plans to wipe out other communities and take their resources. Rick refuses and kills him with his own sword. He and Michonne then blow up the CRM's chlorine gas arsenal, and they return to expose the CRM's crimes to the civilian government.

  The Walking Dead: World Beyond adds a final piece. Jadis admits that she traded Rick to the CRM for her new life, but she lied to protect him from a worse fate. She told them he was a B when he was really an A, because an A would have become a test subject.

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• 8. Other Versions

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  In the comic, a time skip carries Rick into his final conflict, with a tribe of thousands called the Whisperers. They disguise themselves as walkers, and their leader is Alpha. Rick has rebuilt Alexandria into a thriving sanctuary, and Carl has moved to the Hilltop to apprentice as a blacksmith. Alpha marches Rick at gunpoint to a building full of Whisperers, then leaves her daughter Lydia with him, calling her a weakness. Rick later reaches a border Alpha has marked and finds civilians from all four communities decapitated, including Ezekiel and the pregnant Rosita. Afterward, Rick trains the joined communities to fight both walkers and Whisperers.

  A stranger Rick appears in Issue 75 of the comic, published in 2010. In a bonus ending, he wakes in an exploding scientific infirmary after Michonne hits him over the head. His missing hand has been replaced with a robotic one. Michonne tells him that aliens invaded and revealed they created the walkers, planning to harvest the survivors for water. A resurrected cyborg Governor then attacks, with a resurrected Lori at his side. Offered the choice to join or die, Rick smiles and prepares for battle.

  That alternate version, called Rick Grimes 2000, returned in a limited comic series, Skybound X: Rick Grimes 2000, released from the 7th of July to the 4th of August 2021.

  Rick also crosses into the companion series Fear the Walking Dead, in the premiere of its fourth season. There he tries to persuade Morgan Jones to return with him, but Morgan decides to go his own way. Morgan later returns to King County, Georgia, where he and Rick first met, to put down his zombified son Duane. Encouraged by his girlfriend Grace, he uses the rifle Rick had given him. Afterward, Morgan makes an open broadcast to Rick, promising to leave the radio open for a few minutes at dawn every day, just as the two men once promised each other.

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