A History of Helicopters on The Walking Dead

When Morales nicknamed Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) “helicopter boy” on the first season of The Walking Dead, the moniker referred to the sheriff’s deputy’s attempt to flag down a helicopter he saw flying over downtown Atlanta in the early days of the zombie apocalypse. Call it prescience. Call it coincidence. But eight years after an injured Rick was airlifted away aboard a Civic Republic Military chopper, “helicopter boy” moved through the ranks to become Sergeant Major Rick Grimes: a CRM soldier and helicopter pilot.

CRM Lt. Col. Donald Okafor (Craig Tate) recruited and trained Rick to change the secret army that helicoptered him away from his wife Michonne (Danai Gurira) and daughter Judith on season 9 of The Walking Dead — a mission made possible after Jadis/Anne (Pollyanna McIntosh) saved Rick’s life by handing him over to the CRM. While Jadis was ultimately the link between Rick and this expanded world over on The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live, helicopters have been a recurring motif going back to the very first episode of The Walking Dead.

Season 1 Episode 1: “Days Gone Bye”

After waking up in an abandoned hospital, Rick walked past a graveyard of military vehicles and aircraft — including a black helicopter. Rick later saw the reflection of an operational helicopter when he rode into zombie-overrun Atlanta on horseback.

Season 2 Episode 13: “Beside the Dying Fire”

The season 2 finale began with a walker herd forming on the streets of Atlanta after trailing the helicopter that Rick saw in the pilot. The herd eventually made its way to rural Georgia to overrun and destroy the Greene family farm.

Season 3 Episode 3: “Walk With Me”

The Governor (David Morrissey) of Woodbury came across a crashed National Guard helicopter that Michonne and Andrea (Laurie Holden) watched go down in smoke.

Season 4 Episode 1: “30 Days Without an Accident”

After Rick’s group settled into the prison, Michonne, Daryl (Norman Reedus), Glenn (Steven Yeun) and others went on a supply run into a Big Spot store with a crashed helicopter on its roof that eventually gave way to falling walkers. 

Season 7 Episode 10: “New Best Friends”

When Rick first encountered Jadis and the Scavengers at the junkyard, eagle-eyed viewers spotted two background details: a helipad among the heaps and a flying object that some speculated was a helicopter. Savior Simon (Steven Ogg) later questioned Jadis about the helipad in the season 8 episode “The Lost and the Plunderers,” which marked the first appearance of the three-ring symbol that we later learned represented the CRM and the Alliance of the Three.

Season 8 Episode 5: “The Big Scary U”

Rick was en route to Jadis’ junkyard when he heard and then briefly saw a black helicopter fly overhead before disappearing behind the trees.  

Season 8 Episode 14: “Still Gotta Mean Something”

The three-ring symbol was visible on the helicopter that Jadis summoned to the junkyard where she planned to trade Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) for extraction. After a struggle ensued and her flare snuffed out, the CRM helicopter turned around and left without its pickups.

Season 9 Episode 2: “The Bridge”

19 months after Jadis assimilated into the Alexandria Safe-Zone, she was on lookout duty when she saw lights and heard the whirring blades of a circling helicopter in the night sky.

Season 9 Episode 3: “Warning Signs”

When Saviors started going missing and then turning up dead, Jadis was suspected to be the culprit. She tried to convince Father Gabriel (Seth Gilliam) to run away with her to “another place”: the first indirect mention of the Civic Republic. “It’s far from here, but if we go together, we can get there.It can be different for us.There’s only one thing.You can’t tell anyone,” she told Gabriel of the hidden city of 200,000 survivors eventually revealed on The Walking Dead: World Beyond. “But if you can trust me, and help me with one small part of the deal, we can have a life like you can’t imagine.” 

But Gabriel was going to alert Rick that she’d been trading people, so Jadis knocked him unconscious and told Gabriel: “And all this time… I thought you were a B.”

Season 9 Episode 4: “The Obliged”

After designating a captive Rick and Negan as “A’s,” Jadis planned to have Gabriel bitten by a walker and trade him to the helicopter after she was told extraction required an “A.” She ultimately spared Gabriel and abandoned the junkyard.

Season 9 Episode 5: “What Comes After”

Rick was bucked off his horse and impaled on a rebar pipe while trying to reroute a walker herd in “The Obliged.” As he passed in and out of consciousness, Rick’s hallucinations brought him back to the hospital where he woke up after the outbreak. Outside his window was a flock of helicopters foreshadowing his fateful airlift.

Season 9 Episode 5: “What Comes After”

Rick washed up on a riverbed after blowing up his bridge to save the communities from being overrun and destroyed by a walker herd. Jadis found him and radioed the helicopter pilot: “I have a ‘B.’Not an ‘A.’I never had an ‘A.’He’s hurt, but he’s strong.Can you help him?” She then insisted that she was trying to save a friend who saved her… and the CRM helicopter airlifted Rick from Virginia to a military hospital at the Civic Republic of Philadelphia. After multiple failed escape attempts, Rick spent the next six years working in consignment on the outskirts of the city, and another two years training as a soldier and pilot in the Civic Republic’s military.

Read our rundown on everything you need to know about the CRM, our Rick & Michonne timeline explainer, and our recap about Rick’s eight-year disappearance. Stay tuned to ComicBook/TWD and follow on Facebook for more TWD Universe coverage.