7. Sarah Wayne Callies (Lori Grimes)
Bear with me. Lori was not the most popular character. Before Andrea's transformation in Season 3, Lori was almost certainly the main character who viewers most wanted to become Walker-bait. She was underwhelming as a character and for the most part Sarah Wayne Callies was an underwhelming actress. It was a thankless role, and she was unable to do much to redeem Lori for the majority of her time on the show. And then came "Killer Within," the fourth episode of Season 3 in which Lori finally faced her death. With the full knowledge that she is unlikely to give birth naturally without leading to the death of her baby, Lori instructs Maggie to perform a C-section upon her and save the child. Trapped in a room by a horde of Walkers and on the verge of having her abdomen cut open with a dirty knife, Lori has a few final moments with her son. In those moments, Sarah Wayne Callies manages to make viewers forget her frustrating relationships, her inability to keep an eye on Carl during most of Season 2, and the selfishness that made us all wonder what both Rick and Shane seemed to see in her. In an episode that saw the death of T-Dog, the disappearance and possible death of Carol, Rick's breakdown, and Carl's bullet to his mother's head, the real tear-jerker came from Callies in her final scene as (non-hallucination) Lori. She may not have been the best actor on the show, but she really knocked it out of the park in "Killer Within."
MVP Moment: Lori says goodbye to Carl as Maggie prepares to perform the C-section.