Lori Grimes is a fictional character from the comic book series The Walking Dead and was portrayed by Sarah Wayne Callies in the American television series of the same name. Created by writer Robert Kirkman and artist Tony Moore, the character made her debut in The Walking Dead #2 in 2003. In both forms of media, she is married to Rick Grimes. They have two children Carl and Judith. The character escapes the zombie apocalypse with Carl, and Rick's partner Shane Walsh. Believing her husband to be dead, she starts a relationship with Shane.
For her performance as Lori, Callies was nominated for the Saturn Award for Best Actress on Television in 2010, and was among the cast members of The Walking Dead winning the Satellite Award for Best Cast - Television Series in 2012.
Comic book series[]
Lori Grimes is an average middle-class housewife living in Cynthiana, Kentucky. As the outbreak begins, her son, Carl, and she are evacuated out of the city with help from her husband Rick's best friend and work partner, Shane Walsh, in hopes of getting to where her parents live. During the evacuation, the guilt with which she has been racked over abandoning Rick leads her to have a sexual relationship with Shane, which she deeply regrets afterward.She continually brushes off Shane's attempts at advancing and ignores him even more when Rick miraculously arrives at their campsite.
Lori soon finds out, after counting her missed periods, that she is pregnant; however, she hesitates to tell anybody until after Shane's death and their move back onto the road.
Lori faces typical pregnancy issues such as morning sickness and mood swings throughout the first few months of her term. Lori and everyone else find relative stability at an abandoned prison, with hot showers, supplies, and security. While at the prison, she also begins to deepen her bond with fellow survivor Carol Peletier. Lori is frequently concerned with the well-being of both her family and the rest of the group. After giving birth to an infant girl that Rick and she name Judith, she remains extremely protective over her.
During the final stages of the prison assault led by the Governor, Lilly shoots Lori in the back with a shotgun, and she falls while holding Judith, crushing her.
Lori's death leaves Rick and Carl emotional wrecks. Rick suffers frightening hallucinations, both visual and auditory, at one point even using a phone to have what he believes are actual conversations with his deceased wife.[volume & issue needed] He confides in Michonne, who has also talked to a deceased loved one to help the coping process.[volume & issue needed] Carl frequently blames Rick for Lori and Judith's deaths.
Television Series[]
Season 1[]
Lori's husband, Rick, is wounded in the line of duty and left in a coma during the outbreak. Lori, believing him to be dead, takes Carl and accompanies Rick's best friend Shane as they head to Atlanta. They befriend Carol and her family while on the road, and later both groups settle with other survivors on the outskirts of Atlanta near an abandoned quarry. Lori, convinced of Rick's death by witnessing the military bomb Atlanta, eventually succumbs to her distraught state and embarks on a sexual relationship with Shane.
Rick eventually wakes from his coma, and makes his way to Atlanta, and is rescued there by members of the quarry group. When Rick is brought back to the camp, Lori and he have a tearful reunion, but Lori comes to feel guilty with her affair with Shane, and abruptly ends it, as well as discouraging Carl from hanging around Shane. The group eventually abandons the quarry to head for the CDC in Atlanta, where its one remaining scientist, Dr. Jenner, allows them in, and they enjoy the relative luxury of the facilities. During the night, a drunken Shane attempts to sexually assault Lori, but she fights him off. The group is forced to evacuate the CDC and continue on.
Season 2[]
Rick's group is stalled by a traffic jam of cars on a highway; the RV breaks down and the group searches the traffic jam for parts and supplies. Shane tells Lori that he plans to leave the group, and they get into an argument. A walker herd passes through the area and Carol's daughter Sophia is discovered by two stragglers who chase her into the woods; in the process of killing her pursuers, Rick loses sight of her. He, Carl, and others go searching for her, and eventually split into two groups with Rick, Shane, and Carl in one and Lori, Andrea, Carol, and Daryl in the other. Lori's group is headed back to the highway when they are met by Maggie Greene from a nearby farmstead, asking for Lori, as Carl had accidentally been shot, and is being cared for by her father, Hershel. While Hershel is able to stabilize Carl temporarily, Carl is suffering from internal bleeding and Hershel lacks the equipment to perform surgery to repair the leaking blood vessel. Shane goes with Hershel's farmhand, Otis, to get supplies from a nearby school infested with walkers. Shane shoots Otis deliberately to give himself time to escape, but does not tell this to the others when he returns with the supplies. This leaves him with an emotional scar, and he shaves his head, partially to hide the clump of hair Otis had torn out from it; these actions trouble Lori.
Lori feels some illness as Carl recovers, and discreetly asks Glenn to find a pregnancy test on his next supply run. The test turns up positive, and Lori panics at the prospect of raising a baby in their present circumstances. Again she confides in Glenn, and asks him to get her some "morning after" pills on his next run. Once she has them, she tries to take them, but has last-second thoughts and induces vomiting to bring them back up. Rick discovers the box for the pills and confronts her about it. She admits to being pregnant, and having had an affair with Shane when she had no idea Rick was alive, and fears how they can raise a child in this world. Rick helps her come to terms with the situation, and she decides she will keep the child and they will raise it as their own, regardless of who the father is. News of Lori's pregnancy comes out to the rest of the group, and creates a rift between Shane and Rick over who fathered the child that creates tension throughout the group.
After the shootout at the barn, Rick and Glenn go off to look for Hershel, but do not return after a while. Beth collapses from grief at the loss of her mother and Lori, realizing Beth needs Hershel, leaves the farm in the same direction Rick and Glenn went but gets into an accident. Shane comes and rescues her, falsely claiming Rick had returned to convince Lori to return to the farm. Once back at the farm, Lori talks to Dale, learning that he feels Shane is progressively becoming paranoid and he believes that Shane likely killed Otis at the school. Later, Lori helps Maggie stop Maggie's sister Beth from committing suicide. When Dale is attacked by a walker and the group is forced to euthanize him, Lori apologizes to Shane for how she had been treating him.
Events at the farm lead to a confrontation between Rick and Shane, and Rick eventually stabs Shane to death after Shane promises to kill Rick and take his place in the family. In the aftermath, a horde of walkers, drawn by the gunfire, swarm the farmstead, and Rick's group is forced to abandon it. As they regroup on the highway, Lori learns of the circumstances around Shane's death, and is horrified to learn that Carl put him down after Shane reanimated.
Season 3[]
Over the next several months, Lori finds that both Rick and Carl have grown distant from her. Lori is near the end of her pregnancy, and as the group finds an abandoned prison, they decide to clear it out for their own use. They deal with roaming walkers and five living prisoners, two of whom quickly fall into line with the group, but the others they are forced to kill, while Rick leaves the fifth, Andrew, outside in a pack of walkers, though unknown to them, Andrew manages to escape. Lori fears that she may need a repeat Caesarian section as she already had one with Carl, and Carol practices the surgical technique on dispatched walkers. Sometime later, Andrew lures a group of walkers back to the prison to get his revenge. The group is forced to scatter as the walkers flood; the fright causes Lori to enter into labor, and Carl, Maggie, and she take shelter in a boiler room. Lori's fears are affirmed about the birth, and she instructs Maggie to perform an improvised Cesarean section on her, knowing that without painkillers or anesthetic, this will likely be fatal for her. She says her goodbyes to Carl before Maggie starts. Lori's daughter is recovered alive, but as she expected, Lori succumbs to the procedure. Carl insists on being the one to put down Lori before she can reanimate. Maggie and Carl take the baby outside once the walkers have been cleared, and Rick, on seeing the child but not Lori, breaks down. He races to the boiler room, and sees a bloated walker that he believes ate Lori's body, and stabs it over and over. Rick starts having hallucinations of Lori and other survivors who had previously died, leaving him struggling to keep leadership of the group.
As the group deals with attacks from the Governor from the nearby Woodbury community, Rick struggles with continuous visions of Lori, which make him doubt his abilities as a leader. However, he eventually makes a stand against the Governor, reunited his group, and finds that he no longer sees visions of Lori. He accepts her daughter, which Carl named Judith, as his own, despite believing that she may have been fathered by Shane.