At some point a horde of “The Walking Dead” audience wandered off, never to return. I can probably guess when that was for most of us. The seventh season premiere did it for me, which was when a beloved original character was gruesomely bludgeoned to death.
Others stuck around long enough to see Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) exit by appearing to sacrifice himself while detonating a bridge, then peaced out with him.
When you reached your limit of the series, grisly violence and suffering may have mattered less than the reason why, which is likely linked to a character. If your favorite one died while you weren’t watching, maybe it would hurt less. Danai Gurira’s Michonne didn’t die, thankfully. Neither did Daryl Dixon (Norman Reedus), Carol Peletier (Melissa McBride), Maggie Greene (Lauren Cohan) or the man who drove millions away in the first place, Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan).
Neither did Rick, it turns out, making the post-series spinoffs a palatable alternative to wallowing in the repetitive gristle of “Fear the Walking Dead” and “The Walking Dead: World Beyond" (which is basically “The Walking Dead: College Championship Edition”) and that anthology filling the gaps.
Some people can’t get enough zombies, we know. For the rest of us, short character-driven trips like “Dead City” and its Maggie-Negan team-up, or “Daryl Dixon,” are palatable snacks. Out of all these, the main event was always going to feature the return of Richonne: the magnificent sheriff and the samurai.
“The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live” is the culmination of years’ worth of hoping and shipping, both inside the franchise’s apocalypse and our reality, overrun with undead fables as it is. When Lincoln left the main series in 2018, he also split up the only couple worth rooting for at the end of the world.
Rick and Michonne are a super couple played by a pair of superb actors who could have left all this behind permanently and have done some extraordinary work since then. Gurira is as widely beloved as Okoye, her Marvel Cinematic Universe warrior, as she is for her katana-wielding ronin. Lincoln’s Rick was and is the heart and soul of “The Walking Dead,” established in the series’ first episode.
“The Ones Who Live” picks up some time after that, with Rick uneasy in a new life that demands he forget his family and friends, which is impossible. Michonne could never let go of Rick – and when she finds evidence that he survived the bridge explosion, she starts searching for him in earnest, leaving behind Rick’s daughter Judith and the son Michonne has with him, R.J.
That means this series travels on parallel tracks that may at some point hit a junction. Who can say when? Not critics complying with AMC’s long list of “do not reveals” that limit us to either confirming that the show is indeed happening or providing lists of what you might need to know.
Those guides are handy for the many viewers who drifted away from “The Walking Dead” without checking in to its offshoots. Without engaging in a bit of review, you might experience a few re-entry difficulties. Not many though. The main change is the prominence of the Civic Republic Military, which is now this world's top antagonist.
The CRM governs the last known bastions of advanced civilization and prioritizes safety and dominance over freedom, which means eliminating other communities instead of trying to work with them. Terry O’Quinn, who plays enigmatic personalities as easily as breathing, is a spot-on casting choice to play Beale, its top general. But the actor whose presence leaves the deepest mark may be Matthew August Jeffers, with whom Gurira performed in “Richard III,” cast here as a skilled and uncharacteristically generous companion Michonne meets along the way.
While “The Ones Who Live” isn’t exactly review proof, if you’ve been pining away for these two, nothing anyone says will stop you from sucking the marrow out of this carcass. The less emotionally invested but curious, though, may also be pleased to see what these two look like now.
By the time “The Walking Dead” ended, it had long passed the threshold at which topping itself with fresh devastation outpaced reasons and relationships to invest in. Apocalyptic fantasies that came after led with heart and hope – first “Station Eleven,” then “The Last of Us.”
This franchise came before those, and that may braid the brain a little when one of our heroes finds themselves in this show’s version of the “Station Eleven” Traveling Symphony. When a turn forces one of its heroes into a very familiar setting, you may find yourself weighing whether that's more reminiscent of “Alice in Borderland.” When a show has been away long enough to tread the same scenery as the stories that sprang up in its absence, a person can't be blamed for wondering what its return is adding.
The answer may simply be closure or continuation. In the same way the grave will not be denied, neither will everyone who clamored for chapters they feel these characters have earned, showing them fully living together instead of constantly evading cannibalistic gristle that never stops coming.
“The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live” premieres at 9 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 25 on AMC and AMC+.
