Sophia Peletier (TV Series)

This article is about the TV Series character. You may be looking for her Comic Series, Novel Series, Assault, Social Game, Road to Survival counterparts, or the Video Game character.

Sophia Peletier
Actor	Madison Lintz
Gender	Female
Hair	Strawberry Blonde
Age	12
Occupation	Assumed Secondary School Student (Pre-Apocalypse)
Family	Carol Peletier - Mother Ed Peletier - Father (Deceased)
Ethnicity	French/Caucasian-American
Status	Dead
First Appearance	"Tell It to the Frogs"
Last Appearance	"Ghosts" (Hallucination, Photograph)
Fate
Death Episode	"What Lies Ahead" (Alive, Off-Screen) "Pretty Much Dead Already" (Zombified)

“

That's not my little girl. It's some other... thing. My Sophia was alone in the woods. All this time, I thought. She didn't cry herself to sleep. She didn't go hungry. She didn't try to find her way back. Sophia died a long time ago. ―Carol talking to Daryl and Lori about Sophia as a walker.

”

Sophia Peletier is a survivor of the outbreak in AMC's The Walking Dead. She is the daughter of Ed and Carol Peletier. During the initial outbreak, Carol, Ed, and Sophia evacuated to Atlanta for safety, but ended up joining a camp of survivors. While at the camp, Sophia sparked up a friendship with Carl Grimes and Eliza Morales.

Overview

Sophia Peletier was a shy, quiet and smart young girl. Although her personality was not well shown, it is assumed she was very nice, as stated by Carol in "The Grove", who said that "[Sophia] didn't have a mean bone in her body". It can also be said that she was good at making friends, as she was close to Eliza Morales and Carl Grimes, who seemed to care about her deeply.

Pre-Apocalypse

Southern United States

Sophia grew up under the loving care of her mother and the verbal and physical abuse of her father, who consistently neglected her. When she was an infant, Sophia used to wake up at 3:00 a.m. every morning and cry, causing her father to become irritated and stay with a friend until she calmed down.

Throughout her childhood, Sophia and Carol were victims of verbal and physical abuse from Ed. At some point, Sophia was taken by Carol to a shelter in Atlanta in an attempt to get away from Ed, but after a day and a half, they went back to him. After they went back, Ed beat them both very badly.

Post-Apocalypse

Metro-Atlanta, Georgia

During the onset of the outbreak, Sophia and her family traveled towards a supposedly safe-zone in Atlanta. On the way, they got caught in a traffic jam and befriended Shane, Lori, and Carl. Sometime after the city was napalmed by the military, they formed a campsite outside the outskirts of Atlanta, along with other survivors.

Season 1

"Tell It to the Frogs"

Sophia is first seen around the survivors' camp living with her father, Ed, and mother, Carol. She is playing with Carl, when the pair find a zombie eating a deer. They scream, running back into camp, prompting the men to investigate and kill the zombie. 

"Vatos"

Following Jim's strange behavior, the group go to investigate what he is doing, Sophia among them. Lori tells Jim that he's scaring Carl and Sophia. While Jim is tied to a tree (in an attempt to calm him down), Sophia and Carl are being tutored by their mothers. Sophia leaves with Carol and Carl to clean fish with Shane. Later, after Ed is beat up by Shane when he witnesses him beating Carol, her and Sophia give him some water in the family tent. Ed tells Carol to leave Sophia with him, but Carol refuses to leave her alone with Ed, despite his insisting manner. Later, when a few dozen walkers attack the camp, Sophia hides in her mother's arms, crying. She is not upset at all that her father was one of the victims.

"Wildfire"

Just after the zombie attack, Sophia is seen resting with the other survivors. She attends the funeral for the fallen campers. After being deemed unsafe, the group decide to leave the camp. Upon leaving, says goodbye to Eliza Morales, who then gives Sophia her doll as a gift.

The group decide to travel to the CDC. Upon arriving, they supposedly find it abandoned. However, after further investigation, Rick discovers that somebody is indeed still inside. He begs this unknown person to open the door. Just before the group leave, the door opens, shocking everyone.

"TS-19"

Sophia and the others enter the CDC was relief and awe on their faces. After been shown around the CDC and assigned their rooms, she and her mother, along with the rest of the group, settle down. She is later seen eating and playing checkers in the recreation room with Carl before going to bed. Towards the end of the episode, Sophia is seen crying with her mother after Dr. Edwin Jenner informed them of the building's imminent self-destruction. Carol says she does not want her daughter to die like this, prompting Jenner to let the group free. Sophia flees with the others to escape, but the glass won't budge, trapping them inside. Sophia shrilly squealed, "The glass won't break?!" Rick then uses a grenade to break though the glass. Afterwards, she procedes to enter the RV and watches as the CDC explodes. After recovering from the shock, the group then head in the direction of Fort Benning.

Season 2

"What Lies Ahead"

After the RV breaks down, Sophia is seen gathering supplies from abandoned vehicles on the Vehicle Jammed Highway, along with her mother Carol. After noticing a herd coming their way, Rick urges the group to hide under the cars on the highway. Sophia looks at her mother, terrified, as the herd passes through. When she thinks the herd has passed, Sophia attempts to get up, but is given the unwanted attention of two walkers who were still passing through. Terrified, Sophia exits the highway and runs into the nearby woods, the walkers on her tail. She is soon found by Rick, who urges her to stay by a creek while he distracts and kills the zombies. She nods, saying that she will, however when Rick and the rest of the group return, she is nowhere to be found.

Following her disappearance, the group are very concerned and determined to find Sophia. They send out multiple search parties into the woods to find her, to no avail. After Carl is shot, the group are forced to leave the highway and go to Hershel's farm. They leave a message on a car in case Sophia returns to the highway, saying "Sophia, stay here, we will come back every day"

"Chupacabra"

Sophia appears in a flashback at the beginning of the episode, where she was seen playing checkers with Carl on a highway at the beginning of the outbreak, when the Peletier and the Grimes family first meet.

"Pretty Much Dead Already"

After learning that walkers are being kept in the barn on Hershel's farm, Shane breaks open the door of barn, where dozens of walkers spill out of. Shane and the group take out the walkers. As the last walker emerges, stumbling out of the barn, the group are stunned and shocked to see that the walker is Sophia. Carol, beyond devastated, tries to run to Sophia, however Daryl stops her. The group look on in shock and sadness as Sophia slowly approaches them. Rick takes lead from Shane, walks up, and shoots a reanimated Sophia in the head, ending her suffering.

"Nebraska"

Sophia's body is wrapped in a blanket by Shane. Along with Annette and Shawn, Hershel's wife and son, Sophia is buried under some trees by the barn.

Season 9

"What Comes After"

In a hallucination, Rick walks through a floor full of the corpses of his friends and loved ones, among them Sophia.

Season 10

"Ghosts"

Carol looks at the cover of a textbook and hallucinates seeing herself at the head of a table with Sophia, Lizzie, Mika, Sam, and Henry with blood over their necks sitting around the table.

Death

Killed By

• Zombies (Alive, Off-Screen)

While Sophia is trying to find her way back to the group, she is attacked and bitten on the left shoulder by a walker and either dies of the infection or blood loss. Eventually, a zombified Sophia is found by Otis and is put into Hershel's barn.

• Rick Grimes (Zombified)

After Shane opens the barn and all the walkers are gunned down by the group, a zombified Sophia slowly walks out and is shot in the head by Rick.

Relationships

Ed Peletier “ Why don't you stay here? Keep your daddy company. ―Ed to Sophia ” Sophia and Ed had a fairly distant relationship, at best. Ed had a history of abuse, beating his wife, both physically and possibly sexually. The same possibly occurred with Sophia, as she seemed to be in fear of him, maintaining her distance from his side. Shortly before the walker attack on the camp, he opted to remain in his tent due to his shame of the injuries on his face due to an assault from Shane Walsh. He attempted persuading Sophia to remain at his side, but Carol berated him. They departed, and Ed dismissed them angrily. Their relationship wasn't explored more before his death. Carol Peletier “ That's not my little girl. It's some other... thing. My Sophia was lost in the woods. All this time, I thought. But she didn't go hungry. She didn't cry herself to sleep. She didn't try to find her way back. Sophia died a long time ago. ―Carol talking about Sophia after her death ” Carol is the mother of Sophia and she loved her dearly. Carol was very protective of her daughter and is willing to risk her own life in order to keep her safe. In Season 2 when Sophia went missing, Carol becomes extremely distraught and prayed for Sophia's safety and return. When Sophia emerged from the barn as a Walker, Carol was visibly shocked and broke down in sadness. She went into a state of disbelief and said that it was not her daughter that the group shot. She then refused to attend Sophia's funeral, claiming that what Rick shot wasn't her daughter and that Sophia had died a long time ago. Eventually she recovered and stated her belief that Sophia was in a better place, heaven. As time went on and as Carol became hardened, she rarely mentioned Sophia which hinted that she had recovered from her daughter's death. Carl Grimes “ ... No, I mean... me... that I'd be the one. Like, maybe she was hiding somewhere, in a cave or a tree. She'd be safe and I'd find her and bring her back. ―Carl to Lori about Sophia ” Carl was Sophia's closest friend. They met when Shane and Lori came across the Peletier family outside of Atlanta the night the military bombed the city. As both groups joined the other survivors at the Atlanta camp, they spent more time together. They played, studied, and lived alongside each other and so became good friends. When Sophia went missing, Carl repeatedly voiced his concern for her and hoped that he'd be the one to find her safe. Her death deeply affected him and he became cynical as he grieved. When Carol told Carl that Sophia was in Heaven, he called her an idiot for believing that. He also stated to his mother that, had his father not shot her reanimated body, he would have done so himself. When Lori became pregnant with Judith, Carl at first proposed that the baby be named "Sophia" in order to honor her memory. Eliza Morales “ You can have this. ―Eliza giving Sophia her doll ” Eliza was one of the children living in the Atlanta camp. Sophia often played with Eliza, her brother Louis, and Carl in the camp and it can be inferred that they became close. When Morales and his family leave the camp to search for their relatives in Alabama, Eliza and Sophia shared a brief yet tearful goodbye. Eliza hugged Sophia goodbye, and even gave Sophia her doll as a parting gift between friends. Daryl Dixon “ You did more for my little girl today than her own daddy ever did his whole life. ―Carol to Daryl about him helping find Sophia ” In the season two premiere, "What Lies Ahead", a quick glance was shown to be exchanged between Daryl and Sophia. It was possible that Sophia had something against Daryl as she looked a little angry when she looked at him or that she just did not like him. However, in the very same episode, when Sophia ran into the woods, trying to escape walkers, Daryl was the one who looks for her the most, from that point until her confirmed demise in "Pretty Much Dead Already". Her death greatly angered and saddened him. Following her death, he became reclusive from the rest of the group and showed signs of increasing pessimism. In Season 3, after thinking that Carol had died, Daryl went on a run for baby formula with Maggie. They found a nursery, and while searching for formula, Daryl comes across a wall covered with cut-out paper hearts, with children's names on each one of them. One of them read "Sofie". Daryl was shown to be saddened when he sees this. Perhaps this was due to the fact that it reminded him of not only Sophia, but his failure to find her. Rick Grimes “ We'd never go without you and your mom. That's a promise. ―Rick to Sophia ” Rick and Sophia did not interact much in Season 1. At the beginning of Season 2, Sophia went missing as she was being chased by two walkers in the woods. Rick told Sophia to hide by the creek in order to draw the two walkers away from her, giving her a chance to make it back to the group on the highway. Rick was the last member of the group to see Sophia alive. When Rick returned to the creek, Sophia was gone. Rick and the group then conducted a long, painful search for her and was determined to find her and strongly believed she was alive in contrast to Shane. He insisted upon finding her no matter the cost, sending out search parties to possible locations where she might have hidden, and even left out some supplies for her on the highway with no one guarding them. In "Pretty Much Dead Already", after discovering the walker-filled barn on Hershel's farm, and Shane opening the doors, the group proceeded to massacre the undead family and friends of the Greene family and to everyone's horror, the last walker to emerge was Sophia. As Sophia got closer and closer to the group, Rick was forced to step forward and shoot Sophia in the head, killing her for good. This had a lasting effect on Rick and caused him to begin his descent into a more hardened leader.  Dale Horvath “ Bring Sophia back. ―Dale to Rick ” Dale seemed to care a lot about the children of the camp in Atlanta, including Sophia. He was very attentive to them and kept an eye on them all from his camper. After the disappearance of Sophia, Dale remained on the highway with the others along with her mother in the hopes of her returning. Though he was not present when Sophia emerged from the barn as a walker and was put down by Rick, Dale was most likely very saddened. Andrea Although Sophia and Andrea spent very little time together on screen, it is implied that Andrea cared about Sophia. Andrea can be seen with Rick, at moments, scouting out routes to search for Sophia on a map. She also physically searched for Sophia on certain occasions. After the discovery and death of Sophia, Andrea gently covered her corpse with a blanket, delicately placing her lifeless hand under the concealing blanket. However in the episode "Triggerfinger" while speaking with Shane, Andrea claimed that his proposal to have abandoned the search for Sophia was the right call, indicating she possibly thought searching for her was a waste of time. Shane Walsh “ Enough! Risking our lives for a little girl who's GONE! ―Shane screaming at the group that Sophia is dead ” When Sophia first met Shane, she seemed to like him, telling Carl "Your dad's nice", believing Shane was his dad. Shane appeared slightly worried when Sophia disappeared, but as time went on, it is clear that he lost his care for her. Shane only looked for her a few times and eventually wanted to stop looking for her, as he claimed she was more than likely dead and that it was a waste to endanger the group by scouting the dangerous woods and infested towns. Shane even blamed Rick's decision to look for her as the cause of Carl being shot. However, when Shane saw her as a walker, coming out of Hershel's barn, he had a sad look on his face and later told Carol that he was very sorry for her daughter's death and that he never would have broken open the barn if he had known that Sophia was inside as a walker. He also became angry towards Hershel believing him to have kept Sophia's presence in the barn a secret from them while everyone was looking and almost attacked him but was stopped by Maggie.

Appearances

• List
• Table

TV Series Season 1 "Tell It to the Frogs" "Vatos" "Wildfire" "TS-19" Season 2 "What Lies Ahead" "Chupacabra" (Flashback) "Pretty Much Dead Already" (Zombified) "Nebraska" (Corpse) Season 9 "What Comes After (TV Series)" (Dream, Corpse) Season 10 "Ghosts" (Hallucination, Photograph)

Episodes	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18	19	20	21	22	23	24
Season 1			✔	✔	✔	✔
Season 2	✔				✔		✔	✔
Season 3
Season 4
Season 5
Season 6
Season 7
Season 8
Season 9					✔
Season 10			✔
Season 11

✔	Appears	✔	Voice is heard
👁	Appears with no lines	✔	Appears in a flashback
✔	Appears as a walker	🖼	Appears in a photograph/video
✔	Appears as a corpse	✔	Appears in a hallucination/dream

Trivia

• On Talking Dead, Robert Kirkman reveals that it was Otis who had placed Sophia in the barn and that she was already a walker when he found her. Since Rick nor Shane never mentioned that they were in the woods looking for a girl, and saving Carl became the main focus, Otis left for the high school and never returns before this discussion has a chance to take place.
  • He also mentioned that the scene where Otis placed the zombified Sophia into the barn was actually shot, but never made it to the final cut.
  • This means that Sophia was already dead by the end of "What Lies Ahead" since Otis left for the high school shortly after meeting the group in "Bloodletting." Thus Sophia presumably died on the day or night of her disappearance.
• Also during Talking Dead, show creators reveal that they shot the barn scene twice. Once with Sophia looking normal, the way the survivors wanted to see her, and the zombified version, which is the version that was aired in "Pretty Much Dead Already".
• Sophia was bitten on the shoulder, which is what made her turn. Just before leaving her to kill the walkers chasing them, Rick makes a comment about keeping the sun over her "left shoulder" if she runs back to the group. When she is found as a walker, it can be seen that the walker that attacked her had bitten her on the left shoulder. It is unknown if this was done on purpose by the writers or was just a coincidence. This would mean that if Sophia understood Rick's instructions, she could have been bitten when she was on her way back to the highway.
  • However, when her tracks disappeared, Daryl stated that only Sophia's tracks were around. Rick specifically asked if there was signs of walker tracks when Sophia changed from following his directions.
• In The Walking Dead Social Game, there is a mission in Chapter 3 where the hero player and Kara check out the highway for Sophia after hearing Rick's group calling her name while in the woods.
• In "The Grove", the puzzle on the table during Carol and Tyreese's conversation was a picture of Sophia with her rainbow T-shirt, as revealed by Melissa McBride on the following Talking Dead episode.
• Unlike her comic book counterpart, she had never started a relationship with Carl Grimes.
• In "Look at the Flowers", Sophia is mentioned by Alpha during Carol's hallucinations.