Rick Grimes¹

Lori Grimes - deceased wife Carl Grimes - firstborn son Judith Grimes - youngest daughter Michonne - current partner

Rick is an average-sized man, approximately 46 years old,[1] with light eyes and dark brown hair. His style is heavily influenced by his time serving on the King County Sheriff's Office, and during the first season and part of the second, he was consistently seen wearing his sheriff's uniform despite the collapse of civilization, including his cowboy hat and badge.[2] His clothing typically involves solid colors—beige, black, and brown being the most prominent—but he has also occasionally been seen wearing a plaid shirt and white and gray T-shirts. He also carries a holster on his waist for his Colt Python, which is his preferred weapon for self-defense. So far, in cold weather, he has also been seen wearing three signature jackets: a brown one that was part of his uniform in the first season, a beige denim jacket during the second and third seasons, and a suede jacket lined with fur during the fourth and fifth seasons. Rick's physical appearance also varied throughout the seasons, although the most prominent feature was his beard, which reached its peak during the fifth season and served to symbolize how much the group had suffered in the wilderness and the great change that Alexandria foreshadowed in their lives.[3] Rick is usually presented as a man who emphasizes good values. Hershel Greene considered him a straightforward man,[4] while Daryl Dixon maintained that he is a man of honor.[5] Despite this, as the seasons progressed, the character evolved massively, going from a small-town cop who did good,[6] full of hope and optimism,[7] to a grim, fierce, and battle-ready man,[8] with a pragmatic focus on keeping his family safe.[9] Initially, although his intentions were good, his decisions often turned out to be bad.

In the beginning, Rick was a small-town cop who awoke from a coma to a world overrun by the undead and, fortunately, found his family alive in a camp outside Atlanta. An ordinary man, Rick had to fight to hold onto his moral code in the face of increasingly dire circumstances around him, as well as the constant need to find a safe haven for his family and those who trusted him. After assuming a dictatorial leadership role over his group and sheltering them in an abandoned prison, Rick's mental stability began to crumble when his wife died giving birth to their infant daughter. This couldn't have come at a worse time, as the Governor of Woodbury began to emerge on the horizon as a powerful threat intent on destroying them all. Although Rick recovered and led his group to successfully repel the enemy forces from Woodbury, months later a second attack by the Governor shattered the peaceful life they had built in the prison and forced them to return to the Road. Rick, who during the peaceful days had renounced his violent habits in order to be a good example for his children, encountered a reality far worse than he remembered, forcing him to embrace his own brutality to keep his loved ones safe. With the world becoming increasingly dangerous, Rick and his friends traveled north with the faint hope of finding some place untouched by the dead and arrived at a veritable post-apocalyptic paradise known as the Alexandria Safe-Zone. After making contact with other communities and discovering a larger world, Rick fell victim to his own hubris when he volunteered to confront a group of evildoers known as the Saviors, who proved to be a force to be reckoned with. Negan and his men