The Ten Most Shocking Moments of "The Walking Dead" Season Two

So it’s finally come! The season finale of “The Walking Dead” has come and gone and another superb season of “The Walking Dead” has come to pass. After much controversy and so much ballyhoo, the pop culture sensation has come to an end for the spring and with it some of the most memorable moments in television we’ve seen in years. With some amazing special effects and top notch performances, “The Walking Dead” has given Cinema Crazed a lot to chew on and we’ll be watching the season over and over again with much enthusiasm! To celebrate the passing of “The Walking Dead” season two, we bring you our ten most shocking moments of season two that left fans gasping, sulking, and cheering for better or for worse.

10. The Herd on the Highway
Episode: What Lies Ahead

In what promised to be just a prieview of things to come, it’d been unlike the group to experience a herd of walkers before. Sure they’d confronted them one by one and were ambushed but had no idea they were migrating in herds across roads and highways. After being stranded on the road with nowhere to go the group decides to spread apart scavenging for supplies from wrecked cars and abandoned trucks discovering water and left over clothes. But as their guards are down Rick and Dale spot not one, not two, but over two dozen walkers drifting across the highway in unison.

Rick and group hide under the cars to avoid being seen, left with nowhere to go. Through this herd, the series is set in to motion with many plot threads. Andrea is confronted with a walker in the trailer and experiences her first confrontation with a walker, T-Dog is severely cut and is miraculously saved by Daryl, and poor young Sophia is chased off in to the woods by two lone walkers, setting the stage for the season’s first arc in which she goes missing and the group sets out in the wilderness looking for any signs of her or her corpse. The scene is unnerving and absolutely terrifying as the group is outnumbered, outgunned, and absolutely overpowered.


9. Zombie Autopsy

Episode: What Lies Ahead

After chasing her down the forest and inevitably catching up with her, Rick urges poor Sophia to hide under a tree as two walkers come bearing down on them. To distract them, he leads them off in to the woods and finishes them as Sophia runs off. Later when it’s been declared that Sophia is officially lost to the group, Rick and Daryl go on a hunt for Sophia, tracking her markings in the woods and looking for signs of her presence among the trees and grass.

While tracking Sophia, Rick and Daryl Dixon distract a lone walker who they manage to take down. Just to be cautious and ensure that Sophia hasn’t been eaten, Rick and Daryl proceed to give the walker a full autopsy, gutting and opening him wide to explore his innards and stomach contents. After a grotesque feel around and some more investigation, it’s deemed the walker ate a beaver for lunch.


8. Rick battles Shane

Episode: Eighteen Miles Out

After engaging in a shoot out with a wandering band of survivors, Rick, Hershel, and Glenn decide to save one of the shooters as he lays pinned to a fence pole ready to be eaten by an onslaught of walkers dripping down on to the men. Convinced they can save him, they release him and manage to imprison him in the barn where they sap information from him about his gang, and what fire power they’re holding. They learn the young man’s group os thirty strong and filled with ammunition.

In an effort to save the group, Rick decides to spare his life and drive him eighteen miles out in to the country in spite of Shane’s protests. They eventually drive out in to a safe haven where the zombie presence is nil and Rick and Shane inevitably clash words on the fate of the young man and how he should be dealt with. What begins as brow batting turns in to a full on one on one fight between the men who proceed to tear up the parking lot with their struggling and accidentally bring down a herd of walkers on their heads in the middle of their bout.


7. Merle belittles Daryl

Episode: Chupacabra

The search for Sophia meant a lot to the group of Atlanta. It meant hope. It meant restoring the group’s innocence once again and everyone invested their time in to. Most of all Daryl Dixon who found something to fight for in the hunt for Sophia as he ventured out with the group to find her. After spending days tracking her and looking for signs of her presence along creeks and water beds, Daryl inevitably decides to venture out on his own with Hershel’s horse. Things seem to be going well that is until the horse throws Daryl off of it knocking Daryl in to the water below where he’s rendered unconscious.

There is where he’s confronted with delusions of his big brother Merle Dixon, who appears to not only egg on his young brother, but antagonize him in to fighting for his life. Here is where we get a full grasp of the relationship between Merle and Daryl as Daryl is perceived to be weak and pitiful in Merle’s eyes. And as he lays bleeding to death, Daryl finds the will to fight due to hallucinations of Merle who challenge him to go the extra mile to step back in to civilization and get in touch with his inner savage. Through this Daryl battles two walkers, climbs up a steep hill and eventually makes it back to the farm, but barely.


6. Confrontation in the Saloon

Episode: Nebraska

After destroying every walker Hershel had stored in his barn along his farm, Hershel sees the true nature of the infection and ventures out on his own, retreating in the old town near the train tracks where he sulks in to alcohol. Rick and Glenn go after him trying to convince him to come back to tend to his daughter whose fallen in to a catatonic state and there the two men have an argument about faith and the will to live in a world that seems hopeless. While disagreeing, the three men are met with two drifters (One of whom is played skillfully by Michael Raymond-James) who appear at the saloon and make themselves comfortable, greeting them with open arms and befriending them.

But what begins as a meeting of survivors soon transforms in to a tense bout of words and wills as the two survivors seek shelter and pose ulterior motives for the group and the farm. Desperately trying to discover the location of Hershel’s farm, the three men refuse to divulge the location so he and his men can hunker down and they begin to argue. In the midst of the tense confrontation and battle of words, Rick is forced to kill both men with his gun, eliminating two potential threats but sadly bringing down walkers and the rest of their group down on them.


5. Dale’s Demise

Episode: Judge, Jury, Executioner

In a moment that almost made us give up completely on the show, young Carl finds himself confronted with a walker stuck in the swamp one day and after taunting him for a moment is nearly killed as the walker frees itself from the mud. Later on in the evening after pleading with the group to let their prisoner Randall live and not subject themselves to cruel acts of murder, Dale wanders off in to the field to discover a mutilated cow lying along the grass dying and turns to find himself being attacked by the very walker stuck in the swamp.

In spite of his struggling with the beast, the group is too late and it rips in to Dale’s stomach attempting to feed on him. After finishing off the walker, the group attempts to come to Dale’s aid and can do nothing else but watch as he suffers from his mortal wound bleeding to death and horribly moaning in pain. As an act of mercy, Daryl steps up and euthanizes Dale, finally ending his misery and extinguishing the group’s last voice of reasoning once and for all.


4. The Hooded Stranger

Episode: Beside the Dying Fire

After Hershel’s farm fell, the group briefly disbands and manages to scatter along the fields and roads looking for safety. After miraculous common sense and some patience they eventually meet up and reunite in the exact road where they were confronted by the herd and try to figure out where Andrea went. Andrea is in the woods fighting off walkers who are relentlessly chasing her down. After hours of running from their claws and teeth and fending them off with what little ammo she could muster up, Andrea finds herself exhausted, worn, and left with no options.

Desperate to stay alive she beats up a walker and takes down another with a pocket knife but left without arms she’s tackled by a lone walker who dives down on her preparing to eat her. Until his head is lopped off from behind, ending his threat. Much to Andrea’s utter shock and awe, she’s confronted by a hooded figure with a samurai sword chained to two walkers who gazes down at her. Is this stranger friend or foe? We will see.


3. Rick murders Shane

Episode: Better Angels

After realizing the group was now under the control of Rick and Hershel, Shane, the alpha male, lost all sense of his control over the group and attempted to find alliances in Andre and Lori. Realizing that he was all on his own in the group Shane finally lost all sense of sanity and good sense, anxious to re-claim his power and hold over Lori’s emotions. Taking the chance, he finally freed Randall from his barn prison and beckoned him to take him to his group and finishes him off in the woods.

Orchestrating a fight between the two Shane insists the group go find Randall and the team splits up in the woods searching for their prisoner. Along the way Daryl and Glenn discover what actually happened thanks to sloppy signs left by Shane while Shane leads Rick out in to the boondocks of Hershel’s farm where Rick finally figures out Shane plans to murder Rick. After an exchange of words, the two draw on one another and Rick refuses to shoot Shane. Left with no other option Rick mortally stabs Shane in the stomach ending his life and finishes him off in cold blood. Through this Rick finally confirms what he’s known all along. It doesn’t take a bite to turn in to a walker as Shane emerges moments later to lunge at Rick only to be shot down by Carl in cold blood once again.


2. Shane Sacrifices Otis

Episode: Save the Last One
With Shane’s return to the farm with the necessary supplies for Carl’s surgery, it was always suspicious that he never appeared with his cohort Otis, who’d led him to the medical sight to gather the supplies. After indicating Otis had been taken down by the walkers in the middle of the escape from the sight, Shane retreats to his room to shave his head and is haunted by what really occurred.

In the middle of being overrun by the walkers in the middle of the school parking lot, Shane finds little recourse but to shoot and hobble Otis and horribly tear the supplies away from Otis’ body as Otis fights for his life and struggles to keep Shane at his side. After tearing hair from his head and scratching his face, Otis has his supplies torn from him and Shane makes a get away as Otis is left for the walkers only to be used as feed for their ravenous appetites in cold blood.


1. Sophia in the Barn

Episode: Pretty Much Already Dead

As mentioned in previous entries, the search for Sophia was important to the morale of the group. It needed to happen because it provided hope and instilled in them the will to fight for something they felt needed fighting for in a world where hope was all but lost. Daryl expounded all resources looking for her, the group stretched themselves thin, and Rick clashed with just about everyone to find Sophia. But to no avail. Seemingly disappearing off the face of the Earth, the group finally decides to quit the search and Glenn discovers that farmer Hershel is storing walkers in his barn.

Angered and outraged, Shane leads the group to unleash the walkers from the barn initiating a firing squad and much to the misery of Hershel and his family, gun down all of the walkers looming from within. After moments pass, the group discovers one more walker lurking inside. It’s Sophia and much to their horror she’s a walker. She’d been inside the barn for days and had turned. The group can do nothing but look on as she wanders along the field looking in to the sunlight and absolutely confused as to what’s occurring before her. Until she finally regains her senses and approaches the group. The only one capable of stepping up and putting her out of her misery is Rick who executes her before everyone’s eyes, effectively ending all hope they had for maintaining their innocence once and for all.