At most points in time, one member of The Walking Dead (2010) core group serves as the group’s moral compass. This person seems to keep a level, logical head in difficult times. Their morality influences decisions that often impact the whole group. Dale (Jeff DeMunn) was the first notable morality check, followed by Hershel (Scott Wilson), and several other characters for more brief moments in time. Most of these characters are dead, raising the question of whether their morality helped them survive or made them an easy target.

It’s easy to see how ruthlessness and a wanton abandon of civilized behavior would keep people alive in The Walking Dead. Characters are shown to successfully lead others and live a life of status commanding by fear and brutishness. But we also see repeated instances where members of the main group repeatedly seek advice from those characters that hold onto morality and help their everyone balance their apocalyptic survivalist mentalities with humanity.

The show as a whole is genuinely a study in good and evil, weakness and power, morality and a lack thereof. It would be unwise to call morality a weakness. It’s more about finding the right balance and making the right decisions at the right times for survival. Being “good” does not parallel with being “weak.” Most of the moral compass characters are dead, but so are most of the immoral ones.

Andrew Lincoln, in an interview discussing the violence and moral ambiguity of many of Rick’s decisions, states, “the violence on the show is always “grounded in something incredibly powerful and humane… you can do things that are terribly inhumane in this show, and that’s the kind of juxtaposition that really gets people’s juices flowing.”