Characters / The Walking Dead (2010): Carol Peletier

The Walking Dead Main Character Index
Rick's Group | The Grimes Family (Rick Grimes) | Georgia (Morgan Jones, Gabriel Stokes) | Atlanta | Atlanta Survivor Camp (Daryl Dixon, Carol Peletier) | Greene Family & Friends (Maggie Greene) | Prison Newcomers (Michonne Hawthorne) | Woodbury (The Governor) | Tyreese's Group | The Chambler Family | Abraham's Group | Terminus | The Coalition & Other Allies | Alexandria Safe-Zone | The Hilltop Colony (Gregory) | The Kingdom | Oceanside | The Saviors (Negan Smith, Savior Outposts, Former Saviors) | Magna's Group | The Whisperers (Alpha) | The Commonwealth | The Reapers | Other Antagonists | Other Survivors

Due to the Anyone Can Die nature of the show and quickly moving plots, only spoilers from the current/most recent season will be spoiled out to prevent entire pages of whited out text. These spoiler tags will be removed upon the debut of the following season, and the character bios will be updated then as well. Additionally, character portraits will be updated each half-season with the release of an official, complete set from AMC. If you have not seen the first ten seasons read at your own risk!

Carol Peletier/Sutton

"Some people just can't give up. Like us."

Portrayed By: Melissa McBride^{Foreign voice actors}Olga Cano (Spanish), Ayumi Nagao (Japanese), Heike Schroetter (German), Francoise Regal (French), Michela Alborghetti (Italian), Radka Stupkova (Czech), Anna Kubik (Hungarian)

Appearances: The Walking Dead (Seasons 1-11) | Fear the Walking Dead (Season 4) | The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon (Season 1-)

Debut: "Tell it to the Frogs"

"If you want to live, you have to become strong."

One of the main protagonists of The Walking Dead, who has enough examples of tropes to qualify for her own page.

After suffering through a lengthy, abusive marriage with her husband Ed, who was also abusive to their daughter Sophia and had began to eye her in a non-fatherly way, she survived the initial stages of the zombie apocalypse with her family. After becoming close companions with the Grimes family, Ed was killed during the walker attack on the camp. After that, Carol became more independent, but the disappearance and later death of her daughter demoralized her again. However, she has since recovered and started becoming more assertive, taking a larger role in the group as both as shooter and medic. Carol has also established a strong friendship with Daryl and began to deeply care about him after he went out of his way in his search for the missing Sophia in Season 2.

After the community in the prison was established, Carol became a member of the council that helped run the group. She was exiled by Rick after killing some of the group in a desperate attempt to stop a plague, and her actions then and later with Lizzie and Mika haunt her to this day. Carol returns to the group just in time to save them from the cannibals of Terminus, mounting a one-woman assault on the compound and earning back Rick's trust. Upon reintegrating into the group, she becomes one of Rick's closest family members and one of his main advisors as they reach Alexandria, often advising the more ruthless course of action to protect their family.

Despite having trouble facing her own demons, Carol is one of the most changed survivors of the apocalypse. She has proven to be a shrewd tactician whose no-nonsense approach to things makes her a finely oiled killing machine in combat. Given her Mama Bear feelings towards the group, you have what even Rick calls a "force of nature" who will do anything to save or protect her own. Carol is also a brilliant schemer who effortlessly dupes the entirety of Alexandria, hiding her true nature under an innocent, incompetent Stepford wife persona who is more than a few steps ahead of anyone. Carol is forced to abandon her disguise when Alexandria comes under attack. She develops a feud with Morgan over their contrasting ideologies, and exiles herself when regret from her actions convinces her that she has begun doing more harm than good. Carol begins attempting to live a solitary life on the outskirts of the Kingdom, but upon learning of the deaths of Glenn, Abraham, and several others at the hands of the Saviors, she realizes she cannot hide from their brutality and joins the war against Negan.

After the war, Carol finds love with Ezekiel, marrying him and enjoying a happy new family life with him and their adopted son Henry. Six years after the apparent death of Rick, the Kingdom is on the verge of collapse, and Carol helps plan the fair intended to revive the community and rebuild the relationship between the others. Tragically, Henry ends up as one of Alpha’s victims in a massacre, and the grief drives her and Ezekiel apart as the Kingdom falls into disrepair. Carol descends into a vicious vendetta against Alpha for destroying her life, taking several questionable courses of action as she actively works to fan the flames of the conflict with the Whisperers. She frees Negan and orders him to assassinate Alpha, but suffers a blow to her friendship with Daryl when her rash actions at Alpha’s cave cause Connie to go missing. Their relationship remains on the mend even after the defeat of the Whisperers.

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Tropes A-F

• Action Mom: In Season 4, she becomes this to Lizzie and Mika, whom she adopts after their father dies. She's accumulated one of the biggest body counts on the show, and her one-woman assault on Terminus has to be seen to be believed. She becomes one again, to Henry, in Season 9, and proves she hasn't lost her touch one bit when she burns a gang of Saviors alive simply for bullying her son.
  Henry: She's tough. Not somebody you want to mess with.
• Action Survivor: In Season 3. Later upgrades to a full-fledged Action Girl starting in Season 4, and by Season 5 she's able to keep up with Daryl in toughness.
• Adaptation Dye-Job: Went from having medium length blonde hair in the comics to short cropped grey-black hair. Justified in that outside of a few plot points, she has very little in common with the character from the comics.
• Adaptational Angst Upgrade: She's having it much worse here than in the comics.
• Adaptational Badass: By Season 3, she becomes more combat proficient and emotionally stable than her comic counterpart. Which is a good thing because she really needs to be. In the Season 5 premiere, Carol almost singlehandedly destroys Terminus, by blowing up its fences and taking advantage of a passing herd. It would have been impossible for Rick and Co. to escape without her aid. In Season 6 she single-handedly takes out at least eight Wolves when they attack Alexandria.
• Adaptational Hairstyle Change: Comic!Carol is drawn with shoulder-length hair. In the show, she instead has a shaved head, and then as the show progresses, she grows it out far longer than her comic counterpart had.
• A Day in the Limelight: "The Grove", "Consumed", and "The Same Boat" are all very Carol-centric.
• Age Lift: Carol is younger than Rick and Lori in the comic book.
• The Aloner: She usually lapses into this whenever she's feeling morally conflicted. In Season 5, traumatized from what happened with Lizzie and Mika, she tries to leave after saving the group from Terminus, only to be stopped by Daryl. In late Season 6, she leaves Alexandria, as she feels she can no longer kill to protect the group. In Season 7, she moves into a cottage near the Kingdom so she can live in peace, not wishing to suffer anymore. She snaps out of this when she learns of the deaths of Glenn, Abraham, and several others. After Henry's death she spends much of the Time Skip between Seasons 9 and 10 on a boat, far away from any of her friends. Even after Negan kills Henry's murderer, Alpha, she still insists on going off on her own. It takes a hallucination of Alpha herself to finally call Carol out on it and convince her to return to the fold.
• Amicable Exes: After the Whisperer War she settles into this with Ezekiel. She still cares about him as a friend, working hard to get him the medical treatment he needs and still being playful and affectionate with him. She insists they won’t get back together, but she enjoys an evening cuddled up with him and isn’t too forceful in telling Ezekiel it won’t happen.
• Anti-Hero: She slowly starts to become this as her character starts to take a dark turn by doing whatever it takes in order to protect the group, whether it be teaching kids how to use weapons to defend themselves or by killing Karen and David and burning their bodies in order to stop an illness from spreading. Throughout Season 5, she shows herself to be more morally flexible than most others.
• Apologetic Attacker: When she's confronted with a group of Saviors toward the end of Season 6, she tearfully begs them to leave, saying, "Nobody has to get hurt." They think she's begging for her own life. She's really begging them not to make her kill them — which she does, with a hidden machine gun, when they don't back down.
• Ascended Extra: Easily the best example on the show. In Season 1, she is quite literally a background extra and only gets a few lines, only really becoming relevant at the end of the season when she hands Rick a grenade that allows the group to escape the CDC. Over the next few seasons, she slowly builds up screentime and importance (developing into a much stronger character in the process), before finally emerging as a fan favorite and one of the main characters in Seasons 4 and 5. With Rick's departure in Season 9, she is now the longest-running character on the show (Daryl doesn't appear until later in their debut episode). Come Season 10, she's officially the sole Deuteragonist and has arguably the most important arc and most character focus of the season.
• Ax-Crazy: Throughout Season 5 and 6, she displays signs of this, from threatening to kill Sam to slaughtering a defenseless Wolf without even considering interrogation; thus really showcasing how much of a toll her hardened personality and secretive pragmatism is taking on her psyche.
• Badass Biker: Daryl Dixon reveals that she is fully capable of comandeering Daryl's motorcycle on her own.
• Badass in Distress: She is knocked out and captured by Grady Memorial Hospital at the end of "Consumed."
• Badass Longcoat: Wears a brown one. It's not a duster like most examples, but it's below the waist.
• Badass Teacher: In the Season 4 premiere, she's shown teaching the kids how to use weapons and defend themselves behind Rick's back.
• Be Careful What You Wish For:
  • Throughout the episode "Indifference," she tries to get Rick to be more active again and deal with the situation at hand, as far her killing Karen and David, and he does... by exiling her from the group.
  • In "The Grove", her efforts to train Lizzie and Mika to be Action Survivors end in disaster. Mika is the Only Sane Girl who, while perhaps a bit too soft and scared for her own good in a post-apocalyptic world, is/becomes a much stronger and well-adjusted girl than Carol gives her credit; Lizzie, meanwhile, while having some creepy ideas that the Walkers are more real than living people, Carol thinks of as the strong one because of her willingness to kill. By the end of the episode, Lizzie is revealed as an Ax-Crazy Broken Bird who kills small animals like mice (both to feed walkers and for fun) and ends up murdering Mika (and thinking of murdering Judith) because she thinks she'll be better off as a Walker. Carol was so focused on the girls not ending up like Sophia that she was blind to the danger right in front of her.
• Becoming the Mask: When the group arrives at Alexandria, Carol puts on a ditzy, sheltered housewife persona to fool the residents so she can covertly size them up in case the group needs to attack them. However, as she grows more weary of killing, Carol realizes that she really does wish she could be a sheltered housewife away from the brutality of the world.
  • It actually happens in Season 9 when Carol joins the Kingdom and becomes a mother to Henry and wife to Ezekiel. While she doesn't lose any of her badassery (see her murder of Jed's group), she grows comfortable in her new role as "queen" and as such is absolutely broken when Alpha murders Henry and the Kingdom goes under. She says as much to Lydia in Season 10 when lamenting how much Alpha has truly taken from her.
    Carol: I had a whole life...
• Best Served Cold: It takes some time, but she avenges the death of her son by having Negan infiltrate the Whisperers and decapitate Alpha. For an extra bit of satisfaction, she puts Alpha's severed, reanimated head on one of the now-vacant pikes, just as the woman once did to Henry and nine others.
• Beware the Nice Ones: She's known for being one of the most caring and even-tempered members of the group, yet in Season 4 it's revealed that she murdered Karen and David and burned their bodies in an attempt to prevent the fatal disease they were suffering from spreading. Then Terminus happened. Towards the end of Season 6, she begins to long for a more peaceful life, and genuinely hopes that her enemies will have the mercy to spare her - but she still will utterly annihilate those who legitimately cross her.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Ironically, despite worrying that the people of Alexandria are this in disguise (like the people in Terminus), Carol comes across as this, hiding her true self behind a friendly, slightly ditzy façade. She ends up being forced to cast off the disguise after the first few battles of Alexandria in which her ruthless, One-Woman Army traits are sorely needed.
• Boyish Short Hair: For the first nine seasons (and five episodes) of the show, this is her signature look. There is partly a reason for this, however; see Long Hair Is Feminine below.
• Breakout Character: Despite being on the show since the beginning, it wasn't until Season 5 that she became this. Her truly amazing siege on Terminus to rescue Rick and the others in the premiere, which included blowing up a fuel tank with a firework, sniping various Termites, and getting in a fight with (and ultimately mercilessly killing) Mary, cemented her as a bonafide badass in the eyes of the fandom. Since then, Carol is often front and center in many of the series' promotional materials and has become one of the lead characters, especially after Rick’s departure in Season 9. Daryl Dixon brings her back for a pair of cameos in the last two episodes of Season 1, and she's set to become a main cast member once more in Season 2.
• Broken Bird: First she gets broken by her husband's abuse, and then Sophia's death. Since then, she's taken numerous levels in badass to become a skilled shooter and valuable member of the group as a secondary medic, but her experiences have left scars. After her confrontation with Morgan in Season 6 when she nearly kills him, only to get Denise captured by Owen, she becomes severely depressed and now just wants to stop killing, to the point of going into exile at least twice. And when she finally gets better thanks to the influence of Ezekiel and the Kingdom, Alpha murders her son and sticks his head on a pike.
• But Now I Must Go: In Season 6, she knows that killing is the only way to protect her family, but she's become extremely weary of taking human lives after the Wolf invasion and her confrontation with Morgan. Because she finds herself unwilling to kill anymore, she decides to leave the group since she can no longer do what's necessary to protect them.
• The Cameo:
  • She briefly shows up in the fourth season premiere of Fear the Walking Dead, trying and failing to convince Morgan to come to the Kingdom with her.
  • Carol makes a voice-only cameo in the penultimate episode of Daryl Dixon's first season. She later returns in the flesh in the finale, searching for Daryl, who was kidnapped and ultimately marooned in France.
• Can't Stay Normal: After becoming depressed over having to kill so many people, Carol exiles herself to live in a house far from anyone else. When she hears what the Saviors have done to her friends, however, she realizes that she can't stand idly by and jumps back into the fight with full force.
• Cathartic Scream: She lets out a whopper at Alpha when the latter smugly grins at the herd scouting party having been caught in her trap in "Squeeze".
• Character Development: Starts off as a timid victim, but evolves into a more confident, hardened badass with a pragmatic streak, who Rick even leaves in charge on at least one occasion. In Season 6 her badassery comes to take a severe toll on her psyche and she spends most of Season 7 trying to cope with her depression, before realizing that she cares too much for the safety of others to stay out of the fight. In Season 9, her marriage to Ezekiel and mother-son relationship with Henry have allowed her to grow more comfortable in her role as a Mama Bear.
• Co-Dragons: Inverted for Seasons 5 and 6, as she becomes one of Rick's most trusted lieutenants. However, when Rick comes dangerously close to becoming a Villain Protagonist, Carol almost fits into the role of The Dragon too well, as she's the most supportive of Rick's increasingly extreme plans to possibly take the town (while Daryl implicitly refuses to take a big part in the scheme).
• Combat Pragmatist: One of Carol’s greatest strengths is her ability to use anything in her situation to get out of trouble, or she’ll otherwise wait until she has the advantage to strike.
  • Carol instigates the siege of Terminus using a herd of walkers as a distraction, and soon leaves a kneecapped Mary for the walkers not just to punish her, but to lure the walkers outside the door away (as in, to Mary) for Carol to exit safely.
  • Carol immediately decides to use a disguise to get around Alexandria safely during the attack from the Wolves since they’re quicker and more numerous than her. It works marvelously well, and Carol is almost singlehandedly responsible for saving the town thanks to her covert attacks.
  • When Carol is facing down Yago’s squad of Saviors outnumbered and outgunned, she feigns surrender just long enough to grab a Savior coming to collect her - to use as either a hostage or a human shield. She pulls the same trick to get one over on Jed twice in the span of a few days, as she tricks him into thinking she’s giving up to get the chance to overpower him. Six years later and Carol does the same thing when she and Henry are robbed by Jed’s sizable gang, and waits to strike back until that night, when she burns them to death for their troubles.
• Composite Character: Since Andrea dies early in the show, some of her character development in the comics is given to Carol: She is the one in charge of Lizzie and Mika (just like Andrea adopts Ben and Billy) and Carol also becomes the most badass female from the original Atlanta group. Also she is in charge of killing Lizzie after she proves to be too unstable, just like Carl had to do in the comics about Ben. In Season 9, she fills Andrea’s role as the woman with a close relationship with her adopted son, albeit with Henry instead of the late Carl, and replaces Michonne as the woman who gets with Ezekiel. In Season 10, she splits her time between Alexandria and Oceanside, which again was something Michonne did in the comics and video game.
• Deadpan Snarker: The more hardened she becomes, the more often her snarky sense of humor seems to come out.
  Ezekiel: Maybe they need the fairy tale. Maybe the contradiction is the point.
  Carol: And ruling over people and having your ass kissed by everyone's just a perk?
• Death Seeker: Whenever Carol is emotionally conflicted, she can be uncomfortably reckless with her own life.
  • In the Season 6 finale, she rejects Morgan's attempts to bring her back to Alexandria to get her medical treatment that could save her life. Later, when Roman is torturing her, she simply laughs happily that she's going to die, and is furious at Morgan for coming to her rescue.
  • After Henry's death, she repeatedly puts both herself and her friends in avoidable danger, which Daryl eventually calls her out on. Carol's response to this is... less than convincing.
    Daryl: You want [Alpha] dead so bad, you don't even care what happens to you.
    Carol: That's not true.
• Defrosting Ice Queen: After she Took a Level in Cynic some time between Season 3 and 4, Carol starts to grow more and more open after entering the Kingdom, where she makes amends with her initial rival Morgan and forms a new friendship (later romance) with Ezekiel.
• Despair Event Horizon: A few times over the course of the series.
  • Seeing the undead Sophia walking out of the barn. Daryl has to stop Carol from running to her.
  • Being forced to shoot Lizzie after she murdered her own sister.
  • Nearly being forced to kill Morgan only to discover she was responsible for Denise's capture and the Anderson family's death. After learning of the deaths of Glenn, Abraham, and others at the Saviors’ hands, she is roused from it and rebounds.
  • Slips back into it again after Henry is killed and the Kingdom falls. It gets so bad she admits to Daryl that she doesn't know how to deal with it.
• Deuteragonist: Starts showing signs of this in Season 3 as she begins to become a more fleshed out, rounded character and definitely has taken this spot by the fifth season along with Daryl. In Season 9, with Daryl’s ascension to lead following Rick’s disappearance, she’s one of the main heroes of the story from here on out. Subverted in Season 10 — she receives the lion's share of screen time and focus, and can arguably be considered the season's protagonist, though she still appears in fewer episodes than Daryl.
• Don't You Dare Pity Me!: Subverted, in a way. Sophia's death does indeed push her to her Despair Event Horizon, but she gets back up after enough time, arguably sooner than any other woman normally would after losing a daughter the way she did. It's everyone else that insists on awkwardly avoiding her for a while afterward. When Carl, who can't find a way to handle his own grief at Sophia dying, tells Carol that heaven is a lie, Carol then confronts Lori, telling her that Rick and Lori need to control Carl and that everyone needs to stop pitying her and treating her like a headcase.
• Doom Magnet: Any child who forms a bond with Carol should consider their days numbered. The running tally so far is five: Sophia, Lizzie, Mika, Sam, and Henry.
• Drill Sergeant Nasty: A mild example toward the kids in Season 4, as she gives Patrick a hard time for wanting to be excused from her "lessons" and says that Lizzie is weak for being unable to Mercy Kill her Zombie Infectee father. Justified, when you realize that she's trying to get them to toughen up so that they don't meet the same fate as Sophia. It's horrifically Subverted when Lizzie takes it the wrong way and goes off of the deep end, and Carol knows it.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: After the many, many traumatizing things Carol goes through over the course of the series, the Distant Finale sees her in a pretty happy place as one of Ezekiel's top advisors at the Commonwealth.
• Easily Forgiven: She gets off pretty light for nearly getting Connie and Magna killed in a reckless attempt to destroy Alpha's horde. Magna is in shock after the event and seems willing to look past it, while Kelly holds no ill will towards Carol for the potential loss of her sister. Connie has no hard feelings either when she returns, and even requests to be paired up with Carol during the mission to repair the wall during the Alexandria storm, to show that she isn't at all bitter about what happened. The only one with any lingering feelings about the situation is Daryl, who more or less makes amends with Carol by the end of the season.
• Evil Chancellor: To Rick when the group first arrives at Alexandria.
• Evil Stole My Faith: She appears to be at least somewhat religious in the first two seasons, praying for her missing daughter's safety and asking God to punish her instead. By Season 5, she admits to Daryl she isn't sure if she still believes in God or an afterlife.
• The Exile: Gets kicked out of the prison by Rick in "Indifference", not appearing again until "Inmates". In Season 6 after breaking down following her confrontation with Morgan and her abduction by the Saviors, she exiles herself from Alexandria as she's afraid to kill any more.
• Expository Hairstyle Change: She goes from having Boyish Short Hair to long hair during the six-year Time Skip in Season 9.
• Feminist Fantasy: She's the ultimate fantasy not just for women in general, but especially victims of domestic violence. Where she was once a meek woman worn down by years of abuse at her husband's hands, she grows into one of the strongest characters in the television universe with one of the highest body counts and many incredible accomplishments who overcame all the trauma thrown at her for her entire life.
• Fire-Forged Friends: After fighting and clashing both physically and ideologically for ages, Carol forms a bond with Morgan over their mutual battles with mental illness and losses. In the Fear the Walking Dead fourth season premiere, she outright asks for the chance to help and look after him.
• Flower Motifs: Carol is frequently associated with floral imagery.
  • For starters, her shirt in Season 1 has a flower pattern.
  • In Season 2, she is affiliated with Cherokee roses, which Daryl tells her are blooming for her lost daughter. When she apparently dies in Season 3, he places one of them on her grave.
  • Then of course there’s the infamous "Look at the flowers" from Season 4.
  • In Season 5 and continuing into 6, she wears a floral print blouse to disguise her true nature from the Alexandrians.
• Foil:
  • To, of all people, her comic counterpart. Both were abused by their husbands, and began to snap under the stress of the post-apocalyptic world. However, unlike her comic counterpart, her daughter was the one who died, she never committed suicide, and became a much stronger character in the process.
  • To Morgan. Both lost their families and passed the Despair Event Horizon; however, Carol rather quickly came back while Morgan went completely insane, as he had no support system while Carol had the rest of the group looking after her. Carol eventually becomes a ruthless killing machine, while Morgan becomes a Martial Pacifist who adheres to Thou Shalt Not Kill. Carol employs Good Is Not Nice while Morgan is a completely genuine Nice Guy. Their ideologies clash in "Start to Finish", and it's implied Carol envies how well-adjusted he is. When Morgan begins to suffer from Sanity Slippage again, Carol (who has by now overcome her depression) does everything she can to help and support him.
• Forgiven, but Not Forgotten: Tyreese forgives her for killing Karen, although he considers executing her, and swears he will never forget what she did.
• The Friends Who Never Hang:
  • Despite being the most popular female characters of the series, she and Michonne don't share a scene with just the two of them until Season 9.
  • Also, while they're not exactly close, she and Eugene never speak directly to each other until Season 10. This is worth mentioning because by this point, and with the announcement of the series ending with its’ eleventh season, Eugene has been on the show for over half its run, but only now talks to a character who’s been on the show since the beginning.
• Friend to All Children: Subverted. Carol adores children and will go full Mama Bear if you try to harm one on her watch. However, after what happened with Lizzie and Mika she prefers to keep her distance and is extremely reluctant to get attached to Sam and then Henry (both of whom, indeed, end up dead).

Tropes G-L

• Good Is Not Nice: She's a hero, but that doesn't mean she has to act pleasant. She's still the Team Mom to the group and to Alexandria when they officially join their ranks, though.
• Good Is Not Soft: After finding out that Terminus has captured her friends, she singlehandedly kills all but six of them and destroys their safe zone. This phase is repeated whenever the group encounters a potential threat.
  Carol: We'll talk to them and if I'm wrong and they don't listen... then we'll kill them.
• Good Versus Good: Her ruthless pragmatism clashes with Morgan's pacifistic nature in Season 6, and the two actually come to blows over the fate of the Alpha Wolf, ending with Morgan knocking her out. She later says she should have killed him.
• Happily Married: She and Ezekiel become engaged in Season 9 and spend the next six years in a loving and supportive marriage. Unfortunately, Henry's death drives a huge wedge between them and they separate.
• Happy Ending Override: By the end of Season 8, Carol has achieved an Earn Your Happy Ending of sorts. She's accepted that she'll always have friends to help her rebound if killing ever starts to take a toll on her mental state again. She moves into the Kingdom, starts up a relationship with Ezekiel, and becomes a mother figure to Henry, all of which turns her into one of the most stable and well-adjusted characters on the show after she'd had one of the biggest Trauma Conga Lines of anyone other than maybe Rick and Maggie. Then "The Calm Before" completely shatters the fairy tale: Henry is murdered by Alpha, which puts Carol and Ezekiel's marriage in jeopardy and leads to them divorcing a few months later. The Kingdom also falls and Carol is forced to say goodbye to her home for the last seven years. Carol outright admits that she's beginning to lose herself again; this continues into Season 10, by which point she has become so obsessed with revenge against Alpha that she barely even listens to Daryl (who tries his damndest to help her) anymore.
• Heroic BSoD: Enters one during the second half of Season 6. After learning that her actions have begun causing more harm than good, like her threat to Sam getting him and his family killed and her killing the Alpha Wolf while he was saving Denise, she begins to realize how many people she has killed in such a short time and decides she can't do it anymore. She distances herself from the group and runs away to avoid having to kill for them anymore, and whenever she is put in danger she begs her attackers to stop for their own safety.
• The High Queen: In Season 9, she leads the Kingdom alongside Ezekiel. Jerry calls her “queen”, and though she initially hates the lofty title, she begrudgingly accepts it (especially when Ezekiel calls her his queen).
• Hypocrite: She criticizes Morgan for his Pacifism by saying he does it for selfish reasons, despite her ruthless pragmatism heavily shown to just be a way to satiate her paranoia.
• Iconic Item: Her trench knife, which she gains in Season 4. Its connotations with brutal pragmatism reflects on Carol.
• I Did What I Had to Do: Her justification for murdering Karen and David, though Rick doesn't buy it. It gets Deconstructed eventually. When she runs into Tyreese and he talks about Karen, she starts feeling worse about it. It culminates in her admitting out of guilt and firmly expecting Tyreese to kill her as a result.
  • Also when she kills Lizzie, realizing that Lizzie is simply too insane to be trusted, especially around Judith.
• Ice Queen: She comes off as this to Sam until she figures out that he and Jessie are being abused.
• Implied Death Threat: To Sam. Insinuating that she would bind him and leave him to die out in the forest to keep him silent.
• I Just Want to Be Normal: A recurring theme in Carol's arc. "Not Tomorrow Yet" implies that she's grown to like being the den mother for Alexandria after already shedding her masquerade, and that she only wishes she could be as well-adjusted as the pacifistic Morgan. She gets better thanks to the Kingdom's influence, but after Henry's death, chooses to divorce Ezekiel and separate herself from the Washington region by living on a fishing boat for a few months. She later muses with Daryl about an existence where people don't have to kill one another and they can live in peace.
• I Regret Nothing: Even though she feels guilty for what happened to Connie, she firmly tells Daryl that she doesn't regret most of her actions throughout Season 10, specifically detonating the explosives that took out half of Alpha's horde and freeing Negan to kill Alpha herself.
• It's Personal: When she learns that Sam is being abused, she becomes deeply invested in stopping Pete. It’s her chance to finally do what she wished she could’ve done to Ed, and what she wished she could’ve saved Sophia from.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: She's become increasingly cold, but she does care for the safety of her friends. By Season 9, she has loosened up and become one of the nicer characters on the show, thanks to the influence of Ezekiel and the Kingdom, though still a huge example of Good Is Not Soft.
• Kick the Dog:
  • Her Implied Death Threat to Sam.
  • When she and Morgan are sneaking past the Wolves, she sees Gabriel in trouble, but coldly tells Morgan to leave him to die.
  • Telling Morgan that she should've killed him for protecting the Alpha Wolf.
• Kill the Ones You Love:
  • Tearfully kills Lizzie who murdered her younger sister.
  • Love is a bit of a stretch but she does put down the zombified Tobin, who she had a brief relationship with in Season 6.
• Knight in Sour Armor: She's become increasingly antisocial and cynical towards everyone, but she remains one of the heroes.
• Lady of War: She's become one of the more mature and composed Action Girls next to Michonne. In fact, she's rather stoic when killing walkers.
• The Leader: In Season 4, along with Daryl, Glenn, Hershel, and Sasha, as part of the council in charge of the prison community.
• Leeroy Jenkins: In Season 10, due to her unstable Death Seeker tendencies. When she sees Alpha staring at her from the other side of the forest she wastes no time giving in to her blind rage and chasing after her, her own life be damned. It becomes worse when a later episode reveals Carol had already tasked Negan with taking care of Alpha, meaning all she had to do was sit back and wait for him to deliver Alpha's head as promised. Granted, it's Negan and there's no guarantees he would've kept to his word once Carol freed him, but it was still an incredibly reckless and ill-advised move nonetheless.
• Living Legend: Come Season 10, Carol's badass exploits dealing with past foes have made her into somewhat of a folk hero among the community residents. Even Negan (who's been locked in a cell for eight years) has heard enough about her to describe her as a "certified badass" when they finally meet.
• The Load: She can do little but be a victim on the sidelines for the longest time, but grows into a competent survivor during the Time Skip between Seasons 2 and 3.
• Locked Out of the Loop: In Season 7. Due to being away from Alexandria, she is unaware that Negan has killed Glenn, Abraham, several others, and has subjugated Alexandria by force. When Daryl reunites with her, he decides not to tell her after he sees the emotionally fragile state she is in and her desire for peace, and lies that Alexandria has a peaceful relationship with the Saviors like the Kingdom. Towards the end of the season, Morgan finally tells her the truth, inspiring her to return to action.
• Long Hair Is Feminine: After the second Time Skip in Season 9, her hair (finally) becomes long once she's Happily Married with Ezekiel and got another chance in motherhood as Henry's adoptive mother. Henry confirms that she originally kept it short to keep Ed from using it to grab her, but finally feels comfortable enough to let it grow out with Ezekiel.

Tropes M-Q

• Mama Bear:
  • To the group at large. The people of Terminus find this out the hard way.
  • She also seems to feel this way towards Sam, despite her icy demeanor and Kick the Dog moment towards him. When she finds out that he might be abused, she demands that his father be killed. Nonetheless, she has little patience for him after Pete's death, imploring him to get over it.
  • When she learns of Glenn's death in particular, it inspires her to overcome her Heroic BSoD and return to action.
  • She’s also this to Henry, as when he gets attacked by a roaming pack of walkers while hiding in a creek, she races to save him and butchers all of them before they can kill the boy. It’s also helped by the fact that Sophia’s infection and death was under similar circumstances, which probably made her even more determined to save him. Years later, she utterly annihilates Jed’s band of ex-Saviors, partially because they hurt her son.
• The Medic: Under Hershel's tutelage she picks up some medical skills and knowledge.
• Mistaken for Gay: By Axel, due to her short hair.
• Mythology Gag: She's Mistaken for Gay by Axel. In the comics, there's implication she might be bisexual when she proposes marrying both Rick and Lori.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Implied to be her reaction towards finding out that she had a part to play in Sam's mental breakdown and subsequent death, as she visits his gravesite and leaves a cookie behind.
• Named by the Adaptation: As her comic counterpart has Only One Name, she was given a surname by default due to Ed playing this trope entirely straight. She also later receives the surname Sutton through her marriage to Ezekiel (whose last name was revealed in Season 11’s “New Haunts”).
• New Job as the Plot Demands: Owing to her long series lifespan, as well as her tendency to separate from the rest of the group for varying periods of time, Carol has held a significant number of jobs throughout her tenure on the show. And while this is true of most of the characters who have survived for numerous seasons, Carol is unique due to the sheer variety of the jobs she's held. She has served as (among other things) a housewife, a medic, a cook, a weapons and self-defense instructor, a ship's captain, a baker, and the leader, co-leader, or council member of several community's—culminating in her becoming the Director of Operations for the Commonwealth, a massive community of over 50,000 survivors. This stands in contrast to many other characters, who tend to take over the same positions at every new community they become a part of (i.e., Glenn always serving as a supply runner, Sasha a sharpshooter, Rick as the community's leader, etc.).
• Never Found the Body: The other survivors think she is dead after the massive walker attack in "Killer Within" and prepare a grave for her. Daryl later discovers her alive, albeit weak from thirst and exhaustion.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
  • Her teaching the children how to use knives was well-intentioned, but tragically contributed to the deaths of Lizzie and Mika.
  • Similarly, in "Start To Finish," the knife she brought in an attempt to kill the Wolf that Morgan had tied up is how he not only gets free, but manages to escape Alexandria with not just a loaded gun, but Denise as a hostage.
  • Another example in "Start to Finish" regarding Sam. Threatening to leave him to die alone in the woods may have gotten her access to the guns, but it takes a devastating toll on the kid's sanity and he's later seen drawing pictures of him being eaten by walkers. She triggered a Sanity Slippage that ends up putting Rick and the others in great peril when the herd invades Alexandria. In "No Way Out", the poor kid is so traumatized by her threat that he freezes up and breaks down, and is then Eaten Alive as Carol threatened him. This then leads to the death of Jessie and then Carl losing an eye. She seems to realize her part in Sam's death, as she later pays his grave a visit and leaves a cookie there.
  • In "The World Before", while the group is searching for the walker horde, Carol spots Alpha and gives chase. Everyone else follows and they all end up trapped in the cave where Alpha is keeping thousands of walkers.
  • In "Squeeze", she strays from the group mere moments before they can escape the cave and attempts to destroy the horde with a stick of dynamite. Daryl manages to talk her down from it, but she drops the dynamite into the chasm below, causing a massive cave-in that leads to Connie and Magna getting trapped inside with seemingly no way out. Carol realizes this and breaks down in tears, begging Daryl to blame her for the tragedy.
• Not So Stoic: In Season 6, she breaks down crying after the horrific, mindless slaughter brought upon Alexandria by the Wolves, despite spending most of the episode pushing Morgan to break his Thou Shalt Not Kill creed.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: Carol deliberately plays the role of a chipper, ditzy housewife while the group stays at Alexandria. As Carol points out, the best part about staying at Alexandria is that she can be invisible. She ends the charade when she's forced to take action when Alexandria faces the threats of the Wolves and the walker herd. Towards the end of the season, she realizes she really does want to be a sweet, well-adjusted housewife and Team Mom to Alexandria, though. She employs the old housewife charade when she's threatened by Saviors, and both times she almost utterly destroys them.
• Odd Friendship: With Daryl, even having a bit of Ship Tease. Loads of subtext, and they're obviously important to each other, but the exact nature of the commitment they share is ambiguous until Season 9 (see Platonic Life-Partners below). Also with Axel in Season 3, albeit very briefly.
• One-Man Army: She almost single-handedly puts an end to both Terminus and the Wolves, and has accumulated one of the highest body counts on the show.
  Rick: That woman, she's a force of nature.
• Out of Focus: Got this a bit in the first half of Season 6, only having a small subplot revolving around her growing feud with Morgan. It comes back in full force in Season 7A, since she's at the Kingdom and only appears in two out of the half-season's eight episodes since most of the action takes place away from the Kingdom. She gets a bit more focus in the second half of the season, and fully returns to the spotlight in Season 8.
• Outliving One's Offspring: Sophia, who is her only biological daughter so far, dies in Season 2. In Season 4, she loses both of her adoptive daughters Lizzie and Mika after the former kills the latter, forcing Carol to kill the former because she's too mentally unstable. In Season 9 her adopted son, Henry, is one of ten people who is brutally decapitated by Alpha in order to send a message to the Communities.
• Parental Substitute: She and Ezekiel become Henry's adoptive parents following the death of his older brother, Benjamin.
• Pay Evil unto Evil:
  • After gaining the upper hand on Mary, she shoots her legs and allows a horde of walkers to devour her alive.
  • Her Implied Death Threat to Pete.
  • Her systematic killing spree of half the Wolves.
  • When she gives Paula a Cruel and Unusual Death and Boom, Headshot!'s the Savior Michelle.
• Platonic Kissing: She plants a kiss on Daryl's forehead to comfort him after Beth dies.
• Platonic Life-Partners: The entirety of her relationship with Daryl. They remain close even after she's married with Ezekiel, and Henry tells Daryl that Carol considers him her best friend.
• Power Hair: Her short-haired look becomes this in the series finale when she's taken over Lance's job as Director of Operations at the Commonwealth.
• Pragmatic Hero: She's a fundamentally good person acting with the best of intentions, but she's willing to commit some very questionable acts in the name of keeping the group safe and she has no problem taking things under her own initiative rather than consulting with the others. Two good examples are in Season 4 when she straight-up murders Karen and David with the intention of keeping the flu overtaking the prison under wraps; and in Season 10, when she frees Negan and orders him to assassinate Alpha (which he does).
• Promoted to Love Interest:
  • Inverted with Tyreese. They don't become a couple like their comic counterparts, and because of Tyreese's death in Season 5, never will be.
  • Played straight with Tobin and Ezekiel, neither of whom her comic counterpart ever even met, having died long before the group reached Alexandria and the Kingdom, respectively.
• Promotion to Opening Titles: In Season 4.
• Promotion to Parent: In "Infected", a dying Ryan Samuels begs Carol to take care of his daughters as if they were her own, as they don't have anyone else left. She agrees, and they appear to become Replacement Goldfish to her for Sophia. In Season 9, she becomes an adoptive mother to Henry as well.
• Put on a Bus: On a car to be more accurate, being exiled by Rick in "Indifference."
  • The Bus Came Back: In "Inmates", and she's stuck around since.
• The Quiet One: Due to Ed's abuse, and later, Sophia's disappearance and death. She starts speaking up more in Season 3 and especially Season 4, where she is one of the five members on the council running the prison.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni:
  • Red to Daryl's Blue. Especially in Season 10, when her bloodlust is making her increasingly reckless, impulsive, and unstable.
  • She is, however, the more reserved Blue to Ezekiel's exuberant Red.
• Relationship Upgrade: She and Ezekiel become a couple during the Time Skip between Seasons 8 and 9, and later marry.

Tropes S-Z

• Sanity Slippage: Season 10 sees Carol in her darkest place yet due to losing her son, her home, and ultimately her marriage to Ezekiel due to Alpha's actions. She refuses to sleep, becomes increasingly desperate to kill Alpha, takes pills as "coffee", and goes down a very dark path as others become hurt during her vendetta.
• Savvy Guy, Energetic Girl: Gender inverted with Ezekiel. He's a happy-go-lucky Large Ham optimist; she's a crafty, somewhat cynical Mama Bear. Their relationship proves to be quite stable, until "The Calm Before".
• Sex with the Ex: Sleeps with Ezekiel shortly before the Hilltop battle in "Morning Star". He asks if it would’ve happened had the prospect of war not been upon them, which she doesn’t answer.
• She Who Fights Monsters: Much like Rick, she comes dangerously close to crossing into this territory a few times, but is always able to rebound thanks to the support of her friends.
• Shipper on Deck: She encourages Daryl to pursue a relationship with Connie, telling him that he can't hide out in the woods with Dog forever.
• Ship Tease:
  • Besides her ambiguous situation with Daryl, she seems to get a crush on Tobin, enters a relationship with him in "Not Tomorrow Yet" and they sleep together before she leaves Alexandria.
  • Ezekiel gets added to that list when he offers her a chance to live in the Kingdom and frequently visits to bond with her. He also calls her a "fair maiden", which is flowery even for a Large Ham like him. They officially become a couple in Season 9. Unfortunately, Henry's death leads to this ship ending by the end of the season. In Season 11’s “New Haunts”, Ezekiel implies he’s ready to try to rekindle things, and Carol is a bit more receptive this time. She later insists it won’t happen, but she’s not that stern about it, and it’s left ambiguous as to how serious she is.
• Shoot the Dog: Poor Lizzie, who just didn't know any better...
• Shrinking Violet: Initially, due to her abusive husband, she is somewhat reserved around others. She starts growing out of this in Season 2, and by Season 3 this trope no longer applies to her.
• Silver Vixen: For a woman her age, Carol is rather beautiful and manages to attract the attention of Axel, Tobin, and Ezekiel.
• Single Woman Seeks Good Man: After years trapped in a loveless and abusive marriage, she ends up falling for the good-natured King Ezekiel. She also briefly hooks up with Tobin.
• Sole Survivor: The only remaining member of her family.
• Spared by the Adaptation: Her comic counterpart committed suicide before the Woodbury attack on the prison.
• Team Mom: Takes up this role after Lori dies. She herself even lampshades this to the Alexandria survivors during an interview (it's also one of the few nuggets of truth during said interview). After the battle of Alexandria, she really does become the Team Mom to the community at large, making cookies for the town members and such. Carol's Mama Bear complex is so deadly she leaves the group just to stop herself from killing.
  Tobin: You're a mom. It's not the cookies or the smiles. It's the hard stuff. The scary stuff. That's how you do it. It's a strength. You're a mom to most people here.
• Token Evil Teammate: While her loyalty to the group has never wavered and she remains firmly on the side of good, Carol can be quite ruthless and even Ax-Crazy, willing to go behind the group's back if she thinks it's in their best interest, and even sometimes when it necessarily isn't.
• Took a Level in Badass: In the break between Season 2 and 3. She apparently learned how to headshot walkers from a considerable distance. Rick lampshades it in Season 4, even using it as basis when he exiled her. Her actions in the fifth season have elevated her to a badass on par with Daryl in the eyes of the show's fandom.
• Took a Level in Cheerfulness: Thanks to Ezekiel's influence, she smiles a lot more often now. Unfortunately, it doesn't last.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: She's become a bit harsher to other people, but now she's a Knight in Sour Armor.
• The Unapologetic: She becomes unable to take responsibility and say sorry to anyone for putting them or their loved ones in harm's way during her vengeance crusade against Alpha. Yumiko even punches her in the face for it, and it takes a hallucination of Alpha to convince Carol to apologize to Kelly for nearly getting Connie killed.
• Underestimating Badassery: Admittedly, her views on Morgan. While Carol is a badass, she is completely unprepared for his aikido and quickly falls to it.
• Unresolved Sexual Tension: She and Ezekiel don't rekindle their romance by the series' end, though Carol being one of Ezekiel's top political advisors definitely raises the chances of them getting back together sometime down the line.
• Unscrupulous Hero: By Season 5, Carol has only the well-being of the group in mind, but she has become callous in her methods. As an advisor to Rick, she often suggests the most effective, but ruthless strategies.
• Vengeance Feels Empty: It's implied Alpha's death doesn't give her the satisfaction she had hoped for due to it coming at the cost of Hilltop's destruction and her friends turning their backs on her.
• Villain Killer: She has one of the highest kill counts on the show, especially when it comes to villains. She almost singlehandedly took down the entire cannibal clan of Terminus with a few bullets, a propane tank, and fireworks. For the Wolves, she took most of them down by disguising herself among them when they invaded Alexandria. With the Whisperers, she singlehandedly took out half their horde of zombies (and almost got a few people killed doing so), and successfully set up their leader Alpha to be killed by Negan. In Season 11, she kills Lance Hornsby.
• The Voice: Her voice is heard over the radio in the penultimate episode of Daryl Dixon's first season. Daryl briefly manages to get ahold of her and she informs him that someone has returned home before the signal becomes too distorted and she gets cut off.
• Weapon-Based Characterization: Carol’s snub-nosed pistol is small, unassuming, and easily concealed, much like its owner. Also, it’s a revolver, just like Rick’s gun, but in a tinier package that is no less deadly. For melee, she carries a sentry knuckle, which again highlights her concealed lethal nature.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: She murders Karen and David to try and prevent the illness at the prison from spreading further.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Several characters have called her out on her actions.
  • Most notably, Rick is shaken when she kills Karen and David to prevent the plague from spreading further, and outright exiles her despite not even being the leader of the prison community anymore. She regains his trust when she saves the group from Terminus (and also protects Judith after the prison war), and it's ultimately subverted in Season 6 when Rick admits to Morgan that she was right in killing them and is now grateful for her actions.
  • Played for Laughs when Daryl is dumbfounded that she admires a painting that Daryl thinks looks like a dog painted it by smearing paint with its' ass.
  • In Season 6, Morgan is horrified at her ruthlessness during the first battle of Alexandria against the Wolves and later gives her more hell when they directly confront each other.
  • Negan is annoyed when she refuses to go back to Alexandria to vouch for him after he kills Alpha for her, instead abandoning him to mope about in the woods.
• What You Are in the Dark: Carol's advice and actions throughout Season 3 and 4 indicate that her Character Development is taking a darker turn, as she makes more and more decisions on her own and without the rest of the groups knowledge to keep them safe.
  • Tells Andrea she can end the conflict between the group and the Governor if she stabs him in his sleep.
  • Begins to teach the children how to use weapons and asks Carl not to tell his father when he finds out.
  • Kills Karen and David early in Season 4 to keep a disease from spreading to others in the prison and burns their bodies.
  • A deleted scene from Season 3 has Carol quietly declaring to a borderline-reformed Merle that she "will slit his throat while he sleeps" if Merle screws things up for his brother Daryl. It's enough that Merle, who's a badass like his brother, is quite obviously impressed with her.
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: It's very easy to miss, but in the Season 1 finale Carol mentions to Dr. Jenner that she is claustrophobic. So, naturally, being trapped in a cave in Season 10 and being forced to crawl through several tight spaces to escape doesn't bode well for her at all.
• Wife-Basher Basher: Due to her own past as a survivor of domestic abuse, she implores Rick to kill Pete, who is abusing Jessie and his children. In the season finale, she threatens Pete and holds a knife to his throat.
• Worf Had the Flu: After already being weakened from falling from a 3 story high overpass, she's knocked out by a car driven by the Grady Police and becomes their prisoner. Due to the severity of her injuries, Carol is unable to do anything to save herself.
• Would Hurt a Child:
  • She kills Lizzie, as she views her as too much of a threat to Judith. It crushes her soul to have to go through with it, and she's arguably never been the same since.
  • There's also her very wordy, albeit terrifying threat to Sam, saying that if he didn't forget that she was taking guns, she'd abduct him in his sleep and tie him to a tree outside the walls of Alexandria where he'd be eaten alive. Her later, very solemn visit to his grave implies she was bluffing.
• Xenafication: Her comic counterpart was a Non-Action Guy who mostly shied away from danger and this Carol begins the show not much different, being an anti-social Shrinking Violet who is too afraid to fight zombies and other enemies. From Season 3 onward she becomes a Cool Old Lady One-Woman Army who slaughters hordes of walkers and Ax-Crazy humans alike and is willing to make the harder choices that others are too afraid to consider. In Season 5, she completely lays waste to a cannibal base holding the group hostage, annihilating an entire armed group of sociopaths.
• Yank the Dog's Chain: Carol finally finds true happiness after so many years of suffering (even before the apocalypse) by forming a relationship with Ezekiel and becoming a mother to Henry, only to lose both of them by the end of Season 9.

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"Just look at the flowers."