Two of the best ‘Walking Dead’ characters!

Despite ending in 2022, The Walking Dead continues to live on in the form of numerous unique spinoffs. The third in a recent slew of new series, following TheWalking Dead: Dead City and The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon might be the most exciting yet, as it reunites us with Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) and Michonne (Danai Gurira). The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live sets up the Civic Republic Military (CRM) as the series’ presumed antagonist. Although the CRM is still a fairly ominous background presence, we got a taste of their inhumanity in The Walking Dead: World Beyond. Rick and Michonne left the flagship series in Seasons 9 and 10 respectively, but both made cameos in the series finale. But what were they up to the last time we saw them?

Rick Left ‘The Walking Dead’ in Season 9

Lincoln says a dramatic goodbye to the series in Season 9, Episode 5, when he quite literally goes out with a bang. It’s been a year and a half after the war with Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) and the Sanctuary, and now all the communities are picking up the pieces. Pioneering this new tentative friendship between the Sanctuary, Alexandria, Hilltop, the Kingdom and Oceanside, Rick decides they need to construct a bridge to connect the communities. After years of fighting and loss, including the most heart-wrenching deaths of Glenn (Steven Yeun) and Carl (Chandler Riggs) during the war, Rick is determined to reunite the group and build a sense of community again. But in an unforeseen attack by a hoard of walkers, Rick is forced to blow up and collapse the bridge to protect his family, symbolically sacrificing himself to try and heal the broken relationships between the groups.

However, the blazing fire and smoke of the explosion masked the fact that Rick didn’t actually die. As Daryl Dixon (Norman Reedus) desperately scours the river for Rick’s body, we see Rick being cradled away into a helicopter by Jadis (Pollyanna McIntosh). Rick’s abrupt departure was a massive loss for the series, as he’d been our leader since day one. Daryl enters a six-year hiatus where he stubbornly searches the river every day, and Michonne is left more grim while taking care of their son, RJ, and daughter, Judith (Cailey Fleming). Although they try to honor Rick’s legacy by keeping the communities together, they gradually begin to drift away without his guidance and inspiration. Rick’s departure is also what leads into Daryl’s own spinoff and plays into Michonne’s own exit from the show.

Michonne Leaves To Look for Rick in ‘The Walking Dead’ Season 10

After Rick’s departure, Michonne becomes in charge of security at Alexandria, making her temperament far more serious and bleak than it had ever been. The only spots of light in her life are the innocent RJ and the wise-beyond-her-years Judith. In order to protect them and her community from their new enemy, Alpha and the Whisperers, Michonne accompanies the mysterious Virgil (Kevin Carroll) to his island for weapons. However, his true intentions are quickly revealed as he locks her into a room in a compound alongside his other victims and drugs her with a hallucinogen. After hours of Michonne being wrought with visions of Siddiq (Avi Nash) and what life would have been like if she had never met Andrea (Laurie Holden) or Rick, she manages to escape with the other prisoners and capture Virgil.

As she prepares to leave the island, she notices that, among other things, Virgil had collected the pair of cowboy boots Rick had been wearing since Season 1. Michonne demands Virgil take her to the source of the collection, which is an abandoned ship on the shores of the island. She finds an old iPhone engraved with a sketch of her and Judith, Rick’s name and a couple of Japanese characters that translate to: “Believe a little longer.” She prepares for her journey to the ship’s last destination, a New Jersey shipyard, and hopes that these are all hints that Rick is still alive. She contacts Judith about her trip and returns to her old Walking Dead habit of taking two walkers as travel companions. The last we see of Michonne in Season 10, Episode 13 is her running across two strangers and agreeing to help them find their group.

Rick and Michonne Return in ‘Walking Dead’s Series Finale

It was a delightful surprise in The Walking Dead series finale when Rick and Michonne appeared. Rick’s on the run from the CRM, but they inevitably catch up to him in a helicopter. He quickly discards his bag, boots, and the old iPhone Michonne finds in her last episode, confirming that this takes place before the events of Season 10. Interestingly, the helicopter does not open fire at him and instead the pilot ominously says, “it’s like he told you, there’s no escape for the living,” suggesting that Rick may intriguingly be of some value to the group.

Meanwhile, after Michonne embarked on her quest to look for Rick in Season 10, we only had radio silence from her, until this brief update. In the cameo, she is far less disheveled, though she is alone, indicating that at some point in her travels she had said goodbye to her new companions. Michonne has also somehow gotten her hands on some new intricate armor which strongly complements her signature katana. The Walking Dead showrunner Scott Gimple actually reveals in an interview with Entertainment Weekly that there is an interesting backstory around her armor, which will be divulged in The Ones Who Live.

But arguably, the best part of the cameo is when Rick steadily looks at the helicopter with his sickly defiant grin that he usually uses when he knows he has the upper-hand or is about to slaughter someone in his way. Gimple further explained, “Rick still has some fight left in him… [he] is not yet broken, [he] is defiant… that smile is indicative of the strength that is drawn through 11 seasons of The Walking Dead.” As such, both characters leave us with letters that promise to keep fighting to reunite with their family, leading us into The Ones Who Live.

How Does ‘World Beyond’ Connect to ‘The Ones Who Live?’

More details from the cameos and Rick’s last moments are revealed when you cross-reference them with the events from World Beyond. Apart from knowing that Jadis is actually a high-ranking officer in the CRM, Rick’s status there is also hinted at. Jadis gives Rick a Class B label when she offers him up to the CRM, and from World Beyond, it is clear that Class B are the workers while Class A are the test subjects of their walker experiments. World Beyond presents a world where there is unrest between the Civic Republic and their military branch, and the CRM plans to eventually take over. In a scene with a newspaper, we see that General Beale (Terry O’Quinn) helms this takeover, and will also appear in the spinoff.

The CRM is also known for its experiments on walkers and human test subjects, where they aim to reduce the time of (or wholly prevent) reanimation, a fate that Rick narrowly avoids. In the Season 11 cameo, we also see Rick wearing the same jumpsuit and carrying the same tool as one of the CRM workers in World Beyond, essentially confirming his place in the group. But it is also clear that he has made, at the very least, one attempt to escape from the encampment, proving that there is still some fight left in him yet. Despite the sinister presence dividing Rick and Michonne, we are promised they will continue to fight, survive, and reunite with each other in their upcoming spinoff. They are the ones who live, after all.