Warning: This article contains spoilers for The Walking Dead season 2. The Walking Dead is about life-or-death choices — like choosing to head into zombie-overrun Atlanta or embarking on a 125-mile journey to Fort Benning. After the CDC proves to be a literal dead end, the group of Atlanta survivors led by Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) choose to try for the military base in the second season premiere of The Walking Dead, and what lies ahead are more fateful choices that will set the course for the mostly farm-set season.

Does the caravan turn back when travel is impeded by a thousand-car pileup that turned the highway into a graveyard, or try to maneuver around? When Dale’s (Jeffrey DeMunn) RV dies, do they scavenge the dead-filled cars, or forego necessary supplies because Lori Grimes (Sarah Wayne Callies) is uncomfortable with “grave-robbing”? When a walker herd descends upon the highway, they have no choice but to scurry under the cars for cover.

The biggest “what-would-you-do” question comes when Carol’s (Melissa McBride) 12-year-old daughter, Sophia (Madison Lintz), is scared out of her hiding place by clawing walkers and runs off into the woods. Rick’s first choice is to chase after Sophia, and his second choice is to avoid shooting the walkers to avoid alerting the highway herd. Rick’s third choice is to hide the girl so he can draw the walkers away and dispatch them with a rock.

“They don’t get winded. I do,” Rick tells Sophia. “I can only deal with them one at a time. I wouldn’t be able to protect you. This is how we both survive.” Rick instructs Sophia about what to do if he doesn’t make it back: run back to the others on the highway, straight the way they came, and “keep the sun on your left shoulder.”

By the time Rick returns to the creek, Sophia is missing. She never made it back to the highway, causing Daryl (Norman Reedus), Glenn (Steven Yeun), and Shane (Jon Bernthal) to investigate with Rick. “I figured she just took off and ran back to the group,” Rick says. “I told her to go that way and keep the sun on her left shoulder.” Shane questions whether a scared little girl could have followed Rick’s instructions, but he insists she understood.

The group is then forced to make another choice: search for Sophia or move on. Daryl heads tracking Sophia, but the trail goes cold, and the search party returns to the highway empty handed. “How could you just leave her out there to begin with? How could you just leave her?” Carol questions Rick, who explains that drawing the walkers away from Sophia was her best chance. Shane says Rick “didn’t have a choice,” but Carol isn’t convinced.

“How was she supposed to find her way back on her own? She’s just a child,” Carol cries. Rick responds, “It was my only option. The only choice I could make.” The seven-episode search for Sophia ultimately ends in tragedy when a bitten and zombified Sophia steps out of the barn on the Greene family farm in the “Pretty Much Dead Already” midseason finale, leaving fans to ask: Did Rick make the right choice leaving Sophia?

(L-R) Andrea (Laurie Holden), Daryl Dixon (Norman Reedus), Shane Walsh (Jon Bernthal), Carol (Melissa Suzanne McBride), Lori Grimes (Sarah Wayne Callies) and Carl Grimes (Chandler Riggs) – The Walking Dead – Season 2, Episode 1 – Photo Credit: Gene Page/AMC

“It was Rick’s fault,” one user argues on a debate-stirring post published to Reddit. Another user counters, “Rick was the least responsible for what happened to Sophia. He is the only one who reacted quickly in that moment and ran after her, if anyone else in that group had his quick thinking, she’d be alive. He did the best he could with the survival tools he had at that point in time — barely two weeks after waking up from his coma.”

Daryl was busy tending to an injured T-Dog (IronE Singleton) and Andrea (Laurie Holden) was trapped in the RV bathroom by a walker, the post adds, leaving other members of the group without an excuse for not going after Sophia. “Rick is definitely not in the wrong in the slightest,” another user argues, defending the decision to leave a hidden Sophia.

“He did the best he could given the situation,” reads another reply. “It’s impossible for the characters to blame [Sophia] for her own demise but we can.” As users debated Sophia’s choice to immediately run away instead of waiting for Rick’s return, half the replies blamed Rick for Sophia’s fate, and the other half defended Rick’s decision-making.

But the best defense is from Rick’s wife, Lori: “You have got to stop blaming Rick. It is in your face every time you look at him,” she tells Carol. “When Sophia ran he didn’t hesitate, did he? Not for a second. I don’t know that any of us would have gone after her the way he did, or made the hard decisions that he had to make, or that anybody could have done it any differently.”

Lori concludes, “You all look to him and then you blame him when he’s not perfect.”

The Walking Dead is now streaming on Netflix.