Roush Review: ‘The Ones Who Live’ Tells ‘The Walking Dead’s Most Enduring Love Story

The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live

Matt's Rating:

If absence truly makes the heart grow fonder, watch out when those star-crossed soulmates from The Walking Dead lore, natural-born leader Rick (Andrew Lincoln) and warrior goddess Michonne (Danai Gurira), finally reconnect after many years apart.

Fans of the grueling zombie horror phenom will not be surprised to learn it’s the opposite of a meet-cute when the latest Dead spinoff, The Ones Who Live, hits its stride. It’s a reunion complicated by Rick’s unwilling conscription into the monolithic Civic Republic Military, from which he tries to escape with the persistence of a Cool Hand Luke.

Michonne has her own reasons for despising the CRM, and the opening chapters that chart their disparate and desperate journeys toward each other are as compelling as anything we’ve seen from this franchise in quite some time. This is easily the best of the post-Walking Dead spinoffs to date, in part because of our intense connection to these primary characters and their palpable desire for each other. (Plus: that whole absence/heart factor. We’ve missed them.)

Gene Page/AMC

Rick’s storyline could be subtitled “It’s Always Bloody in Philadelphia,” the one-time City of Brotherly Love, now a hidden and protected metropolis serving as home base for Rick’s captors and bosses. “There’s no escape for the living,” his superior officer (well-played by Craig Tate) tells Rick.

We’ve seen this scenario before, though perhaps not on this scale. Thankfully, Rick is in good company, with co-stars including Lost’s formidable Terry O’Quinn as the unit’s skeptical Major General Beale and Lesley-Ann Brandt as Thorne, a prickly colleague who’s wary of Rick’s commitment because she’s been there. (She had me from the moment she quips, “Let’s grab a drink before we kill each other.”)

Michonne’s harrowing arc is more picaresque, and you’ll long remember one of her fellow travelers, a wry builder (and, significantly, a burner) named Nat, played with pugnacious spunk by New Amsterdam’s Matthew August Jeffers. He tells her she’ll know when it’s time to go home, and that time isn’t yet.

The draw here (besides the occasional grisly zombie encounter) is the reignition of Rich and Michonne’s fiery love story. How this comes about and what happens next you’ll have to see for yourself, but judging by the first four (of six) episodes, we agree with an observer acquainted with their history, who declares, “You two together, you can do anything.”

The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live, Series Premiere, Sunday, Feb. 25, 9/8c, AMC (streaming on AMC+)