by Jeff Alan, Contributing Writer
Over five years since Rick’s departure from the original series and four years since Michonne left the show as well, Andrew Lincoln and Danai Gurira return to the world of The Walking Dead with their own standalone miniseries, The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live. After initially being announced as a trilogy of films that would go to theaters, it was announced in 2022 that the project would be repurposed into a miniseries to be aired on AMC, where the series began and branched off into spinoff shows. This spinoff brings in the two leads to drive this story forward with the help of Pollyanna McIntosh, who comes in to reprise her role of Jadis from The Walking Dead, and newcomers to the franchise, Terry O’Quinn, Lesley-Ann Brandt, and Craig Tate.
The Ones Who Live opens up on Rick and Michonne’s journey after their characters left, which saw Rick being helicoptered by a returning Jadis to an unknown location after he blew up a bridge to protect the community of Alexandria. A full season later, Michonne found hints that Rick was still alive and set out on her own journey to find him. Now, we find Rick has been taken and held somewhat captive by the Civil Republic Military (CRM), the up-and-coming “government” formed in the wake of civilizations fall to the walkers.
Working as an indentured servant of sorts ridding the surrounding area of walkers around their home base of Philadelphia, Rick attempts to escape several times, but to no avail. No matter how much he tells them he has a home to get back to, and no matter how many escape attempts he makes, they don’t listen to him or let him leave. Meanwhile, Michonne is taken in by a friendlier group of survivors who travel the country in a large caravan in search of a safe haven, but little do the two leads know that their paths would soon cross in the most unlikely of ways.
As with all spinoff series, I had mixed feelings going into this. I was an OG fan of the original series and would watch it every Sunday at 8 p.m. for many, many years. I watched the first season of Fear the Walking Dead and quickly became disinterested. As for the several other spinoff series, I didn’t even bother. It was too much of the thing I liked all at once, and became difficult to follow. But with The Ones Who Live, I felt it was my duty as a loyal fan of the original Walking Dead to give it an honest try.
The Ones Who Live brings the classic atmosphere of the universe I love back into my life with what really is a fascinating journey to give closure to the question: “What happened to Rick?” The first episode is a Rick-centric story about his life in the CRM, and the second is Michonne-centric, explaining her struggles with leaving her family to find her long lost love. Rick’s episode breezes over a lot of important details about his capture and how the CRM operates right at the start, which makes it a little hard to get wrapped into it in the first few minutes, but as the episode plays out, you start to understand this new world he is now a part of.
This series even looks a little better than the original. Obviously, as time goes on and technology gets better, camera equipment gets better and makes the things you shoot look better along with it, but this has a different level of cinematography to it. All the acting is serviceable, and it’s also nice to see Terry O’Quinn in something again; I personally haven’t seen him in much since Lost ended.
The series’ fatal flaw, though, is that it would have been exponentially better if it was a part of the original run. At the time of him stepping away from the series, Lincoln wanted to spend more time with his family, which is of course understandable, but after watching The Ones Who Live play out, I would have much preferred them to tack the stories this tells to the remainder of the original show’s run — there could have been room to do so.
The Walking Dead was no stranger to letting characters sit out for long stretches of time. We saw how it worked with Brann in Game of Thrones’ heyday. They could have easily let Rick go missing for a season or two and then come back to his and Michonne’s plot line in the final season. Because The Ones Who Live ends in a really satisfying way, and if they would have included that in the final season of The Walking Dead,it would have made the whole experience completely worth it, as opposed to having those tacked on teases that we did end up getting in the series finale. The closest example I can get to how I’m feeling is watching the series finale to Dexter and then Dexter: New Blood comes out and gives us the closure we needed to move on.
And I think this is what holds me back from giving this series a stellar rating. As much of a fan I am of this world and what it has done, they should have sweetened the pot for Lincoln to get him to come back in The Walking Dead satisfying too. But as fan of the world overall, The Ones Who Live is a great watch and a fun story that I was happy to wait nearly five years for.
Rating: Liked It
The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live is currently streaming on AMC+
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