Way back in 2010, when we first saw Sheriff Deputy Rick Grimes first wake from a coma into a world ravaged by the living dead, we had no idea – for better or worse – that his story would somewhat conclude fourteen years later. It’s been a hell of a journey, loaded with about just as many troughs as it was peaks, but with the arrival of Walking Dead spinoff, The Ones Who Live, we finally had a chance to pick up with Rick after his prolonged absence while throwing a similarly absent Michonne back into the mix.
The results, thankfully, has been worth the wait, but a great series is nothing without a satisfying end and as we rush headlong into the sixth and final episode, we now have a real chance to finish Rick and Michonne’s story right in a world where a happy ending usual means you don’t turn into a zombie after dying.
After the franchise’s impressive improvement in quality due to the splitting of the main series into a trio of shows (not so much Dead City, sorry), it’s time for this grand experiment to try and end on a high. Does it succeed? What can I say, love doesn’t die.
After finally taking massive steps toward freeing themselves from the clutches of the Civil Republic Military by finally putting an end to the scheming Jadis, Rick and Michonne agree that the only way they can guarantee the safety of their loved ones is to head back to Cascadia base and tie up some loose ends. While Rick enters via the front gate under the pretence of returning “home” after surviving that helicopter crash, Michonne infiltrates from the rear, disguised in CRM armour with the mission to gain entrance to Jadis’ apartment to find the documents that would expose the location of Alexandria.
However, while Michonne does her spy shit, Rick’s return Grant’s him an audience with the big dog himself, General Beale, who sees Grimes’ voluntary return a sign after years of attempted escape. While his spouse attends a briefing concerning the CRM’s plans, her husband gets it straight from the horse’s mouth.
Simply put, Beale’s experts believe that with an estimated billion of the walking dead still staggering around out there and with other issues such as disease, starvation and murderous intent in effect, mankind only has around fourteen years left before going completely extinct. Thus, in an effort to sustain Philadelphia, he is willing to sacrifice the other colony of Portland and take their supplies to ensure the continued survival of the main city, which Beale will place under martial law. The thing is, the plan is incredibly feasible when you consider that they’ve already carried it out once by taking out Omaha, and we Rick and Michonne realises that Portland will only be the start, they channel their focus on bringing down the CRM once and for all.
If I’m being honest, I found the series finale for the main run of The Walking Dead to be somewhat divisive. While a lot of the characters got proper send offs, they were mostly either newer characters, or ones who hadn’t become as beloved as some of the more legendary mainstays which kind of left left the whole thing feeling a little hollow. Now, while both Dead City and Daryl Dixon both ended their first seasons with plot points unresolved, villains still kicking and the huge matter of Carol’s return still percolating around the writer’s room, The Ones Who Live always felt like it should end rather definitively. Well, guess what? The creators of the show obviously felt the same way I do as this epic love story between Rick and Michonne attempts to snip off as many loose ends as the characters themselves do in order to bring this thread to a noticable end.
Adding immensely is the amount of clips the show uses from the shows long history to rapidly cut through all the vicious and brutal acts that both our heroes have had to perform in order to survive and protect their loved ones (Rick tearing out that guys throat with his teeth gets an especially welcome reairing) and it all ties in with the idea that Rick and Michonne are weighing up all the violent atrocities they’ve done over the years in order to question their motives for trying to erase the CRM off the face of the earth.
They process this lifetime of bloody acts with the repeated mantra of “This is the shit we do”, and it fits perfectly as the show shifts into action mode to close out the season.
Finally getting the screen time a Walking Dead villain needs to get their twisted point across, Terry O’Quinn takes the limited time offered to him and makes it count with an antagonist that doesn’t rant, doesn’t rave and certainly doesn’t go overboard with cartoonish menace or an exaggerated accent. No, Beale lays out his ghastly plans with all the candor and calm of a guy explaining his journey to work that morning and while the actor has great form playing rage fueled lunatics (1987 psycho thriller The Stepfather is a great example), the reasonable tone he holds while telling Rick about his idea to wipe out every other colony in the surrounding area, while saving a mere 10% of the child population is legitimately chilling.
However, action is the name of the fame here, and while it does feel like Michonne and Rick manage to take out an entire army a little too easily – grenades and chlorine gas works wonders if everyone’s in the same place), the show is only acting on the past lessons learnt from dragging out the Savior and the Whiperers storylines way too long. Does the CRM fall within a single episode? Yes. Is the fallout mopped up fairly quickly? Arguably, sure. But it’s still a satisfying conclusion that still comes with an ample amount of thrills, tension and drama. Witness Michonne and Thorne brawl to the death in a battle of the ideologies where the embittered soldier claims that there can be no love in a world that is dead, while her more hopeful opponent insists otherwise with devastating sword thrusts.
Some may dismiss The Ones Who Live as something of an oversimplification of all things Walking Dead, but on the other hand, wasnt that the point of these three miniseries to begin with? To pair down such insurmountable continuity? And on top of that, the show was always billed as a zombie crammed, epic love story that straddled the best part of a decade and instilled hope back into the hopeless and in its final scenes when we finally see this family reunited, it genuinely feels like the franchise has finally found it’s true ending.
However, it isn’t the end. Not truly. With the Book Of Carol looming on the horizon, The Walking Dead will continue to shuffle on, but if we never get another Rick and Michonne story ever again, Andrew Lincoln and Danai Gurira have left their characters in a satisfying place.
Thank God they’re the ones who lived.
🌟🌟🌟🌟
We Have Issues 