2. Character Growth
Mentally, Carol's a hardy sort she's not haunted by ghosts of her (admittedly awful) dead husband or seeing spirits of her zombified daughter, and she appears a whole lot more put together than the Grimes paterfamilias, who's been known to jump off the deep-end when it comes to familial hardship. Carol beats down her demons and refuses to live in the past while Rick still pines for Lori and her awful pancakes to the extent where he hallucinates and can easily be identified as a crazy person. If there is any character on Walking Dead that has shown the most character growth above all others, it's Carol. When we first meet Carol she was too busy using her face as her hubby's punching bag to be at all self-reliant. We traverse over many lands, seeing many people, yet despite critics carping on about there being little in the way of organic character development on this show, we find Carol to be a truly changed individual. Having lost practically everyone close enough to shed tears over, it seems Carol has not only dried out of tears but also any semblance of her previous self. She's not free of compassion and doesn't believe in the same survival-of-the-fittest philosophy as Shane, but she believes that occasionally, a line must be drawn regardless of the heinous actions required to draw it. Leaders make horrible decisions in horrible circumstances all the time, and being fair to Carol, you can hardly say she isn't decisive when she wants to be.