James

Gender Male Hair Color Dark Brown Age 20 Occupation Pre-Apocalypse Assumed School Student Food Truck Worker Family Charlie - Ex-Boyfriend Ethnicity Korean-American Upon his introduction, James shows himself to be a solemn, quiet, but goodhearted young man, ready to help those in need. He is rather awkward around other people, due to spending so much time alone. It is later revealed that when James was with the Whisperers, he was a ruthless killer who was fully loyal to their ways. When another Whisperer in the group expressed doubts over fighting with another group, James slit his throat without hesitation. James soon came to be haunted by this decision, and after becoming disillusioned with their ways, decided to leave the Whisperers. Since his departure from the group, James became a pacifist to an extreme degree, refusing to kill even walkers. Instead, he used his Whisperer mask to camouflage himself from the dead and travel in herds for protection. James even started gathering the dead in a barn to "protect" them. He is very reluctant to use the walkers as weapons as a result of his code; he doesn't want them to get killed, but isn't enthusiastic about causing the deaths of other survivors either. Nevertheless, he will make exceptions if he believes the cause to be just, but will never participate in the fighting himself, due to his convictions. Not much is known about James' life prior to or as the outbreak began, except that he was born in either 1991 or 1992, helped his father run a food truck, and had a boyfriend named Charlie.

On the night the apocalypse began, he visited Charlie and was sat outdoors hanging out with him. Suddenly, alarms started going off and screams could be heard ringing throughout the city. Charlie went back indoors to investigate, while James discovered via emergency message that the world was beginning to end. Earlier that evening, when James had said goodnight to his family before going to Charlie’s place, it ended up being the last time he ever saw them. Sometime after the outbreak, James became a member of the Whisperers. When he was with the Whisperers he became a ruthless killer and would kill anyone who showed weakness without feeling a thing. During his time he may have learned the trick to throw rocks on objects to distract walkers away. When the Whisperers attacked another group, James did not want to be a part of it and decided to leave the Whisperers. He tried to convince Charlie to come with him and to leave the Whisperers behind, Charlie rejected James but he never stopped loving James and allowed him to leave. James eventually started living by himself in the woods, but still uses the Whisperers' tactic of skinning walkers and wearing their hides to walk among the dead. At some point later, he learned of the war between the Delta and another community, and that the former has been abducting other survivors to fight for their cause and have their sights set on the children residing in the Ericson's Boarding School. He has since then steered clear of the conflict between all three groups and remained in the woods. At some point he began to gather walkers into a barn to "protect them" or shield them from those who want to kill walkers.

James is first seen among walkers that Clementine is killing, wearing a disguise made from walker skin. Having previously directed a small herd towards Clementine in order to stop Lilly and Abel's pursuit, he arrives to help in person upon realizing that she has been surrounded. He walks towards her, mimicking a walker, stopping her before she attacks him. Realizing that he's attempting to help her, Clementine lowers her knife, and James proceeds to distract the approaching walkers by throwing a rock in the opposite direction from her. He then asks Clementine to follow him, and guides them back to his campsite. There, he has Clementine use her knife to remove the shrapnel from AJ's torso that he sustained from Abel shooting him. He holds the boy down then uses tape to patch up the wound. He then goes to his fire, nursing it with a stick. Clementine carried AJ to the fire and asks James to reveal who he is. James mentions that he used to a member of the "Whisperers", a group that figured out a way to walk among the dead by skinning them and wearing their hides. He offers a hungry AJ an apple, to which Clementine accepts or denies. He remarks they got into a war with another group which prompted him to leave and survive on his own instead. He also reveals he is from Washington City and was close with his father. Seeing Clementine exhausted, he volunteers to keep watch and allow them to sleep safely, as he doesn't need sleep. Clementine can decide to remain awake and help keep watch.

The next day, James escorts Clementine and AJ back to the boarding school. However, because of his disguise, Willy mistakes him for a walker and shoots at him, narrowly missing. Before entering the school, Clementine invites James in, claiming he is allowed to stay. James declines, stating that he is not ready yet and walks back off into the woods. James is first seen at his camp after it had been attacked by the raiders and then walkers. He requests Clementine and AJ's assistance as he had been separated from his mask, which was still in his bag in the middle of the camp. He asks Clementine to spare the walkers, to which Clementine has the decision to either kill none, kill some, or kill all. While James sneaks into his camp to grab his mask, Clementine will have to hold off against multiple walkers, either slaughtering them against James' wishes or risking her life and sparing them for his sake. After James gets the bag he thought his mask was in, he finds that it's not there and the bag that has it is in the middle of several walkers. AJ yells and throws a rock at the walkers to get their attention, much to Clementine's dismay. Clementine and James proceed to push an abandoned Delta cart to make noise to draw the walkers away from AJ, saving his life. After he recovers his mask, James will appear either appreciative of Clementine's efforts to spare the walkers or upset by her bloodshed.

Clementine asks for James to escort a walker herd to the Delta's ship as a distraction so the Ericson's Boarding School survivors can sneak in and rescue their friends. James takes Clementine and AJ to his barn and opens the doors to show them the walkers he had rounded up and was protecting. James says to Clementine that he sees the walkers as "...Not people, exactly. Something in between," and thinks that a part of the person who turned is still in the Walker. Clementine can agree or disagree with James. James asks both Clementine and AJ if someone they care about turned; AJ tells James that Clementine had a friend named Lee who was bitten and either left to reanimate or shot in the head to prevent reanimation. James, upon hearing that Clementine had shot Lee before reanimating, will apologize to her for bringing up tragic memories and drop the subject. Alternatively, if Clementine had left Lee to reanimate, he will ask her if she thinks that some part of Lee is still out there, even after he had turned. Clementine can feel comforted or disturbed by James' question. After their talk, James tells Clementine that in order for him to help her, she has to walk among the walkers in the barn and touch the wind chimes in the back, and hands her his mask to mask her scent. When Clementine exits the barn, she gives him back his mask and James asks her if she still thinks walkers are just monsters. Clementine can either agree that there might be more to walkers, or claim they're still just monsters, much to James' elation or chagrin. James agrees to release the horde within the barn and allow the Ericson survivors to use it as cover for the rescue mission, and informs Clementine that it will take a while to guide the horde to the Delta's ship and to be ready by tomorrow night.

James is seen next preparing for the mission with the Ericson survivors, and feels accepted among them even with his Walker mask on and his past Whisperers affiliation. Clementine can tell James that her friends can also be James's friends. To which he responds that he hasn't lived with people in a long time but it sounds nice to him. If Clementine agreed with James that there might be people in walkers, James will show Clementine a picture of his ex-boyfriend, Charlie, another survivor he was in a relationship with before the apocalypse and joined the Whisperers with. He says that joining the Whisperers changed both of them due to the suffering and death they had witnessed and eventually became the cause of it. After a fellow Whisperer expressed sympathy for an enemy they were about to attack, James slit his throat without any hesitation and felt justified in doing so. Afterwards, however, James remembered his final words and stopped killing altogether, but no one else did. James expresses that hearing AJ say he had killed someone in the past reminded him of himself, and feared that AJ, should he take another life, might not be able to go back. James is seen once more at the end of the rescue mission, having been captured by the Delta and questioned by Lilly. Just before a Delta member executes James with a shot to the head, Tennessee takes the pistol from her hilt and points it at both Lilly and her. After Lilly takes the gun from Tennessee, she attempts to shoot him in the head but is stopped by AJ biting her right hand. Before Gina can shoot AJ, James attempts to disarm her, succeeding just in time before AJ shoots a mortally wounded, pleading Lilly in the head. James pleads to AJ, claiming Lilly is no longer a threat, and approaches him, asking for the gun in AJ's hands. Tell AJ to shoot Lilly (Alive): Clementine tells AJ to kill Lilly, and AJ does so promptly. After AJ repeatedly shoots her, James tells him to stop.

James appears in this episode either alive or as a walker, depending on if Lilly was killed in the previous episode or not. If James is alive, he helps the group escape from a herd of walkers by leading them into a network of limestone caves. Enraged by Clementine telling AJ to kill Lilly, James attacks her and tries to take AJ away, threatening to break her leg if she tries to stop him. If Clem accuses him of breaking his vow of pacifism, James will respond that she pushed him past his limits. However, AJ lacerates James' palm to get away and breaks up the fight by confessing he enjoyed killing Lilly; stating that he'll gladly kill anyone who threatens him or Clementine. Seeing that Clem is just as horrified by this as he is, James permits her to try to talk AJ out of becoming a bloodthirsty murderer. When counter arguing James' point about his philosophy, if she tells him anything else other than that he can't force it upon others, he will leave the cave in anger, leaving his mask behind to be picked up by AJ. If Clementine does tell him that he can't force his philosophy onto others, he will stay, however as the walkers enter the cave, James pulls out his knives and offers to buy time for the others to escape while also regarding them to be safe For the remainder of the episode, James' fate is left unknown. However according to Kent Mudle, he is alive and is remaining in the forest but is no longer on speaking terms with Clementine.