8. Lennie James (Morgan Jones)
Pilot episodes are notoriously rather shaky. Generally produced as a pitch to a network (and audience), there are usually either flaws in character development in favor of the premise or flaws in the premise in favor of character development. Most pilots are really not all that good. The
Walking Dead pilot? Well, that pilot's pretty great, and it would have been pretty easy to do poorly. This was an episode that had to introduce the main protagonist for the entire series as well as make the Walkers properly frightening and convincing as catalysts for the collapse of civilization. In a universe where there are no zombie movies, somebody had to be there to fill Rick in on everything that had happened while he was in his shooting-induced coma. That person was Morgan Jones. After Morgan's son Duane whacks the clearly-wounded Rick in the head with a baseball bat, Morgan in an act of kindness made more profound after seeing how Apocalypse survivors usually greet each other in later episodes takes Rick in, bandages him, feeds him, and exposits at him until the true gravity of the situation becomes apparent. Morgan's clear love for his wife-turned-Walker and his surviving son just make the circumstances of his Season 3 solo reappearance all the more tragic. Had he been played by a lesser actor, Morgan's inability to snipe his wife might have come across as foolish rather than sympathetic, his unwillingness to follow Rick to the presumed safety of Atlanta might have seemed more for the sake of plot convenience than character motivation, his instability in Season 3 might have been laughable, and his stabbing of Rick (ruining yet another shirt) could have been even more infuriating. However, in Lennie James' capable hands, the role never slipped to such depths.
MVP Moment: Morgan trains the scope of his rifle on his reanimated wife but cannot bring himself to pull the trigger.