The Walking Dead Characters: Carol Peletier

The Walking Dead Characters:

Carol Peletier

"The Walking Dead" will enter its seventh season on October 23, and after leaving on a massive cliffhanger, excitement and anticipation are at all time highs. 

For the next few days I will be posting articles about the main characters you will see in the upcoming season, from faces we've seen since the first season to ones we'll be introduced to once season seven begins.

**THERE WILL BE SHOW AND COMIC SPOILERS!**

You have been warned.  If you want to keep reading, do so in knowing that I will be divulging comic book and television show spoilers.  Information was derived from personal comic book readings, show watching, The Walking Dead wiki and imdb.com.

**SERIOUSLY, SPOILERS WILL ABOUND 

FROM HERE ON OUT**

Carol Peletier: The Comics

Carol has a young daughter named Sophia was married because she didn't want to be alone.  Her husband was a car salesman, and she was a housewife who sold Tupperware.  After the apocalypse her husband shoots himself after seeing his parents die, and Carol takes Sophia to Atlanta to be with her sister, where she runs into the Atlanta survivors.

Calm and collected at first, she exhibits a friendly and normal attitude that only served as a facade to hide underlying mental instabilities.  She is always in need of companionship and a weak and dependent person.  She meets Tyreese at Hershel's farm, and begins a relationship with him.  She goes with Rick's group to the prison where they continue their relationship, until she catches him cheating on her with Michonne.  This causes her to spiral into a depression, cutting herself deeply in front of Sophia.

Sophia looks down on her, and she seeks companionship from Rick, and offers a polygamous agreement between him, her and Lori, but he rejects it.  She offers the same deal to Lori, who also turns it down.  Having been rejected over and over, she hatches a suicide plan because she can't deal with the world anymore.  She goes out and finds a Walker being kept for testing and allows it to bite her.  She dies in Tyreese's arms, and reanimates before Andrea puts her down.

Carol Peletier: The Television Series

Carol is one of the few characters on the show to outlive their comic book counterpart, and is one of only five remaining survivors left from the original Atlanta group, and is the last surviving female from that group.  When we first meet Carol in Atlanta, she is introverted, soft-spoken, meek and defenseless.  She has an abusive husband Ed, and young daughter Sophia.  Before the apocalypse she took Sophia out of their abusive home, but then returned to Ed and both were severely beaten.  After the apocalypse they went to the Atlanta Safe-Zone, and ran into Shane's group.

Ed maintains a firm stronghold on his wife, keeping her at bay and leaving her meek and helpless, until a Walker attack ends in Ed's death.  Carol puts him down with an inner strength she didn't know she possessed, and slowly began to empower herself.  While on the road Sophia goes missing after a Walker attack, and they end up at Hershel's farm.  After days of searching, they find Sophia in the barn, already turned into a Walker.  She collapses into Daryl's arms as Rick puts Sophia down.  After this event, she starts to stand up for herself and gains independence, strengthening her bond with the group.  She is a devout Christian, holds to her beliefs even after Sophia's death, insisting she's in heaven. 

Once they arrive at the prison, she takes a pro-active and pragmatic stance, adopting young Lizzie and Mika after their father dies, and trains the children how to use knives without Rick knowing.  She kills two sick members of the group (including Tyreese's girlfriend) to keep a disease from spreading, and she showed little remorse.  Due to this, she is exiled by Rick and manages to survive on her own until she runs into Tyreese, Judith, Lizzie and Mika on the road, after the prison was overrun by Walkers due to the Governor's attack.

The group takes refuge at an abandoned home, and contemplate living there until Lizzie kills Mika, thinking she'll come back as a harmless Walker.  Carol is forced to kill Lizzie to protect Judith, and she finds the strength to confess to Tyreese that she was the one who killed his girlfriend.  She expected him to kill her, but he forgave her instead. 

The difficult choices she's had to make to stay alive has left her emotionally wounded, but her resourcefulness is exemplified when she single-handedly wipes out the Terminus cannibal compound, rescuing Rick and the others.  She regains Rick's respect and praise after reuniting him with Judith, and she's welcomed back to the group.  However, she still feels herself to be a detriment and tries to run off, but Daryl followed her and the two embark on rescuing Beth from Grady Memorial, resulting in Carol getting hit by a car and finding herself in the compound as well.  After Rick negotiates a trade, Beth is accidentally killed, which also has a deep affect on Carol.

The group finally arrives in Alexandria, where Carol pretends to be a meek, defenseless housewife in order to gain information on the group.  She's become highly intelligent, cunning, objective and resourceful, advising Rick on the most cerebral and analytical approaches.  She's prepared to kill anyone she deems a threat, and on occasion has been shown to be cold and cruel.  After the Wolves attack and she kills several of them, she begins feeling remorse and feels the weight of all the people she's killed.  Deep down she believes Morgan's non-violent approach is right, but the facts don't line up for her.  She's a hardened combat veteran born out of necessity and reluctance.

While in Alexandria she begins a relationship with Tobin, and finds that she's still capable of committing murder to keep herself and her friends safe.  She chooses self-exile and ends up killing a group of Saviors to save herself.  However, one of the Saviors lived and was about to kill her - and she seemed prepared for it - but ended up being killed by Morgan.  Together they were rescued by men in armor, and taken to Ezekiel in the Kingdom.  Currently she's killed a total of roughly 37 people.

Carol seems to be showing a mental breakdown similar to that in the comics, and hopefully she can find her mojo again and return to the Carol we know and love, otherwise she could be in danger.

Carol Peletier: The Actress

Melissa McBride was born May 23, 1965 in Lexington, Kentucky.  She worked as a film and commercial casting director in Atlanta from 2000 to 2010 and appeared in bit parts in "The Mist," "The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys" and "Close to Danger" before "The Walking Dead."  She's been nominated for a Critics Choice Award for Best Supporting Actress in a Drama Series, and won the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films for Best Supporting Actress in a Television Series in both 2014 and 2015.