The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live has brought Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) and Michonne (Danai Gurira) back to us. But our time is over and so let’s talk about what that finale means for our favorite couple!
**Spoilers for the entire first season of The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live lie ahead**
The start of the series had Michonne searching for Rick and Rick trying to find his way back to his family. While the CRM posed plenty of issues in their quest back home, what the last episode of the season, titled “The Last Time,” shows us is how far they are willing to go to protect their family and the world.
Major General Beale (Terry O’Quinn) and Pearl Thorne (Lesley-Ann Brandt) are happy that Rick made it out of the helicopter crash alive when he returns to the CRM base and tells them that Michonne (using her fake name) didn’t make it. Their idea is to break into Jadis’ (PollyAnna McIntosh) old room and rip up the manifesto she wrote that tells the CRM all about Rick and Michonne’s family. While Michonne was doing that, Rick was going to get info on the CRM’s plan to stop them and what they both learn makes it clear to them that they cannot just leave without doing something.
The CRM is planning on essentially giving up hope on the adults and going out of their way to protect the next generation and blow up the rest in a way of trying to save the world. That doesn’t go over well for Rick and Michonne and they decide to, instead, blow up the CRM to protect the world. Michonne learns of the CRM plan by going to a seminar for officers while Rick is told by Beale. While Michonne searches for Rick to tell him they have to stay and end this, Rick has already killed Beale and put him in a locked crate.
The plan they cook up though is incredible, bloody, and very Rick and Michonne.
A battle to be reunited
Rick and Michonne quickly learn that even if they did escape, their happiness would be short lived if the CRM fulfills their plan. Taking out both Beale and Thorne along with the rest of the CRM base is their only option and it isn’t an easy task. There are moments when it does seem like one if not both of them might not make it out alive (especially when Rick is covered by walkers and he has to blow them up to make it out alive).
But through it all, they find their way back to each other and, more importantly, back to RJ and Judith. Rick and Michonne’s plan is to blow up the bombs the CRM was planning on dropping on civilians and they do so, make sure that Thorne is dead (since Rick already took care of Beale), and then leave with the knowledge that their family is at least safe, for now.
Finding Judith and RJ was easier than it probably would have been without the help of the CRM technology but they are one happy family in the end.
Is there a future for the series?
The entire episode is filled with flashbacks to their relationship on the flagship series, The Walking Dead, and it left us feeling like this would be the end. It did seem like a beautiful little sign off for Rick and Michonne as characters, being reunited and it doesn’t help that the episode was called “The Last Time.”
Still, we could see more of them in the future in any of the other The Walking Dead spin-off series but who knows what the future holds for The Ones Who Live.
(featured image: AMC)
