Lori Grimes died during childbirth in season 3 but the events following her death were even more tragic. The character, played by Sarah Wayne Callies, served as a prominent figure up to that point of the popular AMC series. Not only did Lori lose her life but it was up to her young son to prevent her transformation into a walker. To make the situation darker, it was insinuated that a walker discovered Lori and ate her entire dead body. Some viewers had a hard time believing a zombie would gobble up a whole body, leading to an intense debate whether or not the bloated walker was responsible.
Lori was the wife of the central character, Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln), and the mother to the pair’s young son, Carl (Chandler Riggs). When the apocalypse hit, Rick was still in a coma at a local hospital and his best friend and partner on the police force, Shane Walsh (Jon Bernthal), stepped up to get Lori and Carl to safety. The trio wound up at a quarry with another group before they were reunited with Rick. At that time, a romantic relationship formed between Shane and Lori but the latter tried to put a stop to it due to her husband’s return. Lori discovered she was pregnant with Shane’s baby but she vowed that Rick would be the only true father of her children.
Despite the tension that arose after Shane’s death, Rick led the group of survivors to an abandoned prison. By that point, Lori was gearing up to give birth. In the season 3 episode 4 episode, “Killer Within,” a disgruntled inmate wound up leading a horde of walkers back into the prison, forcing the group to split up into smaller groups. This would be the last time much of the survivors saw Lori alive as she soon met her demise before being eaten by The Walking Dead season 3’s infamous “bloated walker.”
After being split up from Rick and the others in The Walking Dead season 3, the immense fear made Lori go into labor forcing Maggie Greene (Lauren Cohan) and Carl to take her to a nearby boiler for shelter. Maggie bravely assisted in the C-section but the labor led to Lori’s death. After shooting his own mother to prevent her from turning into a walker, Carl tearfully presented his new baby sister to Rick. The following episode, “Say the Word,” featured a traumatized Rick go on a rampage through the prison before finding a very bloated walker at the site at which Lori gave birth. There was an assumption that the walker consumed Lori, and that was later confirmed.
When Rick entered the boiler room, he followed a trail of blood leading him to an extremely bloated walker. There was an insinuation that the walker dragged Lori’s body before indulging in its entirety. Some eagle-eyed viewers even noticed strands of Lori’s hair around the walker’s mouth. With no trace of Lori’s body, Rick killed the walker and stabbed at its stomach to search for pieces of Lori’s corpse. He didn’t allow himself to fully investigate since he was overcome with emotion. That said, Greg Nicotero, the special make-up effects supervisor as well as an executive producer and director on, confirmed that the walker did indeed eat Lori after her death. In an interview (via ), Nicotero commented on Lori’s death in The Walking Dead, saying:
“The idea is supposed to be that the walker has sort of dragged her around the corner of that boiler room. There’s actually a blood trail that continues past the walker and goes around the corner.Some of the little touches we added was there was bits of hair in its mouth and hair in his hand when it reaches up towards Rick. And it was just one of those things that we really wanted to show that this thing had feasted on her, as horrible as it is.”
Some viewers still questioned how a walker could have eaten an entire body in that short of time. Others pointed out that walkers have never been known to eat the bones of a victim. The series intentionally avoided showing the remains of her body since the crew thought they would be pushing the boundaries. A deleted scene actually revealed Lori as a walker, but it was only through a vision during Rick’s hallucinations. Lori’s death from childbirth was already emotional enough and the focus needed to shift to the fallout involving Rick. Instead, a walker was used to tie up loose ends in terms of her whereabouts but it ended up creating more questions for The Walking Dead and Lori’s death.
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