SEASON 2

Comic pages from The Walking Dead No. 11; art by Charlie Adlard and tones by Cliff Rathburn.

Season Two

Battle of Cain & Abel

A new showrunner, compelling cast members, a farm overflowing with secrets: Season 2 kept viewers riveted. At its decaying heart was Rick and best friend Shane’s struggle for dominance

BARN RAISING Carl and Rick defend against a herd of walkers.

WELL BEFORE FANS WERE TREATED TO THE onscreen thrills of season 2, the series experienced its fair share of drama behind the scenes. Showrunner Frank Darabont, credited with shepherding the series to television, was abruptly pushed out after disagreements with AMC network execs only a few days after taking a promotional victory lap at 2011’s San Diego Comic-Con.

“It’s definitely not easy,” Robert Kirkman said at the time. “Frank was a very big part of this show from the get-go.” No official reason was given, but rumors swirled about a budget dispute, quickly denied by AMC president Charlie Collier, who insisted, “It wasn’t budget-related at all.”

Fans and critics were also nervous, but it was Darabont himself who took his removal the hardest. He claimed to have stopped watching the show entirely and two years later filed a lawsuit against AMC, accusing the network of breaching his contract and denying him millions in profits.

Back on-set, Darabont’s second-in-command, Glen Mazzara, rose to the top job and acknowledged the challenge ahead. “I did have a lot of mixed emotions,” he admitted. “Not only was I then terrified about being the guy who could possibly mess up The Walking Dead, but I also felt bad for my friend.” Luckily the show was on the rise: The high ratings of the first season persuaded the network to increase its season 2 order to 13 episodes.

Meanwhile the dramas onscreen saw Rick’s band of survivors leaving Atlanta behind. While looking for Carol’s daughter Sophia they discovered a farm hidden in the woods—a potential safe haven. There they found Hershel Greene (Scott Wilson), a stubborn old widower with medical experience and a strong moral compass. Hershel would become a central figure, as would his daughters Maggie (Lauren Cohan) and young Beth (Emily Kinney).

Close quarters led to new beginnings: Lori’s pregnancy became known, and a romance blossomed between Maggie and Glenn. “It’s cool to have a beacon of hope and light in this cavern of doom,” said Steven Yeun. But it was the simmering feud between Rick and former best friend Shane that defined the survivors’ peaceful interlude on Hershel’s farm.

On the surface it was an argument about the missing Sophia: Rick insisted the search continue; Shane pragmatically believed that extending the hunt only endangered the rest of the survivors. For Rick, refusing to give up on Sophia meant holding on to his principles. Shane’s judgment was wholly overshadowed by his unpredictable behavior and fueled by his all-absorbing jealousy of Rick—who had the wife, family and leadership role Shane had temporarily enjoyed.

Their showdown left Shane dead and Rick changed forever. And everyone learned the grim reality: The infection was already inside them. In the end the group fled the farm and started over on the highway. Except for Andrea—separated from the others, she had a fateful encounter with a mysterious woman wielding a very big sword. —RAY RAHMAN

CLOSE ENCOUNTERS From left to right: Shane, Rick, Otis (Pruitt Taylor Vince), Otis’s wife, Patricia (Jane McNeill), Maggie (Lauren Cohan), Hershel (Scott Wilson) and Carl, immediately after a hunting accident in the woods.

SFX artist Greg Nicotero adds gore to a dummy walker before the cameras begin to roll.

RUN AND GUN Glenn, trapped when he went searching for Hershel, prepares to face off against a human threat.

A walker cracks the windshield of Lori’s vehicle with its head as she wakes from unconsciousness after her car accident.

Delirious from his injuries, Daryl begins to hallucinate his older brother, who’s been missing since season 1.

SIX FEET UNDER From left to right: Patricia, Hershel, Maggie, Beth (Emily Kinney), Jimmy (James Allen McCune), Glenn, T-Dog, Andrea, Dale (Jeffrey DeMunn), Shane, Rick, Carl, Lori and Daryl mourn their fallen in the aftermath of discovering the barn’s grim contents.

LOVE BITES Glenn and Maggie in a stolen embrace.

When the feud between Rick and Shane boils over, the two duke it out in a municipal lot, and Shane topples a motorcycle on Rick.

Shane rises again as a walker.

SURVIVAL TACTICS

GETTING BY IN A WALKER WORLD

If anyone can live through the undead and human horrors of Zombiepocalypse, it’s Team Rick. Here’s some of the grim strategies they’ve developed to outsmart the killer hordes.

EVERYONE’S ALREADY INFECTED

Rick learned this secret from Dr. Jenner: Everyone will reanimate as a walker, and the survivors need to be ready to put them down.

BITES DON’T MEAN IT’S OVER

An untreated bite brings infection, fever and eventually death. But quick action (like an amputation) before the infection spreads might stave off death—if you survive the surgery.

NOISE AND LIGHT ATTRACTS

It’s one of the first things Rick learns from Morgan. So while in unknown territory, keep it dark and quiet. Stealth weapons, such as a crossbow or sword, are preferable to guns.

“THEY SMELL DEAD, WE DON’T”

Rick and Glenn slather their clothes with walker guts and gore to test this olfactory theory in a first-season gross-out moment.

The Moment

SCOTT M. GIMPLE Q&A

Zombie Sophia Walks Out of the Barn

The Walking Dead’s blending of heart and horror has never been more powerful than when the anguished search for Sophia, which stretched throughout the first half of season 2, came to a close. When Carol’s daughter emerged in zombie form from Hershel’s barn in “Pretty Much Dead Already,” Shane and the others stood in stunned silence. Then Rick finished the job, putting down the young walker. Scott M. Gimple, who wrote the episode and now serves as the series’ showrunner, reveals what it was like on-set, how the climax was partly inspired by Seinfeld and what it meant for the evolution of the show. —D. R.

What can you tell me about the shooting of this pivotal scene?

I remember the day building and building with emotion. A lot of horrible things have happened on The Walking Dead, with this story of these characters going through an increasingly deteriorating world, but this was one of the big ones. Rick wanted to be the guy who would look for the little girl who was lost. Shane was the realist who didn’t. Michelle MacLaren directed it, and when she called cut after Shane gave that speech before he shoots the walker that Rick is holding, somebody on the camera crew uttered a very supportive profanity with his performance. It was just a remarkable performance by Jon Bernthal.

I had designed the script like an episode of Seinfeld in a lot of ways. All of these disparate stories crashing together at the end. So everybody had a story that tied them up in some way emotionally, and it all came together in this moment. Meanwhile they find out about this threat in the barn right under their noses. It was just one of those moments that defined the show because it had these spectacular walkers coming out and this violence that was very much contextualized with a heartbreaking act.

This isn’t a kick-ass thing they’re doing. This is somebody saying that the world is dead, which was Shane, and to be a realist. It was almost like shooting down idealism. Emotionally the energy felt like it changed and that things have heightened. It was a remarkable day. It was all these different parts of what makes a show come together in this perfect moment. It’s the kind of stuff I’ve been trying to shoot forever since.

There was a lot of bellyaching going on among fans during the search for Sophia, with people saying “This is taking way too long.” But then everyone loved the payoff, right?

That’s one of the lessons I learned: The audience wants to know things sooner rather than later. In that case I think if they knew sooner, it would have been denied some of the impact. The audience, in some ways, had to suffer along with the characters. It made them bound in some way so that when you had that final moment, it wasn’t just the characters feeling that. The audience felt it more because they had put in that time on that search.

It’s riskier TV, I guess, because you’re asking the audience to go through some hard stuff to elicit an even bigger emotion and an even bigger payoff at the end. I loved it. It was a great experience doing that.

Why is Rick the one who has to put that bullet in Sophia?

Because it was about him changing. Because it was about him accepting some realities. So many seasons are about Rick’s transformation, but this was a big one. He was the one strong enough to do this. Nobody else stepped up to do it. He did. If he was strong enough to look for the little girl, he was strong enough to put her out of her misery when she was found to be a walker.

It’s always a big day on-set when it’s someone’s death scene. How was that for the young Madison Lintz, who played Sophia?

She was remarkable and was an incredible pro. In many ways she was and is an old soul. Madison had to come out as a walker essentially onstage. The entire cast for the most part was lined up in front of her and then all of the cameras all around her.

It was so theatrical that she basically stepped out from behind the curtain. She came out and it was horrible, so she did her job incredibly well. The acting in that scene was heartbreaking. It was one of those days where everybody was topping one another in the performances. Madison absolutely did that. For seven episodes to crash into this 10 seconds, it’s an incredibly important moment.

WRITER TO SHOWRUNNER Known for his intricate, character-driven scripts, Gimple was installed as the series’ third showrunner at the start of season 4. He later made some hard decisions, defending character deaths as a means of maintaining realism and establishing stakes. “You do what’s best for the story, first and foremost,” says Gimple. “It’s scary to lose characters and a tool in your toolbox, but so much of what we do on this show is about loss.”