The Walking Dead: Ranking Every Season From Worst To Best

The fleeting six episodes that made up the show’s debut season placed a great deal of importance on an atmosphere of horror; at this early point, zombie imagery still had the power to shock, with viewers not yet as desensitised to the ghastly, gory sights of personal apocalypse as the characters would later come to grow.

It’s fascinating to see how our heroes began at the dawn of the walker outbreak, still to learn the harrowing lessons which would later trigger their shedding of basic human traits in order to survive. In particular, the immense satisfaction of Carol’s arc over the course of the series is even sweeter when we revisit how she began as a powerless, abused wife.

The season’s main flaw is one that it’s blameless for: its brief length means it’s only able to begin to set up character relationships, and is unable to provide much more than a taste of what the show would grow into, for better or worse. With a short six episode order, a few weaker instalments negatively affect the balance and consistency of the season.

While certainly satisfying criteria for zombie action and fearful, atmospheric set pieces, the season also foreshadowed key issues that the show would come to struggle with, the writing growing steadily sillier as the finale approached and with certain supporting characters laughably shafted in terms of screen time and depth (take a bow, T-Dog and Jacqui!).

Still, the importance and atmosphere of the show’s debut season coupled with its lack of major weaknesses keep it ranked highly in fan regard.

Best Episode: Days Gone Bye - The show’s superb pilot stood out among a barrage of zombie fiction in entertainment with pristine production value, lavish photography and a palpable sense of dread, which caused viewers to latch on in droves to the existing audience of dedicated fans of the bleak source material. Focusing primarily on Rick, with brief appearances by the riveting Morgan and his doomed son, the first episode does an excellent job of establishing the tone and scale of one of the decade’s biggest TV obsessions. 



Worst Episode: Vatos - The revelation that the tough Latino gang Rick and company find themselves squaring off with are in fact a kindly group of sweethearts caring for their elderly is sickly and hokey to the point of embarrassment, feeling like an episodic social lesson of the week. The deaths of Carol’s awful husband and Andrea’s sister lack impact, hindered by a lack of development and emotional attachment. Ed Peletier would not be missed.