Love can endure all, and The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live shows us just how deep Rick (Andrew Lincoln) and Michonne’s (Danai Gurira) love for each other runs. It’s everything we have been waiting for and more! Plus, who doesn’t want to see Rick and Michonne back together?
Throwing us into a story split between Rick’s point of view and Michonne’s side of things, the first few episodes of the series do a lot of setting up the story, but it never feels like just exposition or like it is not a warranted storyline.
Truly and honestly what works about this show is less the people that Rick or Michonne find along the way (amazing as they may be) and more everything that these two characters are willing to go through to find each other once more. It was what connected us to them in the original flagship show and now it has become a driving force in each episode as these two characters desperately try to find the one they love.
What makes The Ones Who Live stand out from the regular series of The Walking Dead is that we are able to focus more on that love and devotion. It is less about who is trying to destroy Rick’s group and more a character study of both Rick and Michonne.
It is not without its bad guys. We still have men like Beale (Terry O’Quinn) and Donald (Craig Tate) that we cannot instinctively trust. Even when Thorne (Lesley-Ann Brandt) shows that she’s looking out for Rick in the community he has found in New York City, we are still left wondering how deep our trust can go.
But despite all of that, we continue to long for the moments we get with Rick and Michonne on their quest for each other.
This is a love story.
Two characters who, when we first met them, didn’t seem like they’d end up together are now the best love story in the entire Walking Dead canon. We fans longed to see them back together after knowing that Rick was alive and Michonne knew in her heart that he was still there. It is why, as we’re watching The Ones Who Live, we keep up the dream that these two will be together again, just as Rick and Michonne do.
Rick and Michonne both have drawings of each other etched into the screens of old phones, constantly looking at them for help and support when the search for each other seems futile. We see flashes of a dream that Rick has, a normal life where he could have met Michonne somewhere else, and it shows just how much these two characters care about each other.
Each of their driving motivations is to find the other. Yes, the will to survive in a zombie apocalypse is there, but what is really pushing both Michonne and Rick forward is the hope that they will one day be reunited. So, everything else they are forced to face is fine because they still have that hope within them.
There is so much I love about these first four episodes, but they are something you should experience on your own. Just know that The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live gives fans of Rick and Michonne a lot to love, and you don’t want to be spoiled on the story unfolding in it.
(featured image: Gene Page/AMC)
