The Walking Dead's Rick and Michonne Romance Almost Happened in the Comics

When a Richonne romance blossomed between Andrew Lincoln's Rick Grimes and Danai Gurira's Michonne on The Walking Dead television show, it was a deviation from the comic books — and the start of a love story that would spawn its own spinoff series. But as it turns out, writer and creator Robert Kirkman mulled over a Rick and Michonne romance years before it happened on "The Next World" episode of The Walking Dead season 6 (aired in February 2016). In fact, as Kirkman notes in the colorized reprint The Walking Dead Deluxe #74, his plans for the original issue — first printed in July 2010, months before the show's pilot debuted on AMC — included a germ of an idea.

"Michonne + Rick on patrol. Budding romance hinted [at]," reads Kirkman's handwritten notes in the latest edition of "The Cutting Room Floor with Robert Kirkman," included in The Walking Dead Deluxe #74. 

"This is HUGE," Kirkman writes in his creator's commentary. "I'd forgotten I'd considered making Michonne and Rick an item. Years before it ended up happening in the TV show, here it was. Ultimately, (spoiler alert!) Rick ended up with Andrea, and I kept the Rick and Michonne relationship to a strong friendship, but it definitely almost happened."

The Walking Dead #74 sees Rick, a former police officer, and Michonne, a former lawyer, settling into their roles as constables for the Alexandria Safe-Zone. (In the TV show, Tovah Feldshuh's Deanna Monroe appoints Rick and Michonne as constables; in the comics, it's Douglas Monroe.) After Michonne hangs up her katana in issue #72, Rick tells her she'll get used to "protecting and serving." 

When Rick asks if she's planning to move to a new house, Michonne says she doesn't want to take her sword off the mantel because it's symbolic. "Don't want to take it down unless I need to," Michonne admits. "You talk to Lori recently?" Michonne, who used to talk to her dead boyfriend Mike, overheard Rick talking to his dead wife after the first time she relinquished her katana: when she joined the Atlanta group at the prison.

"Should have known that's not something you'd want to talk about," Michonne tells Rick. "Sorry." Rick and Michonne's otherwise friendly encounter comes one issue after she calls her relationship with Morgan Jones "a mistake" because Morgan, still mourning his wife's death, feels guilty that "not enough time" has passed before sleeping with Michonne. It's around this time that Rick takes an interest in Jessie Anderson, but Rick's next serious relationship doesn't come until issue #90. In an intimate moment that inspired the first Richonne kiss on The Walking Dead, the issue ends with Rick and Andrea embracing on a couch.

Ultimately, Michonne and Rick's relationship in the comics remains platonic. Michonne eventually becomes involved with King Ezekiel, who dies a victim of the Whisperers; and Andrea, who succumbs to a walker's bite, is buried as "Andrea Grimes." But Richonne lives on in The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live, which reunites Rick and Michonne years after Rick was shuttled away aboard a CRM helicopter.

The official logline: "This series presents an epic love story of two characters changed by a changed world. Kept apart by distance. By an unstoppable power. By the ghosts of who they were. Rick and Michonne are thrown into another world, built on a war against the dead... And ultimately, a war against the living. Can they find each other and who they were in a place and situation unlike any they've ever known before? Are they enemies? Lovers? Victims? Victors? Without each other, are they even alive — or will they find that they, too, are the Walking Dead?"

The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live premieres in February 2024 on AMC and AMC+.

Stay tuned to ComicBook/TWD (and find us on Facebook) and follow @CameronBonomolo on Twitter for more TWD Universe coverage.