The apocalyptic, decimated world of The Walking Dead forces people to go to extremes that they never thought they were capable of, because the choices they're faced with often require them to do terrible, nightmarish things in order to stay alive and fight another day.
While zombies are the main threat the characters face, cruel, violent, and sometimes downright evil people are a huge problem survivors must confront as well. But, which bad guys featured on The Walking Dead actually managed to eventually redeem themselves?
8 Nicholas
Some people just aren't cut out to survive in the post-apocalyptic, zombie-ridden wasteland of The Walking Dead. And while Nicholas at least did redeem himself quite a bit before he died, his death was largely driven by the same thing that drove his villainy. He simply wasn't built to live in this world.
The fact that he attempted to kill Glenn because he essentially didn't want to be outed for being a coward was terrible, and although Glenn did manage to pull him back from his worst, he died before he could do a ton of good in the world.
7 Gamma
In terms of the typical Whisperer, Gamma honestly wasn't a particularly evil person. However, she clearly did terrible things in order to survive, and it's unfortunate that it took the death of her sister and the loss of her nephew to bring her back towards her humanity.
But regardless of what triggered it, Gamma did decide to change, and she did whatever she could to stop Alpha, Beta, and the rest of the Whisperers from demolishing the main characters of The Walking Dead.
6 Merle Dixon
Many villains have come and gone throughout the course of TWD, but there are few baddies who were as annoying and unappealing as Merle Dixon. Daryl's big brother was also his worst influence, and Merle was about as bigoted, selfish, and cruel as a person could possibly be.
But on the flip side of that, when it came time to prove his mettle as a hero, he did just about as much as a person can possibly do too, sacrificing his own life to give Michonne and by extension Daryl and Rick's entire group a shot at surviving the Governor.
5 Dwight
Daryl's instincts about who is a good person and who is a bad one are usually right on, and he clearly got a decent read on Dwight as soon as they met. But fear, grief, and the desire to protect his wife Sherry led Dwight down an incredibly dark path that it seemed like he could never come back from.
Dwight really proved his inner goodness in the end though, as he switched sides and tried to help Rick's group defeat the Saviors despite the fact that he was expecting them to execute him once it was all over.
4 Father Gabriel Stokes
It's actually fascinating to see what exactly led many of The Walking Dead's redeemed characters down a path towards evil in the first place. Some do it for personal gain, some do it because of trauma or emotional pain, and others just become bad people because they're afraid.
Father Gabriel is clearly one of the latter kinds of people, as he allowed all of his parishioners to die a terrible death because he was too scared to put himself on the line to help them. But as time went on he developed into a genuinely good person who was willing to die to do the right thing.
3 Negan
The recent TWD episode "Here's Negan" offered some insight into how Negan became who he was, and it was as heartbreaking as everyone imagined. However, Negan's devastation at losing his wife doesn't excuse him from becoming such a brutal and cruel leader of the Saviors.
Although Negan still has an extremely long way to go before he makes up for even half of the horrible things he's done, the fact that he was such a bad guy and has become something approaching a good guy is still one of the most dramatic redemptions of the series.
2 Daryl Dixon
In a certain sense, Daryl is sort of the inverse of Negan in that he was never much of a bad guy, however, he's become such a good guy that he has undeniably had one of the best redemptions in The Walking Dead.
At the start of the series, Daryl was more than happy to follow in his bigoted brother's footsteps, and he didn't seem to care about anyone but himself. But when Sophia went missing, everything changed, and that kicked off an evolution that ended with Daryl now being the biggest hero left on the show.
1 Rick Grimes
Yes, Rick Grimes is theoretically the main hero of The Walking Dead. But he's been through a lot throughout his character arc on the series, and it's hard to deny that at certain points in the show, he was something very closely resembling a villain.
What makes Rick such a wonderful protagonist though is that while he has gone to the brink of evil quite a few times in his life, he always brings himself back and redeems himself as a true hero in an awful world.
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