AMC’s The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live Is a Cathartic Spinoff Too Many Years in the Making

It’s been six years since Andrew Lincoln exited The Walking Dead in 2018, taking starring character Rick Grimes with him. Rick’s story was cut short after blowing up a bridge before being rescued and whisked away in a mysterious helicopter. What was meant to follow was a trilogy of big screen Walking Dead films to chronicle his journey. 

But a lot has happened in those six years. The original Walking Dead series carried on for a couple more seasons and a couple more years after he left. It had its moments, to be sure, but the show never was the same. The flagship series ended in 2022. The franchise’s first spinoff series, Fear the Walking Dead, ended in 2023. A second spinoff, The Walking Dead: World Beyond, also came and went during that time. Several of the show’s other main stars have since gotten their own spinoffs, most notably Norman Reedus’ Daryl Dixon, and the Lauren Cohan and Jeffery Dean Morgan duet Dead City.

And now? Rick is finally back, and he’s bringing his former love interest and fellow badass survivor Michonne (Danai Gurira) along for the ride. The original plan for a series of films was scrapped in development, and instead the long-delayed project evolved into a six-episode TV miniseries more in line with the franchise’s other spinoff projects. Originally titled The Walking Dead: Rick and Michonne, the series is now called simply  The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live. 

Rick Grimes was the heart and soul of The Walking Dead, and his story was the one that fans bought into all the way back on Halloween night in 2010 when the show originally premiered. This is the sequel fans have been waiting to see since he vanished into the horizon in that 2018 episode. After writing Rick out of the show in the first place, the pressure to tell a story worth telling was already sky high—and that was before it took a full six years to actually get this project from page to screen.

Fans have waited six years and been fed mystery after mystery after mystery about this mythical CRM army that whisked Rick away for even-more-mysterious reasons, and it simply puts so much weight on this story. Weight that likely wouldn’t have felt quite so heavy had the project come out a few years ago (of course, the pandemic also played a role in the delay, but isn’t entirely to blame for the full six-year gap).

Has it simply been too long to finally revisit this story, at least in a way that makes sense to the overarching Walking Dead mythology? It’s a complicated question. Yes, this does make the timeline even fuzzier, though The Walking Dead has always played a bit fast and loose with the passage of time anyway. Does the miniseries finally provide some answers? It does, though after waiting six years, any answer as to why Rick has stayed gone so long is a tough one to swallow. We’ve been sold a mystery box about the fate of the future itself in regards to the CRM, and, at least in the first four episodes made available for review, it’s been hard to find anything truly worth the build-up about the strongest civilization left standing in the post-apocalypse. 

As for the story itself, AMC is understandably strict when it comes to which plot points can be revealed (virtually none of them, to put it simply), but what we can say is that the story is not entirely what fans might be expecting from this next chapter. It dabbles in some weighty ideas and stakes, but moves a bit slower and smaller-scale than some might expect for a show we’ve waited six years to see that is being packed into just six episodes. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, as it gives these characters space to breathe and their stories room to be told, but fans certainly need to set expectations going in.

But this isn’t a show solely about mythology, or plot, or solving the dangling mysteries left in The Walking Dead universe. It’s a show about two of the most beloved characters in modern television fighting to finally be reunited, taking on the undead, an army, and everything in-between to find one another. In that regard, it feels damn good to see Rick and Michonne back on television again. These characters are still incredibly compelling, and telling a story focused on them not only provides a peek at what comes next, but also an emotional and narrative tether back to those earlier days of the series when Rick was still around and The Walking Dead was at its strongest.

There’s something that’s still magical about seeing Rick Grimes back in action, taking down walkers and talking in his signature growl; seeing Michonne stalk her way across the country in her continuing search to find Rick and bring him home. We still love these characters, and for a whole lot of fans who started with this show from the beginning (and likely some who tuned out when Rick left), this is a chance to finally resolve that cliffhanger all these years later. 

With so many other spinoffs telling new stories, too, The Ones Who Live doesn’t feel like the future of The Walking Dead franchise, but it doesn’t have to be. It’s more like a reunion to finally bring fans some closure and answers. Which sometimes, that’s more than enough.

The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live premieres Sunday, February 25th on AMC and streaming on AMC+. 

Trent Moore is a recovering print journalist, and freelance editor and writer with bylines at lots of places. He likes to find the sweet spot where pop culture crosses over with everything else. Follow him at @trentlmoore on Twitter.

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