Before Resident Evil, Austin Abrams Played A Villain On TV's Ultimate Zombie Series

Roughly a decade before Austin Abrams played a plucky courier battling terrifying creatures in "Resident Evil," he played a more villainous role on one of the best zombie TV shows of all time: "The Walking Dead." 

During the show's fifth and sixth seasons, Abrams played Ron, a teenager whose initial interactions with Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) and his group in the Alexandria Safe Zone belie the dark pivot he later takes. A combination of his teen rivalry with Carl Grimes (Chandler Riggs) and a good deal of family trauma — including the death of his abusive father — makes him angry, irrational and reckless, leading him down the path of his own destruction.

Ron's story concludes in Season 6, Episode 9, "No Way Out." After a failed attempt to maneuver through a horde of zombies leads to the death of Ron's brother and mother, he unleashes his pent up resentment against Rick and points a gun at him. While Michonne (Danai Gurira) manages to save Rick by piercing Ron through the chest, she's unable to stop what happens next: His gun still goes off and shoots Carl in the eye, which he loses. Carl wears an eye patch for the remainder of his time on "The Walking Dead."

Although Ron's young age and childhood trauma made him one of the more sympathetic villains the "Walking Dead" crew faced, he was still a villain in the end. Given that he permanently injured one of the franchise's most beloved characters, it's perhaps no surprise that some fans haven't let things go. "I did have someone over there tell me that their boyfriend hated me for shooting Carl's eye out," Austin Abrams told USA Today in 2026. "But that's like a once a year thing, I think. Yeah, I'm happy about that though. I'm like, you know, my character got to leave a mark."

Exhibit A? One Reddit fan recently opened up about hating "the new Resident Evil' actor," but not knowing why. "Then I remembered who he is..." they wrote. "The reason Carl lost an eye, and the reason a lot of people almost died multiple times. That kid was super annoying haha." Of course, Austin Abrams' "Resident Evil" debuted in September with the largest opening weekend for the franchise — so he's probably not sweating things either way.