The Walking Dead ending its main series may have seemed like a good idea, given how long it had run. The Walking Dead fracturing into three different spin-off shows after that, did not. However, now that this experiment has arrived at all of those series being released, I stand corrected.
I was mixed on Daryl Dixon, quite liked Dead City, but now, The Ones Who Live? The return of Rick and Michonne? After this week’s episode, I can safely say that this is the best content we have seen from The Walking Dead universe since at least 2016, eight years ago now.
What was 2016? That was the peak of The Walking Dead, right at the end of the series when Negan showed up for the first time, and it was a cliffhanger as to who he murdered until the season 7 premiere, which drew an astonishing 17 million viewers at the time. But then Glenn was killed, viewers fled and it never reached those highs, viewership-wise or quality-wise, again. Until now.
No, the viewers aren’t at the same level, but The Ones Who Live did put up some of AMC’s best numbers in years. And for good reason. The series has been desperately missing Rick Grimes for years, since 2018 in fact, and now that he’s back with Michonne in tow? It’s genuinely incredible TV.
The Ones Who Live
What I like so much about it is not just the exceptional performances from both Andrew Lincoln and Danai Gurira, where it might be a career-best for both of them, but the storyline here is genuinely captivating. I appreciate that this is not just a straightforward Michonne rescues damsel in distress Rick and they sail off into the sunset storyline. There are real complexities at stake here, putting both Rick and Michonne in a sort of impossible position.
- Rick tried to escape for years, but couldn’t
- Michonne tried to rescue him, but is now imprisoned herself
- Either of them try to escape, the CRM will hunt them to the ends of the earth since no one escapes to share the secret of their existence
- Even if they can deal with that, Jadis knows who they are and where their communities and families are, and will kill them
- If Rick kills Jadis to silence her, she has information stored where that information will be revealed to the CRM anyway, and everyone would still die
- So what to do? Rick’s answer for now is…give up. This week he tried to trick Michonne into escaping by herself, even telling her that if she loved him, she would go. She did not go, as of course she wouldn’t, and now she’s actively angry with Rick that he would try that. And yet I do think there are larger questions here about Michonne, and the nature of her quest that in order to save Rick, she could end up with one of both of them dead, elevating this quest above the well-being of her kids. Everyone tells her to turn around and go home to be with them, even Rick, but she won’t.
This is genuinely thrilling! Given that we are free from comic source material, we have no idea what’s going to happen next here, a true rarity for The Walking Dead. While the miniseries will end in just a few more episodes, I really hope it doesn’t, and we will see a lot more of Rick and Michonne to come, and someday, getting the band back together, as it were.
