The Walking Dead saga, including the comics, has been ongoing since way back in 2003, which gives you a pretty good idea as to how loyal some of the franchise’s biggest fans are. While that may be the case, there’s no way of getting around the fact that the popularity of the TV adaptation has been struggling in recent years, in addition to the comics, which have actually stopped altogether.

Today, we want to take you all the way back to the very beginning of TWD in order to run down some of our favorite moments from the first season.

A Fresh Idea

Everyone knows about the core concept behind zombies or, as they’re known in TWD, walkers.

However, few had been able to successfully craft a television show as opposed to a movie on the matter. Whether people followed the core material from the comics or they didn’t, this was bound to be an entirely new experience that many people hadn’t really seen before.

That, in itself, was enough to excite fans, which is why over five million people tuned in to watch the pilot episode – with the fanbase growing even further from there.

Rick Wakes Up

Nobody really knows all too much about Rick Grimes in the early stages of the episode, aside from the fact that he was shot, he has a wife, and that he slipped into a coma.

Upon waking up from his coma, Rick’s entire world came crashing down around him. The viewers felt like they were right there alongside the Atlanta officer as he struggled to come to terms with the reality that now faced him.

Thankfully, he’d eventually meet Morgan, which helped to unravel the mystery of what exactly was going on.

Nice & Short

It’s pretty uncommon to see this now but back in 2010, when the series first began, the first season only contained six episodes.

It was a much shorter run than the subsequent seasons that followed it, but all in all, it was perfect. They were able to set up several storylines, build towards a big climax, and draw in even more fans for what was going to be a second season that was twice as long as the first.

Timing is everything on television, and The Walking Dead got this just right.

Early Danger From Humans

The immediate threat came from the walkers, as the dead came back to life and pretty much brought on the next apocalypse.

However, in what would quickly become a central theme of the entire show, we saw some signs that indicated humans could be equally as dangerous now that society had broken down.

The survivors in the fourth episode seemed like they were going to cause some problems initially, but the major threat, in our eyes, was Merle. It wasn’t like there was an ‘official’ authority that could prevent people like that from causing problems anymore, and they were lucky to get rid of him as early as they did.

Justice For Carol

While some may have thought the walker crisis was enough to deal with, it turns out that Carol was also suffering physical and mental abuse at the hands of her husband Ed.

Nobody really knew how to deal with the issue in the right manner, until Shane came along and quite literally beat Ed to within an inch of his life. He punished that man to the point where he wouldn’t even come out of his tent, and then when he tried to do so, he had his face eaten by a walker.

Glenn

The story of Rick Grimes would’ve been over and done with had Glenn not appeared to save the day. Rick was in a whole lot of trouble and it didn’t seem like there was a way out, until Glenn popped up and offered him a route to safety.

Glenn went from the nerdy kid to one of the leaders in the group during his time on the show, and while many fans will choose to focus on how he died, mainly because it’s hard to forget, we prefer to think about where he started.

Daryl’s Growing Maturity

In the first, second, and potentially even third episode, it really didn’t seem as if Daryl Dixon was going to be the sort of character that hung around. However, we started to get a sense that he could become an integral figure as the seasons went on.

Now that he’s the primary leader of the group, it’s clear to see that people who felt like this were onto something. He was almost certainly a socially awkward character before the apocalypse even began, but he became so much more than that.

Impact Of The Walkers

In the last few seasons of The Walking Dead, the actual threat of the walkers themselves has reduced dramatically. They pop up from time to time, but they barely have any sort of recognizable impact.

In the first season, they were still unbelievably scary. Whenever one popped up on screen, whether it was a surprise or spotted from a mile away, it was a terrifying prospect. It confirms that they’re definitely spookier when they walk slowly as opposed to running, too, which seems to be an ongoing debate in the world of zombie culture.

Lori & Shane

Rick’s battle to get back to his family made for great TV, mainly because it was so frustrating to know that they were alive while Rick wasn’t really all too sure what was happening.

Then, when it was revealed that Lori and Shane had started a relationship with one another because they thought Rick had died, a whole new layer was added onto this story.

You just knew there were going to be repercussions of some sort, and the build-up to that bled into Season 2 following an incredibly tense few episodes was great to see play out.

The CDC

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention was a place that Rick Grimes was pretty convinced would still be standing, even though there was a bit of a divide within the group as to whether or not it’d still exist.

From their arrival to their night getting drunk to when the whole place blew up, it was a great story to tell.

It was also nice to get an idea of what was happening around the world, and whether or not any sort of cure was close.

Then, of course, there was the big secret that Dr. Jenner revealed to Rick that changed the whole game for the series – for the living, that is.