Daryl Dixon: What Happens to Carol in The Walking Dead Comics?

Melissa McBride’s Carol Peletier returns on Sunday’s season premiere of The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon — The Book of Carol, which tracks her journey overseas to find the only other season 1 character who lasted the entire 11-season run of the original show: Norman Reedus’ Daryl Dixon. While the next chapter in the book of Daryl and Carol will play out in a foreign country, Carol’s story almost ended at a Georgia prison in season 3, where it was IronE Singleton’s T-Dog who died instead when he saved Carol from a fate similar to her counterpart in the comics.

“I was dead set against [Carol’s death], because I thought it would be a greatstory to see a person who came from abuse become the hero and not in aneasy way, that she herself had to struggle with the power that shefound,” The Walking Dead chief content officer Scott M. Gimple said in 2019. “Carol’s great story is that she found that shewas strong, she found she had this superpower, but then it wouldn’t beeasy. It wasn’t happy ever after after that — that she had responsibilityand there was a weight to that strength that she found.”

In The Walking Dead comic book by Robert Kirkman and artists Tony Moore and Charlie Adlard, Carol is introduced in issue #3 as a widow and the mother of a young daughter, Sophia. After Rick Grimes reunites with his family at a small camp outside Atlanta, Sophia mentions to Carl that her daddy is dead, and Carol later tells the group that her husband died by suicide at the start of the outbreak. (The show included Carol’s abusive husband, Ed Peletier, who dies when he’s devoured by zombies during an attack on the campsite.)

Carol befriends Rick’s wife, Lori, and becomes romantically involved with Tyreese after the group takes refuge on the Greene family farm outside of the city. (Unlike the television show, Sophia isn’t lost on the highway, and the walkers in Hershel’s barn are let loose much earlier — in issue #11.) The group survives on the road until Dale and Andrea come across the prison (in issue #12), and Carol is initially optimistic that they could make a new life at the prison. She tells Lori that her life is almost better post-apocalypse, and Tyreese is better than her husband ever was. Carol’s happiness is short lived, however, when she catches her boyfriend cheating on her with a new arrival to the prison: Michonne.

Carol breaks up with Tyreese and attempts suicide by cutting her wrists (issue #22). Carol kisses Rick (issue #24) after he’s injured fighting Tyreese, and she becomes increasingly dependent on Rick and a pregnant Lori. She confesses to Lori she’s become a “basket case” since the end of her relationship with Tyreese, and then expresses remorse over Sophia witnessing her suicide attempt (issue #25). While Rick is out tracking down a helicopter with Michonne and Glenn, Carol confides in Lori, telling her: “I kinda want to marry you.” Carol propositions Lori with a polyamorous relationship where Rick, Lori, and Carol could raise Sophia, Carl, and the new baby together (issue #26).

Lori tells Carol they’ve grown close over the last seven months, but ultimately rejects her “insane proposal” (issue #27). When Rick fails to return after two days — he’d been captured by the Governor of Woodbury — Lori mistakes Carol’s attempt to comfort her for another romantic pass and reacts in anger (issue #30). Rick, Michonne, and Glenn eventually escape from Woodbury and return to find the prison overrun by walkers, but they reclaim the prison with the help of new arrivals from Woodbury. That includes Alice, a nurse who Carol takes a liking to while setting up the prison hospital for Lori to give birth (issue #37).

After Alice delivers Lori’s baby, Carol confides in her that she can’t be alone. “I can’t handle it. It kinda drives me crazy,” Carol says. “I was that way even before the end of the world.” She married Sophia’s father because she didn’t want to be alone, even though he sometimes hit her (issue #41). Carol abruptly asks Lori if she’d take care of Sophia if something were to happen to her, and aggressively approaches Hershel’s 19-year-old son, Billy, for sex.

Carol then talks to a tied-up walker in the prison courtyard, telling her the group has lost respect for her since she attempted to take her own life. Lori has been distant since Carol’s polyamorous proposition, and now, “Everyone thinks I’m crazy,” she tells the walker (issue #41). “I don’t really have anyone to talk to, so I figured I’d introduce myself. I’m Carol. I really hope you like me.”

Carol lets the walker bite her neck, and as she succumbs to blood loss, her last words to the group are: “Just let me die.” A zombified Carol quickly reanimates, so Andrea shoots her in the head (issue #42). Carol’s death leaves Sophia catatonic, but the group soon suffers another devastating loss when the Governor returns and attacks the prison. 

New episodes of The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon — The Book of Carol premiere Sundays on AMC and AMC+. Stay tuned to ComicBook/TWD and ComicBook TWD on Facebook for more Walking Dead Universe coverage.