After Ed's death and the departure from the Atlanta camp, Sophia goes missing near the Greene farm and her rescue becomes the driving force of the first half of season 2.

[volume & issue needed] With the group under Rick's guidance following Shane's death, they arrive at an abandoned, gated community named Wiltshire Estates.

[volume & issue needed] After spending a good deal of time traveling, the group comes upon an abandoned prison, which they clear of walkers and subsequently settle into.

Following this decision, a rival community named Woodbury, which wants to take the prison for itself, storms an attack on the group and successfully kills everyone except Rick, Carl and Michonne.

[volume & issue needed] A group of survivors soon shows up on the farm, one of them claiming to be a scientist who knows how he can stop the outbreak and is on his way to Washington, D.C. to develop the cure.

Devastated, Maggie repeatedly punches Rick in the face for not doing anything; this prompts Carl to point his gun at her so she would stop, which in turn causes Sophia to lash out at him and bite his arm.

[volume & issue needed] Glenn's body is buried at the Hilltop Colony, where he and Maggie had previously discussed moving to with Sophia and their soon-to-be-born child.

Sophia gives Carl a tearful goodbye and hugs him, and she and Maggie ultimately do move to the Hilltop Colony while the others return to the Alexandria Safe Zone.

[1] Sophia, along with her mother Carol (Melissa McBride) and her father Ed (Adam Minarovich), are staying at the camp formed by a relatively large group of survivors outside of Atlanta.

As it was revealed in a flashback in the season two episode "Chupacabra", Ed brought Carol and Sophia with him while moving toward a "safe zone" on the outskirts of the city.

They meet up with Shane Walsh (Jon Bernthal), Lori Grimes (Sarah Wayne Callies), and her son Carl (Chandler Riggs), whom Sophia quickly becomes close friends with.

In the next episode, "Vatos", Ed's injuries are revealed to have confined him to his tent, and so during dinner, he implores Sophia to stay with him and keep him company in an inappropriate, quasi-sexual manner.

Towards the end of the episode, a herd of walkers kills several people, including Ed and Amy (Emma Bell), before Shane and Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) destroy them.

In the episode "Wildfire", Rick decides to lead the group away from the current site and travel to the Center for Disease Control (CDC) because of its assumed security and to possibly find a cure for Jim (Andrew Rothenberg), a survivor who had been bitten when the camp was attacked.

While there, Sophia and the others are briefly introduced to the many luxuries the CDC has to offer, such as delicious food, hot showers, and a recreation room full of games and toys she and Carl can play with.

In the episode "Cherokee Rose", Carl's injuries ultimately lead the whole group onto Hershel Greene's (Scott Wilson) farm, where they settle.

In the mid-season premiere "Nebraska", she is buried in a funeral ceremony, alongside Hershel's second wife Annette, and stepson Shawn (who were also kept in his barn as walkers).

Gina McIntyre of the Los Angeles Times referred to the second season premiere "What Lies Ahead" as "thrilling" and "heart-wrenching", citing Sophia's disappearance and the shooting of Carl.

[4] Paste's Josh Jackson felt that the side-plot of the continued search for Sophia takes a backseat to the events with Rick's family at the farmhouse in "Bloodletting".

[5] HitFix's Alan Sepinwall commented in his review of "Save the Last One" that with all the time spent waiting in that traffic jam while searching for Sophia, "the show and its characters seem to be heading nowhere fast".

"[8] Time journalist Nate Rawlings complained in his review of "Cherokee Rose" that Sophia had been "missing for a month now in what has become an incredibly dragged out subplot".

[12] Nick Venable of Cinema Blend found himself "aghast" that the show still considered the plotline regarding the search for Sophia something worth coming back to: "What little sympathy I had for Carol’s character has been replaced with an eternal yawn.

"[16] Janet Turley of The Huffington Post asserted that the episode's concluding scene involving Sophia's death was "fiction not afraid to provoke",[17] while Eric Goldman of IGN described it as an "absolutely horrific scenario".

[22] Gina McIntyre of the Los Angeles Times felt that the concluding sequence was "the most eventful moment" of the episode, and stated that it was difficult to watch.

[23] Ken Tucker of Entertainment Weekly affirmed that the scene reestablished The Walking Dead to full form, as well as redeemed the season's "general gutlessness thus far.

Club summated: "The Sophia reveal is a punch in the gut, because narrative fiction teaches us the longer someone stays missing, the better the chance they'll turn up alive; otherwise, where would the drama be?

[29] HitFix writer Alan Sepinwall describes how the opening scene, "picking up seconds after Rick put a bullet through the thing that used to be Sophia, was great: the emotion felt every bit as palpable as it was at the end of November".

[30] However, he stated that although the show made him "feel the weight of Sophia's loss in that moment where she walked out of the barn in November, once things went quieter, she went back to being a non-entity.

)"[30] The Atlantic's Scott Meslow commented: "It's clear from "Nebraska" that The Walking Dead was banking on us caring about Sophia's death - a tall order, since she'd had nothing but quiet, unmemorable screen time before her disappearance, and kept our heroes from leaving the farm to do something more interesting after.

But if the show's viewers aren't mourning Sophia's death, its characters are, with reactions ranging from striking (Daryl's impotent, barely contained rage) to melodramatic (Carol sobbing and ripping up Cherokee roses, in a none-too-subtle callback to an earlier episode).