‘TWD: The Ones Who Live’ Stars on Whether Rick & Michonne’s Love Can Withstand Change

Emily Aslanian March 5, 2024, 10:00 am

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Danai Gurira and Andrew Lincoln in 'The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live' — Gene Page/AMC

The moment that so many Walking Dead fans have waited for is here. In the very last scene of The Ones Who Live’s first episode, former sheriff’s deputy and leader Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) and his long-lost love, katana-wielding warrior Michonne (Danai Gurira), finally come face to face after years of being apart.

We can’t say exactly what happens in the seconds that follow the blood-splattered lovers’ shocked meeting in the woods, where Rick has survived his Civic Republic Military helicopter going down and nearly being killed by Michonne — until she ripped off his helmet. Do they embrace? Do they kiss? Will they just run away together right now?

For those answers, you’ll have to keep watching the explosive six-episode spinoff, described by Walking Dead Universe chief content officer Scott M. Gimple as both “epic and intimate.” But the knowledge that Rick and Michonne do in fact reunite is sweet enough for now, even if the circumstances are less than ideal, particularly for Rick.

(Credit: Gene Page/AMC)

When we see Rick at the top of the hour, he’s a desperate prisoner of the powerful, highly organized Civic Republic — the same folks who helicoptered him away from his people in The Walking Dead’s ninth season, in 2018, after he was injured in an explosion. He’s tried to escape being a consignee to the Civic Republic Military multiple times — including one gruesome attempt we see where he chops off his left hand with an axe to get away. Trapped for years, Rick is on the precipice of suicide. “It was relatively painless to slip back into the cowboy boots,”
Lincoln says. “But this is a Rick we haven’t seen before, in no small part because of his time spent in the Civic Republic.”

Rick’s boots are now military-grade. He has moved up in the ranks of the CRM, thanks to the guidance of Lt. Col. Donald Okafor (Craig Tate), who was steering Rick toward a higher purpose within the Civic Republic: By having Rick and others infiltrate the military in leadership roles, Okafor thought positive change could come from within. At least, that was the mission, until Okafor was blown up. “Okafur deeply affected Rick,” Gimple notes. “Right before things really went crazy in that helicopter, Rick all but signed on Okafor’s dotted line.”

In the meantime, Michonne’s journey toward that fated meeting with Rick remains a bit of a mystery. Gurira, a series creator alongside Lincoln and Gimple, says the Michonne we see here is the “2.0 version” of the fighter she began playing on TWD in 2012. She builds friendships with newcomer Nat (played by Gurira’s former Richard III costar Matthew August Jeffers) and the two survivors she first met in her original TWD exit episode (in 2020) on her way to track down Rick.

Matthew August Jeffers as Nat - The Walking Dead

(Credit: Gene Page/AMC)

A support system seems like a good idea too. Michonne’s gamble to get Rick — after finding irrefutable proof that he’d survived the blast — meant the mom had to leave behind young Judith (Cailey Fleming) and Rick Jr. (aka R.J., played by Antony Azor). “She can’t walk away from this possibility [that Rick is out there], but also she’s walking away from the other thing that’s most important to her in the world,” Gurira says of the two children. Michonne might even get a chance to tell Rick about the birth of their son, R.J. “There has to be the right time to tell him, and I think she just listens to her instincts about when that is,” Gurira says.

Time might become the greatest enemy for Rick and Michonne in this love story. Asks Lincoln: “Are they still the same people they once were, and will their love survive after all this time and distance apart? That is very much the question at the heart of the series.”

Gimple notes that they are different now. “They do have this massive problem [at the end of the first episode], but there’s something beyond that. The last moments before all hell breaks loose [and the helicopter goes down] — it does show that Rick has changed as a person. And that’s the very moment that he finds Michonne again. How has she changed?”

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That disconnect between their old and new selves will be evident in the story moving forward. Despite that, Gimple promises that Rick and Michonne are still “similar in ways that no one else is similar.”

“They both have this fire and this craziness, beyond their strength — things that they’re willing to do,” he says. “[The series shows] their energies connecting and their energies bumping up against each other. It’s like flipping the magnets over.”

Also potentially repelling for Rick and Michonne: Sergeant Major Pearl Thorne (Lucifer’s Lesley-Ann Brandt), whom Okafor also assigned to change the CRM from the inside. She mistrusts Rick at the best of times, even though they must work together to achieve their goals. “The way I looked at Thorne, she wasn’t Shane [Rick’s BFF/enemy in TWD played by Jon Bernthal], but [she and Rick have] kind of a similar relationship,” teases Gimple. “She’s incredibly formidable.”

The CRM leadership will no doubt get in Rick and Michonne’s way at some point as well. We finally meet Major General Beale (Lost’s Terry O’Quinn), who was teased in the CRM-heavy 2020–21 spinoff The Walking Dead: World Beyond. Pollyanna McIntosh’s Jadis (formerly Anne, leader of the Scavengers) reports to him. She’s also the reason Rick is trapped at the CRM’s secret Philadelphia base. “She’s a big presence,” Gimple says. “Jadis is this consummate performer and trickster. Tricksters have self-centered motivations, or a self-centered vision of the world. And even in this series, Jadis gets to play a few different lives.”

But then again, Rick has always had difficulties with reality himself. His character has struggled with visions since the Season 3 loss of his first wife, Lori (Sarah Wayne Callies). It’s something he and Michonne even bonded over early on. Now, Rick’s having vivid dreams of meeting Michonne in a much simpler alternate reality. Dream Rick is lost on his way to a new job and encounters Michonne (in an incredible purple pantsuit) eating lunch in a park. They flirt. It feels like the start of a romantic comedy. “Are you where you want to be?” dream Michonne asks him. Is he? Gimple says the dream sequences are “really important” for viewers “to see what’s going on in Rick’s mind.”

The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live, Sundays, amc+

This is an abbreviated version of TV Insider’s March 2024 cover story. For more in-depth, reported coverage on The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live, The Girls on the Bus, and more streaming shows from the publishers of TV Guide Magazine, pick up the issue, currently on newsstands.