The Walking Dead: How Long Rick Was In The Coma

How long was Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) really in a coma in The Walking Dead? The main character being in a coma prior to the setting of the show was the basis of the AMC series. The story of The Walking Dead began not with the zombie outbreak, but with its protagonist coming out of a comatose state.

In The Walking Dead pilot episode, police officer Rick and his partner Shane (Jon Bernthal) were involved in a shooting. After being hit in the shoulder, Rick lost consciousness. When he woke up, he found himself in a deserted hospital. As it turned out, he had been in a coma. Rick, confused by the state the hospital was in, left and laid eyes on a zombie for the first time. Rick was horrified to discover that the city of Atlanta had fallen into chaos and zombies were everywhere. His wife and son had already evacuated and fled the area with a group of survivors. After a chance encounter with Morgan (Lennie James), Rick set off to find his family.

According to former Fear the Walking Dead showrunner Dave Erickson, Robert Kirkman has said that Rick was in a coma between four and five weeks [via Business Insider]. This makes sense, based on the length of Rick’s beard, comments made by Morgan about the water shutting off a month ago, and the state of the bodies in and around the hospital. This means that Rick’s family were with Shane for slightly more than a month before Rick was able to reunite with them. In that short amount of time, civilization had already collapsed as a result of the zombie outbreak.

Some have found the length of Rick’s coma to be unrealistic, considering that he didn’t die of dehydration and was seemingly unattended by hospital staff. Though Shane left Rick alone in the hospital to flee with Rick’s family, it is possible that there were others who cared for Rick. A Walking Dead webisode introduced Gale Macones (Ellen Greene), a doctor who worked at the same hospital where Rick was being treated. The webisode revealed that Dr. Macones stayed at the hospital when the zombie apocalypse occurred and refused to abandon her duties to the patients. What ultimately happened to her was never explored, but it seems likely that she would have ensured that Rick didn’t die of dehydration.

Regardless, the length of Rick’s coma was essential to the setup of the series. Unlike the situation with Fear the Waking Dead, the point of the series was never to show how it all started, but to begin with a person who was suddenly thrust into the middle of it all. This created a great deal of shock value in the show’s first few episodes. Also, having the main character wake up from a coma was the best way to make that work and it helped The Walking Dead jump right into the midst of a post-apocalyptic, zombie-filled world.

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