Carol Peletier

Carol arrives as a quiet, battered woman traveling with her young daughter Sophia and her controlling husband Ed. She flinches before she speaks, defers before she's asked, and does small kindnesses for others while seeming to expect nothing for herself. In a camp of survivors, she is the one nobody thinks to worry about.

Melissa McBride plays the meekness so precisely that you feel the character has further to travel than almost anyone else on the show, without the writing tipping its hand about how far. It's a performance built on stillness and watchfulness, and that restraint is what makes Carol so quietly riveting from her very first scenes.