The Walking Dead won't be reanimated anytime soon. Even before creator Robert Kirkman and Prime Video collaborated on adult animated superhero show Invincible, fans have been hoping to sink their teeth into an animated adaptation of the Skybound/Image comic by Kirkman, Tony Moore, and Charlie Adlard. Kirkman has been receptive to the idea of a "faithful" animated version of the black-and-white zombie comic that spanned 193 issues and spawned a live-action Walking Dead Universe at AMC, but it seems the network isn't biting.

"I'd love to see it happen someday, but I don't think it'll be possible until I get the rights back from AMC," Kirkman wrote in response to a fan who asked about a Walking Dead animated show in the "Letter Hacks" column of The Walking Dead Deluxe #85. Skybound's TWD editor Amanda LaFranco added: "There's definitely been developments over the years for something like this, and there's a lot of fans over here that would still very much love to make that happen."

In 2010, the network released an eight-minute, "fully-animated" motion comic adapting 13 pages from The Walking Dead #1 by Kirkman and artist Tony Moore. AMC also dabbled with comic-style animation in an animated segment of the webisode series The Walking Dead: Red Machete. AMC's Walking Dead Universe chief content officer Scott M. Gimple has expressed interest in using animation in potential future episodes of anthology spinoff Tales of the Walking Dead, but the franchise has so far only dabbled with the format.

AMC acquired the rights to the graphic novel in 2009 in one of the largest development deals the network ever closed. The Walking Dead debuted in 2010 from series developer and showrunner Frank Darabont, who served as executive producer with Gale Anne Hurd, David Alpert, and Kirkman. The Darabont-directed AMC Original series premiere marked the largest audience for any original series on the network, and delivered the highest ratings in the key 18-49 demographic for any cable series premiere in 2010. AMC's Walking Dead was the #1 series on basic cable for 12 consecutive years when it ended its 11-season run after 177 episodes in 2022.

In March, Kirkman and four other Walking Dead executive producers -- Hurd, Alpert, Charles Eglee, and former showrunner Glen Mazzara -- saw a victory in their 2022 profits-sharing suit against the network when a federal judge denied AMC's motion to have the case dismissed. (After first filing suit in 2017, and after Darabont was awarded $200 million in his separate profit participation lawsuit in 2021, the executive producers sued a second time in a suit arguing they were "entitled to a payment well over $200 million from AMC.")

Along with since-ended spinoffs Fear the Walking Dead and The Walking Dead: World Beyond, AMC continued The Walking Dead with the spinoffs The Walking Dead: Dead City (starring Lauren Cohan's Maggie and Jeffrey Dean Morgan's Negan), The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon (starring Norman Reedus), and The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live (starring Andrew Lincoln's Rick Grimes and Danai Gurira's Michonne). Dead City season 2 and Daryl Dixon season 2, also starring Melissa McBride as Carol, are currently in the works at AMC.

The Walking Dead spanned 193 issues across 32 volumes, but there was nearly a prequel volume exploring the days before "Days Gone Bye." The six-issue first volume of Robert Kirkman's zombie comic began with small town sheriff's deputy Rick Grimes waking up from a coma one month into the apocalypse, sending Rick on an undead odyssey from Cynthiana, Kentucky, to Atlanta, Georgia, to find his wife and son. By the final page of issue #2, Rick reunited with his family in a camp outside walker-swarmed Atlanta along with his police partner -- and best friend -- Shane Walsh.

Shane was escorting Carl and Lori to her parents' house in Atlanta, only for a flashback in issue #7 to reveal the moment they arrived to find the city overrun by the dead. It was during this time that Shane and Lori began an affair that resulted in pregnancy. As it turns out, Kirkman conceived a Walking Dead prequel comic set during that eventful 349-mile trek from Cynthiana to Atlanta with original series artist Tony Moore, who ended his run as interior illustrator after the first six issues.

"I had always considered doing a volume 0 that would be Shane, Lori and Carl's trip from Cynthiana, KY to Atlanta, GA," Kirkman wrote in the Letter Hacks section of The Walking Dead Deluxe #85. "I even wrote a few pages of a script. There was a time early on I'd thought of it as a cool project to do with Tony Moore, but in the end it just never came together. At this point, we'll probably never see it."

Kirkman eventually penned a prequel -- Here's Negan, a standalone volume exploring Negan's origins at the onset of the zombie apocalypse -- and 2020's Negan Lives one-shot, the only Walking Dead issue written by Kirkman since Image Comics published the long-running book's final issue in 2019. In a previous issue of TWD Deluxe, Kirkman cast doubt on ever reviving the series but didn't rule out future one-shots or a self-contained spin-off from another writer.

"I gave 16 years of my life to this world. I may dabble in it at some point in the future, but I doubt I'll ever return to do a full series," Kirkman wrote in a recent installment of Letter Hacks. "But... I'd never say never."

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The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live ended up being a very good TV series but the sum of its parts was better than its final 48-minute episode. The series finally brought Andrew Lincoln back to the zombie universe for fans clamoring for Rick Grimes, along with Danai Gurira's Michonne who left The Walking Dead more than a full season after Lincoln. However, while the first five episodes delivered a compelling return to its best form for The Walking Dead universe, the finale of the series felt like a race to the finish line as hopes for a Season 2 started to feel more and more dashed as it went on. Spoilers for The Ones Who Live follow.

Ultimately, The Ones Who Live answered its most important questions and was quite successful while doing so. We now know what happened to Rick Grimes. We know what happened to Michonne. We know they eventually found each other and both reunited with their children. We know what the CRM is (or more accurately phrased; was). We even know about Jadis' fate and some details about what Father Gabriel was up to with her that we didn't even know to ask about. However, all of the answers came within six episodes, while bigger questions were both introduced and resolved in quick succession along the way.

The series ended up being very good, despite what felt like a mostly safe and largely rushed finale. The first five entries spent time introducing new characters, expanding the world and lore with history and plans from the CRM. Terry O'Quinn's General Beale seemed primed to be a Thanos-type of villain for The Walking Dead universe, as Daryl and Carol are off exploring Europe and Negan is in New York with Maggie. The threat of the CRM with the lives of those in Alexandria, the safety of the Commonwealth, and everyone else the spinoff shows are introducing at stake... it was a very exciting prospect! Instead, Beale was killed by a knife and a sword while he had a gun in his hand (and he wasn't the only character in the finale taken down by a blade while armed with a gun).

Focusing on the good, it was simply awesome to see Rick and Michonne reunite with Judith and RJ. The moment was beautiful and it felt like the happy ending no one expected to ever get from a franchise like The Walking Dead. Rick and Michonne in action together has been a chef's kiss touch throughout the entire series (not in the bedtime kind of way, which there has been plenty of, too). The musical score in the finale and entire series was tremendous. The flashbacks, especially those which flashed when Rick Grimes was asked about the worst thing he had done to survive, were shots to the feels for those of us on this Walking Dead journey for 14 years. Not that it's new footage, but seeing Shane Walsh again? Always a treat, especially when used so poignantly. The alignment of Rick and Michonne having to do what it takes to survive, emphatically declaring without just saying it that they're the ones who live, often because of the lengths they go to survive... all fantastic stuff!

Then, there are the parts that didn't make much sense. The aforementioned pair of characters killed by knives and swords while armed with guns was a bummer to see. Michonne sneaking into the CRM with such ease made the place look weak. Beale trusting Rick Grimes after so many escape attempts, questionable. However, the biggest suspension of disbelief came after Rick and Michonne popped off the massive chlorine bombs in the CRM. We saw the devastating effects these same bombs had on Michonne's group in the show's second episode. Nat and Michonne had to recover for a year because they were exposed to the yellow gas. Rick, however, was able to have an entire fight with Thorne with only a cloth over his mouth and never felt the negative effects of that same chlorine bomb. It's one thing to suspend disbelief for the sake of believing in a zombie series... it's another for the rules laid out by said zombie series to contradict themselves all within six episodes.

The pace of the episode was also far too quick. Perhaps, if there was never going to be a second season, there could have been a seventh episode. Infiltrating, plotting, and executing a takedown of the massive threat which the CRM was framed as all within the final episode itself was a bummer. Thinking back to the Governor story, one which an argument can be made that it had the opposite problem of what we're discussing here about the CRM in The Ones Who Live, there was a level of anticipation when we knew the group was taking the fight to Governor and vice versa. Some of the best scenes had no action, like Rick and the Governor sitting together talking and negotiating. This made the action more meaningful. Now, the finale was set for an explosive end where thousands of unnamed CRM soldiers were killed and Thorne had to attack Rick before having a change of heart and handing him a gas mask that he didn't need, anyway. Not to mention, the love story of this series was fantastic and truly drove it forward, but the line of "love never dies," in the middle of a life-or-death fight felt a little out of place. All of this and more is covered in this week's video review and breakdown.

All of that said, this is all just a bunch of criticism of an otherwise excellent series. The finale certainly felt like it moved through all of the interesting and emotional elements more quickly than anyone could have expected or wanted but it moved through them, nonetheless. There was a time when fans started to doubt whether or not we would ever see Rick Grimes again at all when the movie trilogy turned to one movie and then the movie turned to a series and years went on with no updates. Now, both Rick and Michonne made their exciting returns and truly gave fans what they clamored for in the end. The duo find themselves engaged, back home, and living with their family.

All of this is not to say the finale was outright bad. Above, there is plenty of points made for the great elements and some of its lackluster elements. However, it is definitely to say that the series as a whole was better than the finale. The tension, the emotions, the performances, the writing (including the impressively crafted Episode 4 from Gurira's pen), and the cliffhangers built into something tremendously interesting through the first five episodes. It was a pressure cooker which might have just been released a little too quickly, something which seems to be an all too common trend with six-episode shows these days.

There is, of course, room for more story to tell. Rick and Michonne could now head up the CRM and start spreading all of the resources and aid to the rest of the world as the finale implied was happening. A continuation with Daryl and Carol seems more likely, as Norman Reedus and Melissa McBride seem to be more game for continuing with their respective roles than some other cast members in the franchise and their show is already on its way to releasing a second season with a third on the way. Meanwhile, Dead City is also set to bring Maggie and Negan back for at least one more batch of episodes. Whether or not we ever see Rick and Michonne again seems to be anybody's guess, possibly a sentiment echoed within the creative teams behind the Walking Dead universe, as well. So, playing it safe and giving the characters an emotionally satisfying, albeit rushed to the finish line conclusion... this might be what the franchise always need, in the end.

Warning: This article contains spoilers for The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live episode 6. "Secrecy and security above all." Eliminating threats to "operational security." Extinguishing the living to preserve the "last light of the world." So were the ways of the Civic Republic Military, the shadowy three-ring group that airlifted Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) away from an exploding bridge back on season 9 of The Walking Dead. But those ways went up in smoke in The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live finale, which ended with Rick and Michonne (Danai Gurira) delivering a fatal final blow to the CRM.

As Michonne retrieved the dossier that CRM Warrant Officer Jadis (Pollyanna McIntosh) left behind with intel the military could use to destroy Alexandria, Rick received the Echelon Briefing from Major General Beale (Terry O'Quinn). The briefing was first mentioned by Rick's mentor, the late Lt. Col. Okafor (Craig Tate), who told the Sgt. Maj. that the Echelon contains "all the info, the whys, the things 90% of our force doesn't know about and 100% of our city doesn't."

The Echelon Briefing

Major General Beale gave the Echelon Briefing to 2,533 elite soldiers who then joined the CRM Frontliner force, including Command Sgt. Maj. Pearl Thorne (Lesly-Ann Brandt). The CRM Force Command leader told Rick the first secret: "The most likely outcome after all the fighting and killing, all the plans and sacrifices, we lose. Most likely outcome is that we're all gonna die."

CRM modelling determined that between the dead, disease, starvation, and the discovery of million-strong zombie herds, "non-necrotic human life" has an estimated 14 years left on the planet before going extinct. On The Walking Dead: World Beyond, Elton (Nicolas Cantu) projected that humanity is fated to go the way of the dinosaurs in 15 years -- placing Homo sapien extinction around the year 2035.

According to Elton, humans are "at the conclusion of the Holocene extinction," the sixth extinction event on the planet following the Late Ordovician mass extinction, the Late Devonian extinction, the End-Permian extinction, the Triassic-Jurassic extinction event, and the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event. "We were already killing ourselves directly and indirectly, but nature made a shortcut," Elton told the Endlings, the last-living survivors of a soon-to-be-extinct species. "It took the dinosaurs possibly 60,000 years to die after 240 million of living, so following that ratio, given the human race's 600,000 and factoring in other miscellaneous variables, I say we have about 15 years until we're gone."

Operation N1W

Rick and Michonne also uncovered the CRM master plan to destroy Portland (also seen on World Beyond). Operation N1W would begin with the CEP (Child Evacuation Protocol), in which CRM Frontliner embeds enmeshed in the Portland school system would evacuate select children and airlift these assets away from three extraction zones. The army would then bomb the area with toxic chlorine gas and Portland's population of 87,000 would be liquidated.

"The CRM destroys communities for resources, for strategic superiority, and to ensure the city's secrecy and security above all," Beale told Rick. Jadis disclosed this fact to the Endlings on Season 2 of World Beyond, where the CRM carried out the "tactical military operations" that destroyed the Omaha Safe-Zone (population: 97,407 survivors) and its satellite community, the Campus Colony (population: 9,671). The army's final target was Portland.

The Alliance of the Three

The Civic Republic of Philadelphia (known to its allies only as the Civic Republic, the "hidden city" in an undisclosed location) was part of the Alliance of the Three: an alliance between the Civic Republic, Portland, and Omaha, represented by the three-ring symbol of the CRM. But when CRM modelling projected that the city's alliance partners would become a drain on the CR's resources, Beale ordered Omaha and Portland to be destroyed.

"Omaha, the Campus Colony, Portland had become too reliant," Jadis explained on World Beyond. "They'd never be fully self-sustaining. It was only a matter of time before thousands faced a famine of devastating proportions. At best, those thousands would have died slowly. At worst, disease and conflict would have spread through the Civic Republic itself, and then? The light of the world -- extinguished forever. Death wins."

Project Votus

Though it isn't mentioned by name on The Ones Who Live, Beale indirectly referenced Project Votus while giving Rick the Echelon Briefing. Beale told Rick that the military supplied test subjects for scientific experiments to CRM-run labs, including the victims of Omaha and Campus Colony, and the people that Jadis trafficked to the CRM in exchange for supplies while operating out of the Heaps on The Walking Dead. The CRM designated people as "A's" or "B's": "A's" are leaders who are sent away and killed, and "B's" are followers trying to survive. World Beyond confirmed that "A's" were used as zombie-bitten test subjects for the CRM's Project Votus.

These experiments took place at a CR Research Facility in Ithaca, New York, under CRM scientist Dr. Lyla Belshaw (Natalie Gold). It was Belshaw who developed the lethal green liquid chlorine gas that triggers severe bronchial spasms and an excess of fluid in the lungs, effectively "drowning" the victim from the inside out.

It was revealed that Beale and then-Lt. Col. Elizabeth Kublek (Julia Ormond) founded Project Votus two years post-outbreak in 2012. The project involved studying live test subjects through death to further research on reanimation.

A's would either die from zombie bites or be gassed, and then Belshaw would observe "what inside us makes us turn -- whether it be fungal, bacterial, viral, or something else entirely." If the CRM could determine what keeps the dead animated, what slows their decomposition rates, and what feeds their appetites, Belshaw said, "We hope to one day turn off those triggers, eliminate the dead as a threat, and eradicate them from the earth."

CRM Martial Law

Before it was foiled by Rick and Michonne, Operation N1W was to be Beale's final action to make the Civic Republic Military the supreme force on the continent -- and, potentially, the world. Beale told Rick that the CRM had spies in selected communities throughout North America and the world "to monitor them, to potentially sabotage them, to influence their politics and approaches," including Portland.

The CRM would activate its operatives in Portland, destroy the community, and then declare martial law on the Civic Republic. Once the authoritarian military removed the Civic Republic Council and took control of the city, they would march across the country and eliminate competition like the Commonwealth of Ohio and the Tank Town oil fields in Texas. "We will take their resources and ensure supremacy," Beale said. "And maybe we get to survive."

World Beyond disclosed part of this plan. That series revealed that Project Votus was the "ultimate priority" for Beale to resist returning power to the Civic Republic Civilian Government ten years after the CRM -- once the Pennsylvania National Guard -- agreed to a transition of power. But a decade later, in 2020, Beale ordered the destruction of Omaha and Campus Colony and blamed the tragedies on the dead to force an emergency delay of civilian oversight.

"Portland will die, and this force will take over the Civic Republic. We will begin our march on the countryside," Beale told Rick. "The Next World will begin, and through that, somehow, some way, we will survive."

The Next World

After Rick and Michonne rigged grenades to the canisters of chlorine gas to explode at the CRM summit, killing the CRM Frontliner force and CRM Force Command in a single blow, they exposed the CRM's operations and activities to the Civic Republic Council.

A CR newscast reported that the CRC voted unanimously for emergency oversight over the remaining forces of the CRM, which were remade as a force for good. The CRM's infantry and enhanced infantry units -- meaning those not among the ranks of Beale's elite squad of blood red-striped soldiers -- were unaware of the atrocities committed by Force Command. It was also reported that the CRC unanimously voted for free movement in the Republic: citizens are free to leave the CR, and the city will welcome new citizens and provide aid to other communities and survivors. The last light of the world burns anew.

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"Where is my friend?" That's the question in The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon - The Book of Carol, the upcoming second season of the Walking Dead spinoff returning this summer on AMC. The network unveiled an extended sneak peek on Monday, with new footage showing Daryl (Norman Reedus) -- still stranded overseas in Europe -- ambushing Madame Genet (Anne Charrier) and a Pouvoir convoy in a small French village. Meanwhile, in America, Carol (Melissa McBride) has tracked down Daryl to Freeport, Maine: the town where Daryl disappeared before being loaded onto a cargo ship with zombie test subjects and shipped across the Atlantic.

After reclaiming Daryl's stolen motorcycle from biker Mick (in the Daryl Dixon season finale), Carol rolls up on Fuller's Auto Repair. The body shop with a conspicuous French flag is where Jones (Gilbert Glenn Brown) hires drifters to round up walkers in exchange for ethanol -- les affam?s that French Dr. Lafleur (Fran?ois Delaive) then transports overseas, providing Genet with her amped-up super-zombie army.

"Buddy of mine got this bike from you guys," the seemingly harmless Carol says in the footage. "Thought maybe you could help fix it." Jones asks if she's "Mick's lady," to which she answers with a smile. A walker wrangler reports the bike belonged to an "a--hole" named Dixon, so Carol grabs the hunter's crossbow and drops the act. "Don't move. Keep your hands down," she says, finger on the trigger. "Where is my friend?"

AMC also released a synopsis for Daryl Dixon - The Book of Carol: "The new season picks up where The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon left off, following fan-favorite characters Daryl Dixon and Carol Peletier. They both confront old demons while she fights to find her friend and he struggles with his decision to stay in France, causing tension at the Nest."

Along with Reedus and McBride, the season 2 cast includes Cl?mence Po?sy as Isabelle, Louis Puech Scigliuzzi as Laurent, Laika Blanc Francard as Sylvie, Anne Charrier as Madame Genet, Romain Levi as Codron, and Eriq Ebouaney as Fallou. The second season is executive produced by showrunner David Zabel, Scott M. Gimple, Reedus, McBride, Greg Nicotero, Angela Kang, Brian Bockrath, Daniel Percival, Jason Richman and Steve Squillante.

The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon - The Book of Carol premieres this summer on AMC and AMC+. Stay tuned to ComicBook/TWD and follow on Facebook for more TWD Universe coverage.

The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live wrapped up its first (and possibly only) season on Sunday night with a satisfying finale, with Danai Gurira joining ComicBook.com for an exclusive interview to break down the journey. With only six episodes, The Ones Who Live got audiences up to speed on where Rick Grimes and Gurira's Michonne have been since departing The Walking Dead, with both cast members serving as executive producers. In fact, Gurira also wrote an episode, putting her pen to paper for the show's excellent fourth episode. Spoilers for the show's sixth episode follow!

"I feel great about how this has gone. I'm so thankful for how the audiences and the fans have responded," Gurira said of The Ones Who Live. "I feel like it feels really special how people have taken the story and seem to have really have had a good time with it. So, there is a lot of thankfulness about that, and that's where we are right now."

With Rick having left The Walking Dead in its ninth season and Michonne following suit in the show's tenth season, it has been years since fans have seen the beloved cast members and their characters. Six episodes later, those clamoring for more time with them got it and the story has ended at a point where - if there is no season two - everyone gets the closest thing to living happily ever after that The Walking Dead universe seems willing to provide.

"Allowing these characters to get to a place where it's good for more than them, that's what makes it epic," Gurira said. It's not just about them, it's about what they can do for others. And the fact that as a duo, there's something extremely powerful there that's very singular."

The full interview with Gurira can be found below. More coverage from The Ones Who Live, including a breakdown, reviews, new show updates, and more can always be found right here on ComicBook.com!

ComicBook: Before getting to the end, I'd love to go back and talk about episode four with you, which you wrote, and I know that we were talking how that brought you so much joy. I thought it was so incredibly well done and some of the sequences and the dialogue felt like I was watching a play. I'd love to hear, if at all, how did your background in theater influence your work in writing for The Walking Dead?

Danai Gurira: It directly influenced it. I wanted that episode when we were mapping out the series, me, Andy, and Gimple, and we said, "Yeah, this will be the two-hander where it's just them and we just get to the bottom of it all and they come out, they go into the cocoon and come out butterflies..." I was like, "Yeah, that's my episode, that's the episode I'll right." As a playwright, I love that type of dynamic where you're keeping the ball in the air between two characters only and you have to find a through line of action and who wins and who loses, scene to scene, moment to moment. And that's sort of a journey of characters. And also specifically, honestly, I was like, "I don't trust anyone else writing this!" Because I wanted to see them say certain things and get certain things out, and I wanted them.

It was the desire of mine to make sure that the things that needed to be said that I felt needed to be said. But then also at the end of it, I wanted to make sure that we could really keep the love story really rich in the fact that; why is he acting like this? Why is he blocked? Why is he unable to do what everyone expects him to do? And getting into the innards of that type of emotional trauma really, and the emotional wound that of course, why would Rick Grimes know how to just easily articulate that as would most people not? So, that journey of really finding the thing that's causing the conflict, but finding it through him having to open up. I think him having that panic attack and then the journey that Michonne has to take him on at that other scene, that was something I also really wanted to very carefully thread the needle with. And I think definitely that's a theater play. When I say play, I don't mean play, play. I mean when you make a play, it was like, that was me making a play definitely as a writer of theater, because that type of threading is what you have to do in theater a lot.

CB: You did such a brilliant job and your performances were fantastic and that really is a pivotal moment in this show. After that we have essentially the wedding in a sense, and I'd love to hear about that. Was that always part of the plan for the show? What did it feel like for you guys to take these characters to this next level of their journey together?

DG: It wasn't, we discovered that proposal thing along the way. We discovered it really while we were in the midst of shooting the previous episodes, and we had a break in between. There was a discovery of what is the journey of Rick and Michonne in Episode 5 and then we sort of discovered that it was very collaborative. I was definitely very involved. Andy was very involved and we worked a bit with the writers, Channing [Powell] a lot on it, but that was a collaborative find to be like, this is the journey in this episode, post-four. What happens post four between them? Post-four is him now throwing himself at her, you know what I mean? In a sense of making up for that wound that he was acting out of and how much that put her through. And of course, wanting to connect, wanting to really seal their love in a way that he hasn't had a chance to before.

CB: You mention the collaborative effort that went into the show, there's the moment with the metal cat, and that to me instantly was like, "Oh, I was in Michonne and Carl!" That's that bonding moment from years back. I loved where did that come from and did I read that the right way?

DG: Yeah, it does take us back to the Carl relationship, but it also takes us back to Jadis, also initially when they put Rick through hell with their gladiator zombie and all that, and Rick came out there and Michonne and him embrace, and then he is been speared right through his hand and all this mess they put him through. And then he takes one of her cats. She liked to make cat sculptures and he knows that Michonne likes cat sculptures because she lost the one that she'd found that time with Carl. So, he replaces it with one of hers, and I think she complains about it in a later episode that he took her cat.

So, it is this ongoing thing between Jadis and Rick and Michonne about her and her cats, and also bringing in the Carl remembrance. That's how we know Michonne loves them. So, the fact that that's where it is, yeah, there's definitely some poetic aspect to that, but the fact that that's where she stored, she stashed that document was definitely that. I think that was mainly Gimple. I would give that to Gimple.

CB: Ultimately, it was such a beautiful moment to have the whole family come back together, Judith and RJ together. Was that the last thing you all filmed for this series, or what was the last thing you guys shot for The Ones Who Live?

DG: I don't think it was the last thing. I think the last thing we shot was we were on top of the tank after we got away from all the walkers and it was just we were standing on top of those containers

CB: I love how that took us right back to the season one, the pilot ending, in the tank.

DG: Exactly. Exactly, exactly. So that was the last thing we shot together, So many people there and we got to speak to them and give them love. And so it was kind of a great way to end.

CB: Well, I would love to hear about that. What was it like to, because this was largely a new crew with some familiar faces in New Jersey outside of Atlanta. What did you guys say? What did you guys do to celebrate wrapping it up?

DG: Oh, I can't remember. I think I might have a little BTS that I might post of Andy talking. I don't think it gets me, but I think someone was recording Andy talking that I caught it. So, I'll definitely post it, but as long as he lets me. It was definitely a very powerful moment to see everybody's, so many people have done so much work.

So, Andy's very good... Sometimes I think is Andy African because he's so good with the speech making. At the end of a moment, Africans, we be doing that! Every gathering. Usually it was my grandmother. Somebody will get up and give a speech and Andy's just so good at that, it's amazing. So he got up and I said something, but he really stuck the landing about loving on everybody and thank being thankful. And of course the journey he's taken from the pilot, he's able to really speak to, in no way no one can. So he was really talking about that spirit and that energy having been so powerful with this crew and these people and all the work they've done. So it was really beautiful. He's always, he's very good at those. But it's just genuine. It's just very genuine. It's very heartfelt and it's very powerful, all at once. So, it was a very poignant moment.

CB: I was surprised that after episode five, by the end of episode six, it felt like so many of the story elements did wrap up in very satisfying ways before this came to an end. So as an executive producer, now that it's out in the world, what was that experience like to develop that arc in its entirety? And also, was it always the plan to have this all wrap up and one, is there plans for season two?

DG: You know I'm not going to answer that! But, yeah, definitely, I feel great about how this has gone. I'm so thankful for how the audiences and the fans have responded. I feel like it feels really special how people have taken the story and seem to have really have had a good time with it. So there is a lot of thankfulness about that, and that's where we are right now.

CB: The fan reaction has been tremendous. What do you guys think you've done that really has drummed up that positive response from a really big audience?

DG: I mean, we have to take some time once six airs, I think we think about it, but I think from this perspective now, I think it really is about two things we really wanted to do is we wanted to create cliffhangers. We wanted to misdirect you because that's satisfying, you know what I mean? So, the fact that everyone thought he'd, Michonne would only find him later in the series, and then it's the end of the pilot, she's found him... Just things like that. We definitely wanted to keep ahead of the audience and we know our audience. We know TV audiences today are really smart, really sharp. So how do you do that? And we definitely held that responsibility to ourselves very, very seriously, to keep steps ahead of where the audience thinks they're going. And then simultaneously too, we had to really accomplish the premise, which is this is an epic love story, and that means that these are two lovers who are very different from most others, and what does that result in? Is that good for only them?

So, allowing these characters to get to a place where it's good for more than them, that's what makes it epic. It's not just about them, it's about what they can do for others. And the fact that as a duo, there's something extremely powerful there that's very singular. And then also, yes, always a focus is allowing other characters, no matter how long their arc, but to have a satisfying one and Walking Dead has always been very good with that, bringing in characters and allowing them to have powerful arcs. Even as short as Nats' arc was or Beale's arc, it's allowing characters to have a strong arc in and of themselves and still shine in their particular roles and affect people. And so those were definitely the tenants, some of the tenants that were very important to us.

CB: So, speaking of those characters that have a legacy, hypothetically, if this were the last time we ever saw Rick and Michonne and the family is together, what do you think they do from here or want to have happen from here?

DG: Well, I think they are aware that they have to find the balance of home, but also the balance of their responsibility to think larger than themselves. I think even the connection that they've had now with the city that the CRM was working with, that's an alliance, a connection that they have a responsibility to now, quite honestly, because they destroyed the army is. Those are people, those are good people who are doing good things. So I think they have, having seen what bad can be done with power, I think it is their responsibility to figure out the opposite beyond themselves, beyond their family, because that;s who they are.

CB: I was introduced to you when you became Michonne, and I've been following your career, and of course I've seen you jump over to Marvel as well. Your co journey has been awesome, and I know Eyes of Wakanda is on the way, and I'd love to hear if that's a series where you're getting to explore new sides of the Okoye character and just if you know when you'll play Okoye again?

DG: I mean, I can speak to none of this, Brandon, but what I can say is yeah, I think Okoye is, I love Okoye. I think there's something so interesting about her compared to Michonne is that Michonne really has had so much, there's times I really was taking notes from Michonne about being a better woman, whereas Okoye is like, she's a very good woman, but there are things she still has to learn. You know what I mean? There's a way that she has to still figure some stuff out for herself.

CB: What do you think a Michonne, Okoye meeting would look like? Would they get along?

DG: I think they would. Game recognizes game. I think they would get along.

As one chapter of the Walking Dead Universe comes to a close in The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live, a new chapter is opening this summer. Following the Rick and Michonne spinoff series finale, AMC released a new trailer for The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon - The Book of Carol during Sunday's series premiere of the Giancarlo Esposito-starring crime drama Parish. The footage from Daryl Dixon season 2, which you can watch above, teases Daryl's (Norman Reedus) attempt to get home from France while Carol (Melissa McBride) sets out to find her best friend who disappeared in the town of Freeport, Maine.

"There was this guy, and he left home looking for someone," Daryl tells Isabelle (Cl?mence Po?sy) in the sneak peek. "And he couldn't get back." Carol, meanwhile, chokes back tears as she tells someone that the Daryl Dixon is "the only family I have left"... possibly suggesting a grim fate for her former husband, Commonwealth Governor King Ezekiel (Khary Payton). Carol's journey leads her to Europe, but she's not going alone. "Come with me," Carol can be heard saying as she sets out onto the open road on Daryl's bike.

The new season replaces Reedus and McBride's once-planned Daryl & Carol spinoff, reuniting the longtime TWD co-stars after their tearful goodbye that ended The Walking Dead series finale in 2022.

"I've known there was much more to be told of Carol's story as I felt her so unsettled when we last saw her, as she watched her best friend, Daryl, ride away [in The Walking Dead series finale]," McBride said in October when announcing she had joined Daryl Dixon as series regular and executive producer. "Apart or (hopefully!) together, their stories run deep, and I'm so excited to continue Carol's journey here. This team of storytellers have done amazing work to land these two established characters in an entirely new world to them, and I'm loving the discoveries!"

The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon - The Book of Carol stars Reedus, McBride, and first season cast members Cl?mence Po?sy as Isabelle, Louis Puech Scigliuzzi as Laurent, Laika Blanc Francard as Sylvie, Anne Charrier as Madame Genet, Romain Levi as Codron, and Eriq Ebouaney as Fallou. The second season is executive produced by showrunner David Zabel, Scott M. Gimple, Reedus, McBride, Greg Nicotero, Angela Kang, Brian Bockrath, Daniel Percival, Jason Richman and Steve Squillante.

"It was always the hope and the desire that we would get Melissa onto the show in season one, in whatever version she was ready to do. That was always what I wanted to do and what everybody wanted," Zabel previously told ComicBook. "Norman wanted it, Scott [Gimple] wanted it, we all wanted it. So it was just a matter of working out what the show was going to be and then seeing how we could include her. Because we love the character, and we love Melissa, and we love the dynamic of Daryl and Carol together. So from the point where I started participating on the show, that was always the conversation."

The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon - The Book of Carol premieres this summer on AMC and AMC+. Stay tuned to ComicBook/TWD and follow on Facebook for more TWD Universe coverage.

Warning: This article contains spoilers for The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live finale, "The Last Time." "Love doesn't die"... and neither do Rick and Michonne. The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live ended its six-episode season Sunday night with "The Last Time," wrapping up the stories of Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) and Michonne (Danai Gurira) as the long-lost couple -- who lived up to the Grimes family phrase "we're the ones who live" -- finally returned home to their children, Judith (Cailey Fleming) and Rick "RJ" Grimes Jr. (Antony Azor).

Before they can head home, Rick and Michonne return to the Cascadia Forward Operating Base on an undercover mission: Rick to receive the Echelon Briefing from Civic Republic Military Major General Beale (Terry O'Quinn), and Michonne to retrieve the dossier that Anne/Jadis (Pollyanna McIntosh) left behind with intel that threatens to destroy Alexandria. After they find out what the CRM is planning, their next move is to take that information to the Civic Republic and then go home. Together.

Rick's superior officer, Command Sergeant Major Pearl Thorne (Lesley-Ann Brandt), has given up on the late Okafor's (Craig Tate) mission to remake the CRM from the inside. Instead, Thorne is a true believer among the ranks of the CRM's Frontliner force and Beale's CRM Force Command, and she's convinced Sgt. Maj. Grimes will convert when he's briefed on the secrets that are kept hidden from the hidden city: the Civic Republic of Philadelphia.

After Michonne finds and destroys the dossier, she sneaks into a briefing on "Operation N1W." It's revealed that CRM Frontliner embeds have been living in Portland under false identities and, in 18 hours, those operatives will be activated to evacuate selected children. Those assets will be airlifted away from three extraction zones before the CRM gasses Portland, destroys the community, and liquidates its population of 87,000 people.

Meanwhile, Beale briefs Rick on the Echelon and discloses what only 2,533 elite soldiers have heard before: between the dead, disease, starvation, and million-strong dead masses roaming across the continent, CRM modeling shows humanity has 14 years left before the living become extinct. Beale explains that the Civic Republic Military destroys communities "for resources, for strategic superiority, and to ensure the city's secrecy and security above all," and their tactical military operations already eliminated the Omaha Safe-Zone and the Campus Colony in Nebraska. After they destroy Portland, the CRM will become the supreme force on the continent -- and potentially the world. To combat an existential threat, they must be an existential threat.

With the Alliance of the Three eliminated, Beale's CRM will declare martial law on the Civic Republic and seize control of the city from the Civic Republic Council. Then they will march across the country, eliminate competing communities, take their resources, ensure CRM supremacy... and humanity's survival. Frontliners must swear on the sword, with Beale believing that "the sword that kills is the sword that gives life." But the sword that kills does just that when Rick, refusing an offer to eventually become the next leader of the CRM, impales Beale and plots to thwart Operation N1W with Michonne.

Inspired by pyromaniac Nat (Matthew August Jeffers) and Rick's childhood story about his father burning down the family farm, the couple rigs grenades to blow up the chlorine gas canisters before the CRM can bomb Portland. With the Frontliners and CRM Force Command convened for a summit at the Cascadia base, Rick and Michonne manage to kill the force of 2,533 with an explosion that Rick foreshadowed: "Sometimes things have to burn to bring things back."

Rick and Michonne survive the bombing and gassing by taking cover beneath a CRM flag doused in water -- and so does Thorne, who tries to kill the traitors for "destroying the whole world." Michonne engages Thorne in a fight, countering that "love doesn't die" when Thorne tells her "in a dead world, love is dead." Michonne stabs Thorne with Beale's sword, only to seemingly watch Rick die as he's swarmed by walkers before pulling the pin on a grenade. But Rick emerges from a pile of zombie bodies he used for cover, and then the couple escapes the massive walker horde that is the fiery remains of CRM command.

In the aftermath, it's revealed Rick and Michonne exposed Operation N1W, and the CRC unanimously voted for emergency oversight over the remaining forces of the CRM. The council also made it so that current and future citizens of the Civic Republic are free to leave at will, and the reformed CRM's priority has shifted beyond defense of the CR to aid survivors and communities. In the end, Rick carried out Okafor's mission to reform and remake the CRM as a force for good.

The series ends with Rick and Michonne returning home on a CRM cargo helicopter -- part of a fleet of choppers shipping supplies across the country. In the final scene, Rick and Michonne make it home to their children, and RJ meets his father for the first time. "You're the Brave Man?" RJ asks from beneath the sheriff's hat that Rick handed down to Carl, who passed it down to Judith. "I am," Rick answers. "But maybe you can call me Dad." We see one final shot of the Grimes family in an embrace, the end of their story a happy one. They're the ones who live.

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Warning: This article contains spoilers for The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live finale. The phrase "we're the ones who live" inspired not only the secret saying shared by Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) and Michonne (Danai Gurira) on The Walking Dead but also the title of their spinoff, The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live. Rick and Michonne are, in fact, the ones who live -- a phrase that applies almost exclusively to the couple who survived the six-episode series that introduced (and then killed off) new characters like CRM Lieutenant Colonel Donald Okafor (Craig Tate) and pyro-tinkerer Nat (Matthew August Jeffers).

But the bloodshed didn't end there. Aiden (Breeda Wool) and Bailey (Andrew Bachelor) -- the two lovebird survivors Michonne first encountered on season 10 of The Walking Dead -- also met their tragic end on The Ones Who Live, and the penultimate episode ended with Jadis/Anne (Pollyanna McIntosh) biting it after surviving both The Walking Dead and The Walking Dead: World Beyond. Father Gabriel (Seth Gilliam) appeared in flashbacks and made it out of the series unscathed, but the same cannot be said for the latest and final victims in Sunday's "The Last Time" series finale of The Ones Who Live.

The first casualty was Civic Republic Military Major General Beale (Terry O'Quinn). While Michonne retrieved the dossier that Jadis left behind with intel on Alexandria, Rick reported to Beale to receive the Echelon Briefing: the CRM's top-secret master plan to take over the Civic Republic, destroy communities across the continent for their resources, and become the supreme force on the planet to ensure humanity's survival.

Beale promoted Sergeant Major Grimes to the Frontliner corps, the elite soldier squad that convened at Cascadia Forward Operating Base with the rest of Force Command for the CRM Summit. Beale told Rick that "the sword that kills is the sword that gives life," but rather than swear on the sword, Rick killed Beale by impaling him with the weapon that symbolized a soldier's undying commitment to the CRM.

Meanwhile, Michonne infiltrated a briefing and learned that, within 18 hours, the CRM would carry out Operation N1W. Undercover operatives embedded in Portland would evacuate select child assets, and then the army would destroy the community with chlorine gas and liquidate its population of 87,000. Rick and Michonne made it their mission to stop the CRM, rigging grenades to canisters of chlorine gas and using a zombified Beale to trigger an explosion that killed 2,533 Frontliners.

The plan almost went off without a hitch -- until Rick's suspicious superior officer, Command Sergeant Major Pearl Thorne (Lesley-Ann Brandt), figured out too late that he plotted against the CRM. In the aftermath of the bombing, a vengeful Thorne tried to kill Rick and Michonne as the three survivors were swarmed by walkers... only for Michonne to cut Thorne down with Beale's sword.

A dying Thorne confessed that "Okafor was right" before giving her gas mask to Rick and sealing her fate: Thorne either succumbed to blood loss or the toxic chemical gas as Rick and Michonne escaped the Civic Republic Military once and for all. They're the (only) ones who live.

Stay tuned to ComicBook/TWD and follow on Facebook for more TWD Universe coverage.

"We, together, are the strongest thing. We're love, and love is endless. So we, those gone, all of our lives, those away, they come in one life. We are endless. We're together, pieces of a whole that just keep going for what we gave each other. One unstoppable life. We're the ones who live." -- Michonne and Rick Grimes

"I remember it all. What it was like. Who we were. Who we are now." Rick (Andrew Lincoln) and Michonne (Danai Gurira) are intertwined in bed. Strewn around the newlyweds are reminders from their journey back to each other. A red-striped CRM soldier uniform. Souvenirs from their cabin honeymoon. A bloodied hatchet and ax. Nat's "Danger" lighter. A cell phone with Carl's portrait. And the wedding ring that symbolizes an infinite love. Rick slides the ring onto Michonne's finger, and they kiss.

Their mission: Return to the Civic Republic Military's Cascadia Forward Operating Base. Rick receives the Echelon Briefing. Michonne retrieves the dossier that Jadis (Pollyanna McIntosh) left behind with intel on their loved ones back at Alexandria. They expose the CRM to the Civic Republic, then go home. Together.

The Last Time

Rick and Michonne, clad in CRM uniforms, are dressed for battle. As Sergeant Major Rick Grimes hands himself over to the Civic Republic Military at a gate on the perimeter of the Cascadia Forward Operating Base, Michonne infiltrates the army base under the guise of a Frontliner. Rick recalls what his father told him when he set fire to the family farm: "He said I didn't need to be scared, that it was just 'the burning.'"

Rick debriefs Command Sergeant Major Pearl Thorne (Lesley-Ann Brandt), who is happy to see Sgt. Maj. Grimes alive. Rick debriefs his superior officer, telling her how he was returning to base with Consignee Dana Bethune -- an undercover Michonne -- when their helicopter hit turbulence and was struck by lightning. As the chopper flew low to ride out the storm, Bethune shoved him out as they were going down over water, saving his life. Rick thanks Thorne for vouching for Bethune back at the Harvest Point, but she reminds Rick that he brought her in. As a compromise, Rick credits Okafor (Craig Tate), the officer who put them on their path. A path that Thorne has strayed from ever since she received the Echelon Briefing. Okafor was never committed to the CRM's mission, she says, and that's why he died. "But you lived. I lived," she tells Rick. "We are meant to be a part of this." They are the last light of the world.

Meanwhile, Michonne sneaks into Warrant Officer Jadis Stokes' quarters and rummages through the room decorated with paintings by the artist formerly known as Anne. Michonne finds the dossier hidden inside a wire cat statue like the one that Rick gave Michonne at the Heaps what seems like a lifetime ago. The dossier contains intel on Rick, his wife Michonne, and their home at the Alexandria Safe-Zone, with a handwritten confession: how Jadis secretly brokered a deal and traded the injured Rick Grimes to the CRM. The document is a warning to whoever reads it after Jadis' death: Rick is a natural-born leader, and Michonne's relentless determination makes her an equally dangerous adversary. Rick and Michonne aren't "B's," they are "A's," and they are a grave threat to the CRM operation. Michonne destroys the dossier and strangles a snooping soldier before she can be discovered.

The End and the Beginning

At the perimeter fence, Rick reports to Major General Beale (Terry O'Quinn). He waxes poetic as he clears delts with a killstick, telling Rick that it's "the end of the world and the beginning of the world. And we're the dead ones, Rick." With killstick in hand, Beale imparts his mantra: "The sword that kills is the sword that gives life. And that's us. We're the sword." In his office, Beale has Rick surrender his gun and his prosthetic hand with the blade. He then has Rick reflect on his life, on "all your lives before and after," and all the things he did before this moment. Because, the general says, "After this next moment, everything will change." Beale asks Rick: "What was the worst thing you did to make sure someone else survived?"

There are flashes of Rick stabbing Shane, killing Tomas, butchering the Terminus butchers, and then Rick ripping out Joe's throat with his teeth as he claimed the Claimers for the kill. "I killed someone with my teeth," Rick confesses. "Like they do." Beale has given the Echelon Briefing 2,533 times to 2,533 elite soldiers, but never to someone like Rick Grimes. "This is the first. It's the start of what's next," Beale tells Rick, sat inches away from his gun and bladed prosthetic. "And that couldn't be more appropriate for today. A day completely about tomorrow."

Beale unsheathes his sword -- Revolutionary War General Hugh Mercer's sword, the military antiquity that saved his life at the Battle of Fitler Square -- and places it before Rick. It's his time to swear on the sword.

The Echelon Briefing

Before: Rick and Michonne are in bed. "Are we crazy?" Rick asks his wife. "Certifiable," Michonne tells her husband. There are flashes of Rick executing Pete Anderson and Michonne plunging a shard of glass into the Governor's eye.

Now: Beale places a Frontliner uniform with the blood-red stripes before Rick. The major general recounts growing up in Pittsburgh before his journey as a military man brought him to Vietnam, twice, officer training in Fort Benning in Georgia, and then back to Pennsylvania, where he moved through the ranks to command its National Guard. When the military bombed major U.S. cities as part of Operation Cobalt at the onset of the outbreak, Beale alone made the decision to engage with federal forces. The Pennsylvania National Guard waged war on the U.S. Army, fighting the Second Civil War on Pennsylvania ground. There were two fronts -- Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, what would become the Civic Republic -- but Beale's forces couldn't sustain two theaters of battle. Beale led his troops out of Pittsburgh and let a dead mass swarm and overwhelm the military... and the Steel City. By sacrificing Pittsburgh, Beale saved Philadelphia.

"My dad taught me, for better or worse," Rick responds, "sometimes things have to burn to bring things back."

On the base, CRM soldiers push carts loaded with stuffed animals and other children's items. This triggers more flashes of Michonne and Carl with the cat statue she rescued from a zombie-filled restaurant in King's County, Michonne fighting off the walker herd that invaded Alexandria as Rick raced a shot Carl to safety, a pregnant Michonne cutting down the children who left her scarred, Michonne hugging Judith and RJ... and then Rick and Michonne burying Carl.

The Future

Rick remembers: a childhood memory of a fire burning inside his family's farmhouse. The burning.

"The sword that kills is the sword that gives life," Beale tells Rick. "I killed my past and a whole city so another could live." Beale then reveals the first secret of the Echelon Briefing: the living are fighting a war with the dead they're destined to lose. The most likely outcome? "We're all gonna die."

Meanwhile, a sleuthing Michonne attends the CEP overview briefing CRM forces on "Operation N1W." The Child Evacuation Protocol will be carried out by the CRM Frontliner embeds living in Portland under false identities -- operatives enmeshed in the Portland school system to facilitate an evacuation of selected children. After these assets are extracted and airlifted away, the Frontliners will destroy Portland with chlorine gas and liquidate its population of 87,000 survivors.

Back at the Echelon Briefing, Beale discloses another secret to Rick: the CRM's modeling shows that humanity has an estimated 14 years of life left on this planet. The dead, disease, and starvation will wipe out what's left of humanity, with the most likely outcome being that the planet "will be cluttered with corpses to eventually rot into food for the trees. It all becomes a strange temporary museum to an even stranger species that conquered it and marked it for a blink of its existence." This, Beale explains, is why the CRM is the last light of the world and why they do what they do.

Beale explains that the CRM destroys communities "for resources, for strategic superiority, and to ensure the city's secrecy and security above all." The army has embedded spies in selected communities throughout the continent and the world to monitor them, potentially sabotage them, and to influence their politics and approaches. Until recently, they supplied test subjects for scientific experiments at CRM-run labs. The CRM -- not the dead -- destroyed Omaha and the Campus Colony, and in 18 hours, Operation N1W will leave the Civic Republic Military as the supreme force on the continent... and maybe the world.

Before: Rick and Michonne in bed. They plot to expose the CRM's clandestine operations to the Civic Republic. If they don't, who will? "This is the sh-t we do," Michonne says.

The Next World

Now: Beale walks Rick through Operation N1W. The Civic Republic Military will destroy Portland, their last alliance partner of the Alliance of the Three, and then declare martial law on the Civic Republic and do away with the Council. Once the CR is under CRM control and all their Alliance partners are dead, the CRM will march across the country and eliminate any growing competition. "We will take their resources and ensure supremacy," Beale says, "and maybe we get to survive." Competition like the Alexandria Safe-Zone. Tank Town (Texas oil fields seen on Fear the Walking Dead.) And Junction 7, possibly explaining the disappeared exiles marked as "Designation 2" and then sent away from the Commonwealth community in Ohio (on The Walking Dead).

Rick palms his knife. There are more quick flashes: Rick waking up to wilted flowers at the hospital. Seeing Michonne for the first time outside the prison fence. King Ezekiel. Daryl. Negan. Morgan. Eugene. Carol. Maggie.

Inside the N1W briefing, Michonne clicks her walkie-talkie. Before: Rick and Michonne are in bed together, revealing more of their plan. They'll return to the Civic Republic in Jadis's helicopter, with Rick flying them to jump points for refuels. If Michonne encounters trouble on base, she'll key the walkie. Now: Michonne's signal comes over Rick's radio. Her eyes widen in horror as she realizes the crates filled with children's toys and other "comfort items" are tools to attempt to soothe the traumatized children extracted from Portland. She pictures her children -- Carl, Judith, and RJ -- and steps out of the theater as a CRM officer drones on about how the extracted children could "prove to be the difference in our civilization's survival," scavenging a future from the imminent ruin of Portland.

At the Echelon Briefing, Beale tells Rick that Sgt. Maj. Grimes could become the next leader of the CRM within the next decade. After all his escape attempts, Rick was dead to the CRM... and then he returned. It's a powerful story that the CRM may need to win the hearts of the citizens who will see some of their freedoms delayed yet again once the army declares martial law. Rick grips his knife, listening with intent as Beale talks about sacrifice. When he asks Rick to name the closest person to him who has died since the fall, Rick answers: his son, Carl. He's who Rick saved tearing out that man's throat, but in the end, he couldn't save Carl. If Rick swears on the sword, Beale gives his word: whoever Rick was trying to get back to can come to the Civic Republic and be spared from the CRM's march on the world. Rick's grip on his knife loosens.

Portland will die, and the last light of the world will continue to burn. "The Next World will begin, and through that, somehow, some way, we will survive," Beale tells Rick. "We will burn things to bring things back. The sword that kills is the sword that brings life."

The Sword That Kills

Beale parts Rick's gun and his prosthetic. The sword is before him, ready for Rick to swear upon it. "Swear on the sword," Rick remembers Okafor saying. "Don't let it take." As Beale looks into Rick's eyes, he sees it: fire. Beale grabs the gun as Rick lunges, sparking a brawl that sees the Major General use his sword to kill. "The world isn't gonna end," a defiant Rick says, countering Beale's sword as he takes another swing: "It is. I'm trying to make sure we don't!"

Rick disarms Beale, then runs the sword through his outstretched palm. Beale blames Okafor. There may be no escape for the living, but there's no escaping the dead. "I never lost my son. I lost myself. He brought me back. My wife brought me back. We're the sword that kills. We're the sword that gives life. One life. One unstoppable life. We're not dead," Rick tells Beale, impaling him with the sword that kills. "You are."

Rick reaches Thorne over walkie-talkie to tell her that Beale went into the woods to be in solitude before the all-hands summit, then transports Beale's body in a rolling cart onto a service elevator to the ground floor. After a CRM soldier notices Rick's cargo is dripping blood, a fight ensues that ends with Rick beating the man to death with his prosthetic hand, pummeling him so hard that he turns his face into bloody pulp inside his battered helmet. Michonne finds Rick and alerts him of Operation N1W, telling him they can't go home until save an entire city of people from the CRM. "We have to stop them," Michonne says, "because we can stop them."

The Burning

Thorne becomes increasingly suspicious of Rick after failing to find Beale at the perimeter fence. She pieces it together: "Dana" is the one Rick was trying to get back to. The one he told her isn't "gone." Thorne hunts down Rick, who is wiring a crate of M67 Frag grenades with Michonne -- a plan she says was inspired by the pyro Nat. Rick considers just leaving, but Michonne reminds him it's "what we have to do. What sort of world are we making for them if we walk away from something like this?"

Rick knows she's right. But he's mad at the time he missed -- eight years -- that he didn't get to see their children grow up. "I know we can't, but I just... I think about that time, and I just want to go back," Rick confesses. Michonne kisses him. "We are back," she says. To that, Rick replies: "And this is the sh-t we do."

Meanwhile, the CRM Frontliner Corps have gathered for the CRM summit: an all-hands briefing outside of tents containing the chlorine gas canisters destined for Portland. Rick and Michonne wheel in the cart carrying Beale's body and a case of grenades, carefully unloading the explosives and rigging the tent to blow as they string together wires attached to the canisters of chlorine gas.

"This is it," Rick tells Michonne, giving her Beale's sword. "This is the last we're apart." Using a zombified Beale and the soldier that Rick killed in the elevator as triggers, the couple tethers the walkers with wire to the rig and then draws them out of the tent as they make a run for it. They almost get away -- until Thorne intercepts them at gunpoint. She orders Rick and "Dana Bethune" to undo whatever they did, but Beale is a ticking time bomb. "It never died. It won't stop," Michonne tells Rick, taking his hand in hers. "It can't stop." A zombie Beale emerges from the tent rigged to blow, which then explodes as Rick and Michonne take cover beneath a large CRM flag doused with water.

Rick and Michonne burn the CRM to the ground. The Cascadia Forward Operating Base is in smoldering ruins as deadly green chlorine gas permeates through the air, liquidating the Frontliner forces in one fell swoop. Rick and Michonne escaped the explosion unscathed, but so did Thorne, who has donned a gas mask. The CRM soldiers who weren't blown to bloody bits have turned and descend on the only survivors of the explosion.

Pulling cloth masks over their mouths, Rick charges Thorne in the green haze where every breath is death. Michonne makes a run for another gas mask as Thorne rants at Rick, whose soldier training comes in handy as he lifts Thorne and hurls her with all his might. "You destroyed our chance," the last-living Frontliner yells. "You destroyed the whole world!" A mass of zombified soldiers come between them, forcing Rick to fight off the walker army as Michonne comes out swinging with Beale's sword -- a sword that kills Thorne with a stab to the gut.

"In a dead world, love is dead," she tells Michonne, who fires back: "Love doesn't die." Rick is swarmed by walkers... and pulls the pin on a grenade. The huddled mass of walkers explode into bits of bloody mush, and with them, Michonne's love. Except love doesn't die. Rick emerges from behind the zombie bodies he used for cover, stumbles out of the gore, and is embraced by Michonne.

"Okafor was right," a dying Thorne realizes as she gives her gas mask to Rick. "You just have to hope Beale was wrong." Rick and Michonne escape the carnage as the military force of the last light of the world burns to ash.

The Ones Who Live

A series-ending montage reveals that Rick and Michonne exposed Operation N1W to the Civic Republic, confirming that the CRM's Frontliner force and CRM Force Command died in the attack that foiled the Portland plot. The Civic Republic Council votes unanimously for emergency oversight over the remaining forces of the CRM, restoring oversight of the military to the Council. The Council also overturns CRM guidance: citizens of the Civic Republic are now free to leave at will, and the once-hidden city will welcome new citizens. The last light of the world lives on, with Michonne and Rick remaking the CRM as a force that will now engage with, assist, and aid the survivors and communities they come across.

Rick and Michonne make a cross-country helicopter trip home. "Shoto? It's Daito," Michonne says into a walkie-talkie. A CRM cargo helicopter touches down in a picturesque forest glade, and Rick and Michonne step out into their homecoming. The Grimes children -- Judith (Cailey Fleming) and Rick "RJ" Grimes Jr. (Antony Azor) -- come running to their parents. Judith has her father's colt python holstered on her hip and her short sword on her back; RJ wears the King County Sheriff's Department hat that Rick handed down to Carl, which he passed to Judith, and then big sister to little brother. Michonne embraces the kids first as Rick, for the first time in eight years, sets eyes upon the family he thought he'd lost.

After all those years gone "bye," Rick Grimes found his family. The tearful reunion culminates in Rick and Michonne's son asking his long-lost father: "You're the Brave Man?" Rick straightens the sheriff's hat and answers, "I am. But maybe you can call me Dad."

"I knew you'd come back," RJ tells Dad. "I believed."

As CRM aid helicopters fly overhead into the new world remade by Michonne and Rick Grimes, the Grimes family embraces as one -- one unstoppable life. They're the ones who live.

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A lawsuit between Robert Kirkman, Gale Anne Hurd, producers of The Walking Dead, and AMC is being allowed to move forward. In a ruling Monday, federal judge Fernando Aenlle-Rocha denied AMC's motion to dismiss the lawsuit, one that alleges inaccurate profit sharing between the network and the producers behind the series.

"It would be an illogical interpretation of the MFN (most favored nations) provisions and contrary to the reasonable expectations of the parties in entering into the agreements if the court were to allow Defendants, as a matter of law, to provide Darabont and CAA with increased contingent compensation and a greater share of future gross receipts for the series through a settlement agreement--at Plaintiffs' expense--without providing Plaintiffs the same," Aenlle-Rocha wrote in his decision.

The Darabont and CAA case noted was settled three years ago, with the ex-showrunner and management agency receiving $200 million in a settlement with AMC.

"Plaintiffs are entitled to the same treatment afforded to Darabont with respect to his MAGR interests, they are therefore entitled to have the same valuation applied to their MAGR interests, which, collectively, exceed Darabont's and CAA's," Aenlle-Rocha added. "As a result, Plaintiffs are entitled to a payment well over $200 million from AMC, in an amount to be proved at trial."

Kirkman, Hurd, David Alpert, Charles Eglee, and Glenn Mazzara filed suit in 2022 alleging AMC was withholding sizable payments from the group.

"Even though AMC exploited Plaintiffs' ideas and services to make billions from The Walking Dead franchise, AMC issued a MAGR definition that, in its original form, would not have paid out a single dollar in profit participation to Plaintiffs," the initial suit read (via Deadline). "Unsurprisingly, AMC's MAGR definition has spurred a storm of disputes with the creative talent on The Walking Dead that ultimately resulted in litigation."

Unless AMC also chooses to settle this lawsuit, it is now clear to proceed to trial.

[Warning: This article contains spoilers for The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live episode 5.] There were no "I dos," and there was no wedding episode, but Rick (Andrew Lincoln) and Michonne (Danai Gurira) finally tied the knot on The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live. Sunday's "Become" episode revealed that Rick planned to marry Michonne on the bridge being built during season 9, one that symbolized the future and connection between the communities. But then Rick blew up the bridge to saved his loved ones from a zombie horde and disappeared with Jadis (Pollyanna McIntosh), who had him helicoptered away as part of her deal with the CRM, and Rick and Michonne's future went up in smoke.

Eight years later, the couple reunited and escaped the inescapable Civic Republic Military. They were on a cross-country road trip headed home to Alexandria when CRM Warrant Officer Jadis Stokes tracked them down in Wyoming, intercepting them and interrupting a romantic "honeymoon" consisting of scavenged ramen noodles, dusty bottles of whiskey, and a woodside cabin.

But it was a series of flashbacks chronicling Jadis' secret yearly meetings with her confidante and former flame Father Gabriel Stokes (Seth Gilliam) that revealed the priest planned to marry Rick and Michonne on the bridge with a ring he found in the forest. Then the bridge happened, so Gabriel eventually gave the ring to Jadis/Anne as a "symbol of faith, of love." A dying Jadis finally returned the ring to its rightful owner -- along with information on the CRM dossier Rick and Michonne need to find and destroy before going home.

"It's a broken world, Michonne, and you're the only thing that puts it back together. 'Til my last breath, I am yours," Rick told the mother of his children, kneeling with the ring in hand. An emotional Michonne replied, "I could never have imagined this. But it could only ever have been you. I'm yours." With that, The Walking Dead pronounced Rick and Michonne husband and wife.

It was a heartfelt episode with callbacks to two essential Richonne episodes. The first was the season 6 episode "The Next World" with the mention of the specific toothpaste that Michonne requested, and the second was the season 7 episode "Say Yes," where Rick and Michonne enjoyed a romantic road trip while scavenging guns for Jadis to help them fight their war with the Saviors. As it happens, "Say Yes" and "Become" both saw the couple engage in talks about "reordering" the world.

"It's a throwback, a little bit, to one episode that we had during The Walking Dead," showrunner Scott M. Gimple, who co-created the series with Gurira and Lincoln, said on The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live Episode Insider. "It's like a honeymoon. An apocalyptic honeymoon, but a honeymoon. There's a sweetness to it, and they're so together, and everything's going to be fine, but, obviously, the world is still coming for them."

"The marriage proposal was driven by Danai as a story idea to bind them even closer," Gimple added. "That's their last moment they get to have in that way before all hell breaks loose."

The honeymoon is over in The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live finale, which finds Rick and Michonne on a mission to infiltrate the CRM's Cascadia Forward Operating Base during the army's summit with its top commanders, including Major General Beale (Terry O'Quinn) and Command Sergeant Major Pearl Thorne (Lesley-Ann Brandt).

The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live episode 6 airs Sunday, March 31, on AMC and AMC+. Stay tuned to ComicBook/TWD and follow on Facebook for more TWD Universe coverage.

Pollyanna McIntosh joined The Walking Dead near its peak, becoming infamous leader of the trash heapster scavengers known at the time as Jadis. She would transform from a strangely short spoken woman with a unique haircut into an ally to Alexandria known as Anne. Ultimately, McIntosh's Jadis had a bigger purpose than being the love interest to Seth Gilliam's Father Gabriel or helping to take on Negan and his Saviors. Jadis would rescue The Walking Dead's leading man Rick Grimes in the show's ninth season, flying him off in a helicopter to The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live, a new series which followed many years later. However, it was this new series where Jadis' story would come to an end.

McIntosh previously reprised the role in The Walking Dead: World Beyond, where she showed more of her villainous side and took out one of the show's main characters. Despite being a hero in The Walking Dead's ninth season, her returns proved to lean in the villainous direction with McIntosh's excellent presence drumming up the exactly-as-intended strong, emotional reactions from viewers. Ultimately, in The Ones Who Live's fifth episode, Jadis came around to Rick and Michonne's survival and spared them, providing the necessary information for the couple to escape safely. In the same episode, flashbacks showed Jadis' human side thanks to a nuanced performance by McIntosh, which also brought Gilliam's Gabriel back into the series for the first time since The Walking Dead wrapped with its eleventh season.

With The Ones Who Live sealing the fate of Jadis before the end of its first season, having her be the latest enemy of Rick and Michonne to perish after starting a fight they couldn't win, McIntosh spoke with ComicBook.com about the journey. As the story goes, learning of Jadis' death came in a way that is different from most of the other actors whose characters in the zombie universe perished before hers, yet she did get to have a good time with some extra sequences after filming Jadis' final moments.

ComicBook.com's full interview with Jadis actor Pollyanna McIntosh can be found below!

ComicBook: Congratulations on an epic run in The Walking Dead universe. You were a huge part of this show and I'm happy for you and I know it's opened a lot of doors for you, so I'm happy for you and it's been fun to watch. When did you find out this was the end of the road?

Pollyanna McIntosh: I found out, I think it was on the first day of shooting with Andy [Lincoln], and Andy was like, "So, how are you feeling about your death?" I was like, "Oh, well now I know that it's definitely happening!" [Scott] Gimple had said, "Oh, obviously, we may go in that direction with..." I was going, "Of course, we may go in that direction. We don't want her killing one of them." So it made a lot of sense. And then Andy being an exec producer on this, of course he was very involved, so it was quite right that he said it. But at the same time, Gimple was like, "No! what?" It's okay. We're all friends, we're all family. It's fine. It's all good. I'm excited. I was excited.

CB: So, how did the cast and crew kind of send you off when they called? That's a wrap. That's a series wrap on Pollyanna McIntosh?

PM: Oh, lots of love and hugs and I tried to cover them all in blood.

CB: You got one of the epic kind of Rick Grimes staring down the barrel send offs, which there aren't. I mean, was that the last thing you shot? What was that final day?

PM: Actually, the last thing I shot was a funny one. The stunt driving and the car, sorry, the car chase piece where Jadis and Rick and Michonne after each other. Michonne's driving because of course Rick can't drive which was great fun. Yeah, I thought that was a lovely little moment. I love the elements of wit that they've kept in the show is just so, such a pleasure to watch and to read. So the last bit I came in to do the interior of that scene of the "Crash! Bang! Wollops!" because the rig that we had, one of the cars that we had that we were driving, there was electrical problems with it. So we were like, "Yeah, let's not carry on today. It's not seem to be happy." So I came back the next day, literally just got in at the end of the day into the car with all the mount on it and went, "Oh no!" Got smacked around a bit and then that's Pollyanna. It was very sweet.

CB: It sounds like almost unceremonious that you found out from Andy. You just kind of came in to do a pickup shot!

PM: Stop working your journalistic magic. I'm trying to make this sound dark!

CB: I imagine when you join The Walking Dead, you probably have maybe a picture in your head of how it ends. How did it compare to sort of any expectation you might've had years ago when you first joined The Walking Dead?

PM: I'm entirely in the moment, man. Hell yeah. I don't have no expectations. I'm just living the moment.

Honestly, three episodes in, I was still like, "Really? I'm still alive?" You know what I mean? You never know when it's coming for you on that show. So to leave alive, to leave the flagship show alive was just extraordinary. Did I tell you this about the song I wrote for Andy?

CB: No!

PM: You know that song by the Stones? "Angie?" Angie! Angie! I changed it to "Andy" for his sendoff party and then the last line is like ain it great to be alive. And I sang, "Ain't it great to leave alive because who leaves The Walking Dead alive?" And me and a bunch of folks sang that to Andy, including Danai [Gurira] and Christian [Serratos] and Khary [Payton], and I think Josh sang it with us as well. McDermott. Yeah. So I've just had no expectations and yet have felt very, very lucky. And then on this one I was like, well, it's just as it should be that she dies. My God, this is perfect. It's perfect place to die. Yeah,

CB: Gives you some closure to take with you.

PM: And there's always Tales of the Walking Dead!

CB: Hey, you never know because there is so much story, right!

PM: Story everywhere. Humans just be interesting!

CB: I feel like with Andy and Danai being executive producers on this show and you have the scene with them in the cabin, I felt like the three of you just had such a good chemistry and so much conviction in the story you're telling. Your timing, your performances were all so good. Do you feel like you guys hit a whole new rhythm this time around?

PM: Yeah, thanks for that. No, it's really nice to hear because I definitely felt it in the rooms and really enjoyed it and it felt very easy and very fun. And I've always loved Andy and Danai. I've always loved how much themselves they are as people. There's no bullshit whatsoever. And it was the working in scenes together and the commitment and the passion for the audience and for the characters is really, really strong with them. And I feel the same way. So it worked really well together in the moments, I won't speak for the audience, they can decide that for themselves, but in the moments it worked, I felt it was working really, really well. And I looked at each other at one point and we're like, huh, yeah, we didn't really get to do this much before, huh? Because even in the scene where Michonne and Rick come back and after all my people have gone, we're still quite separated by space in that episode. And when Michonne with Rick, it's Rick and I who are doing the talking and Michonne is observing and she's not very happy about a few things a few times. So, really when I kind one-on-one with her about "laying with him after," and then The Ones Who Live, it's really the only times we've been really eye to eye of any import.

CB: I didn't even think about that being one of the last times they interacted with that line that the fandom went crazy over.

PM: Some people got real mad.

CB: Of course they did. This all leads to the ax being lodged into Jadis, into Anne. They love to craft these incredible for violence, these stunt rigs. Did you have to have yourself rigged with anything? How'd you guys pull that off?

PM: I did. We had the ax half sticking out of my stomach wounds with some, I remember there was a lot of velcro involved and the bed rig was pretty cool as well with the bullets shooting through and And that was a real cabin that we were in, which was pretty cute as well. So, we were properly in the woods in a cabin, which was great. It could have been a whole another horror movie, Cabin in the Woods! That was all fun and games.

CB: You get to work with Seth Gilliam again, which was a huge surprise. I feel like Father Gabriel is the outlet for both the audience to get the peak at it but also for you as a performer to kind of explore the humanity of Anne really actually show us who she is and the weight she carries. What did you feel like you were getting to do with those scenes and show us with the size of Van we don't see anywhere else?

PM: There's such nuanced situations between her and Gabriel each time because there's, like you say, there's so much she's carrying and the massive wait five minutes that Rick is alive and that she could alleviate him and so many of the people that she knows and cares about back home, even that on its own is just so huge kind of running under everything. And then the secret she's keeping about what's going on. But her need to sit in confession with him to a degree and to mull over these big ideas that she doesn't get to do with anybody in her world, in her community. And she has no scavengers community left to talk with. She's really set herself up in a situation where she's kind of friendless and loveless in the world she's in. And that's necessary for her to do the things she's doing.

I think that with scenes like that, you're just so glad that you have Seth to work with because you really want to keep it honest and you could overdo it. You know what I mean? You can totally overdo it and be like, Oh, I'm really conflicted!" And just in the moments of being heard, taking him in even his beauty and his wisdom and his kindness and this man I've been with that I've been with physically and mentally in such strong ways, such connective ways, and now I can't connect anymore. I'm not allowed to connect anymore, but I'm reaching for it and he's saying all the right things, but that's what she came to him for and they still can't get along. They still can't. It's pretty beautiful. Yeah, it's good old Scott Gimple with his complex relationships that he creates.

You're trying to serve what's been written, you're trying to serve an audience is really smart and has really loved this show, and you can think about it in a lot of different levels and a lot of technical ways. I thought it was really beautiful, for instance, that there's a little flash in his eyes when he says, "I've been using, with Rosita's help, on the hand radio trying to find you." And the audience knows, "Oh my God, that's your love who is dead, who has past that we love and Jadis doesn't know that he's had anything to do with her in that way." You know what I mean? So he is just so adept with that little flash in his eyes. I saw all of that as an audience member. So what I'm trying to do is going back to that is I hope that people get to see themselves reflected some of those moments. That's what I always hope and get to think about things and feel things and get to feel a sense of connection from watching it. I certainly think that they gave me a great opportunity to earn my death with those scenes. I thought that was very smart for the audience to start feeling things again for Jadis. Like, "No! Not again. It's too much!"

CB: I can't believe this might be the last time I ever asked you a question about The Walking Dead. It's been half a decade! Your last act as this character is to help Rick and Michonne. Ultimately, you've played this character who has been on the dark side, been on the light side, has walked the line really tightly. What do you think this kind of says about the character?

PM: I think that ultimately Jadis does what Jadis feels is right, and sometimes it's not what we feel is right, but she always does what she feels is, and I think here is just the same. And I think it's not lost on her that she gets to sue Gabriel to some degree when he gets to see them eventually, she hopes that she gets to tell him through that act that he was right again and that that's who ultimately she needs to be and needed to be and was. I think she, she's showing respect to Rick and Michonne as well, which she always had. She always had that respect.

So, ultimately she's given over to what is, and she's grateful for it. And she's grateful for what can be because she ain't never going to get to have that love. But ultimately, if she had succeeded with the CRM, if the CRM had succeeded where she felt that they could, there would be a world in which love and all its joys and all its freedoms and art and everything else could be possible again. And I really think that that's where she was at ultimately. She was at that I have to go through this in order for that to be possible. And I don't get to have any of those things in the meantime because if I did, I wouldn't be able to do these things. But this is my sacrifice.

It's a burning question that fans have been asking since a 2016 episode of The Walking Dead: What is "PPP?" Ever since the season 7 episode "Swear" ended with Tara (Alanna Masterson) and Heath (Corey Hawkins) getting separated during a two-week supply run, there has been just one clue about what happened to Heath: a keycard with the letters "PPP." It was a mystery that then-showrunner Scott M. Gimple set up and left unresolved on The Walking Dead, with successor showrunner Angela Kang eventually confirming that Jadis (Pollyanna McIntosh) took Heath and then traded him to the CRM in exchange for supplies.

A similar "PPP" card appeared on the "Davon" episode of Tales of the Walking Dead in 2022, also without explanation, but the letters "PPP" haven't popped up anywhere since. That will change in episode 6 of The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live.

The trailer for the final episode of the Rick and Michonne spinoff shows a peek inside the Civic Republic Military's Cascadia Forward Operating Base in the Cascades, where Major General Beale (Terry O'Quinn), Command Sergeant Major Pearl Thorne (Lesley-Ann Brandt), and other top CRM commanders have convened for a summit about the mysterious Echelon Briefing. A quick glimpse at a whiteboard shows the words "PPP Exception" written just below the word "Reclamation," referring to the CRM reclamation teams that are tasked with covering up all traces of the army's existence.

Closer examination of the board also shows the words "Portland," "echelon exceptions," "refinery," and the phrase "engage, assess, execute." PPP could indicate a CRM Priority Placement Program, which typically affect military personnel who have been subject to reductions-in-force, realignments, consolidations, base closures, transfers, and position classification decisions, according to similar verbiage in the U.S. military and federal agencies.

The Walking Dead: World Beyond revealed that the CRM was targeting Portland, one of the three surviving cities on the continent, which has a population of 87,000. That series also revealed that Jadis carried out the "tactical military operations" that destroyed Omaha (population: 97,407) and Nebraska's Campus Colony (population: 9,671) under Beale's orders, using a combination of green liquid chlorine gas and zombie hordes. It was part of the CRM Plan to eliminate drains on the Civic Republic's resources and sever the city's ties to the Alliance of the Three, which was an alliance between Portland, Omaha, and the Civic Republic of Philadelphia.

"It's like with the CRM -- there's a huge mythology to it," Gimple recently told ComicBook of the "PPP" keycard. "But the thing is, and I do want to [tell it], but if things change and you haven't released that much, you can pivot. But I will say we have... it's just sitting on a shelf right now, this really great mythology that might apply to something very, very soon."

"But I'd say it's sat on a shelf for two years now, that mythology," Gimple added, "and ideas around it and stories and characters and things. But we will sell no wine before its time."

The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live finale airs Sunday, March 31, on AMC and AMC+. Stay tuned to ComicBook/TWD and follow on Facebook for more TWD Universe coverage.

[Warning: This article contains spoilers for The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live episode 5.] Faith. Forgiveness. Redemption. Those were the themes in Sunday's penultimate episode of The Ones Who Live, which featured the surprise return of a Walking Dead character who exemplifies all three: Father Gabriel Stokes (Seth Gilliam). The episode, titled "Become," revealed that the last time the priest saw his then-girlfriend Anne/Jadis (Pollyanna McIntosh) on a season 9 episode of The Walking Dead was, in fact, not the last time that they would meet after Anne vanished aboard a Civic Republic Military helicopter with Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln).

As Anne -- now CRM Warrant Officer Jadis Stokes -- pursued an AWOL Rick and Michonne (Danai Gurira) following their escape from the CRM, a series of flashbacks taking place over years revealed that Jadis secretly met up with her confidante Gabriel in the woods outside of Alexandria once a year. The first, to "three years ago," was set during the post-Rick timeline between The Walking Dead seasons 9B and 10, as noted by Gabriel telling Anne he tried to find her using the ham radio that Eugene (Josh McDermitt) got working at the tail end of season 9.

The second flashback, to "two years ago," took place after Michonne's exit from The Walking Dead in the season 10 episode "What We Become." (Gabriel told Anne Michonne was "away helping people:" the mobile group that would ultimately lead her to Rick on The Ones Who Live.) Gabriel then told Anne that the Whisperers compromised Alexandria's walls and the community was starving, placing Gabriel and Anne's second meeting after the Whisperer War ended in the season 10 episode "A Certain Doom." Alexandria was still rebuilding in season 10C, and the community had a week's worth of food left in the "Acheron: Part 1" season 11 premiere.

A third and final flashback, to "one year ago," took place around The Walking Dead season 11C. No, Gabriel didn't cheat on Rosita (Christian Serratos) when Anne kissed him: Gabriel and Rosita's relationship had already ended off-screen during a six-month time skip, and The Walking Dead's "Rest in Peace" series finale concluded with a final one-year time jump after Rosita's death.

Were these secret meetings set during previous episodes of The Walking Dead always the plan? As Gilliam told ComicBook, he only learned of Gabriel and Anne's clandestine confessionals during a phone call with series co-creator and showrunner Scott M. Gimple.

"I had the initial actor's thing of, 'You know, you could have told me this some years ago, it would have informed my performance,'" Gilliam joked. "No, he had no idea some years ago that this is the route he'd be taking with the characters, so I couldn't really hold that against anybody. It was just one of those things, 'This would have been fun to wink-wink to myself.'"

Even with Gabriel's "clergy confidentiality," Anne never tells him the truth about Rick or the CRM. She only admits to being part of another faraway community, and that she's done "cruel and difficult things" to keep herself and the rest of the world alive.

"I think he has to trust her. I think that's part of the deal with taking on that position," Gilliam explained. "You have to believe what people are telling you and you have to do so without thinking that they have ulterior motives because they need to be heard more than they need to manipulate you. You have to believe in that kind of ideology."

He added, "I think it would be interesting to look back and splice the two shows together, timeline-wise, and see if there's anything in the performance from years ago that would connect the two worlds. That'd be really kind of interesting."

The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live finale airs Sunday, March 31, on AMC and AMC+. Stay tuned to ComicBook/TWD and follow on Facebook for more TWD Universe coverage.

[Warning: This article contains spoilers for The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live episode 5.] "Our fates are bound. You, Michonne, me," Jadis (Pollyanna McIntosh) once told Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln), having saved his life by loading him onto a helicopter that took him somewhere he could never leave: the Civic Republic. But when Rick's wife Michonne (Danai Gurira) found her husband as a soldier serving within the ranks of the Civic Republic's army, Rick threatened to kill his superior officer. "I will," he promised Jadis. "But not today."

Jadis had informed Rick that if he and Michonne escaped together, the Civic Republic Military would find them, kill them, and then destroy their home at Alexandria. And if Rick made good on his threat, Jadis' untimely demise would trigger the release of a dossier with intel the CRM would need to do just that. As it turned out in Sunday's "Become" episode of The Ones Who Live, Jadis' fate was, in fact, bound to Rick and Michonne.

Thinking they would be presumed dead by the CRM after their helicopter crashed in the Cascades, the couple were headed home on a cross-country road trip to Virginia when investigating Warrant Officer Jadis Stokes tracked them down in Wyoming. A dramatic cat-and-mouse chase ensued, and Jadis shot Rick, grazing his forehead with a bullet as she berated him for betraying the Civic Republic Military. "I live for the cause, and I will die for the cause," Jadis said, even as periodic flashbacks to her secret yearly meetings with her former boyfriend-turned-confidante Father Gabriel (Seth Gilliam) revealed Jadis' inner conflict about saving humanity or keeping her humanity.

In the end, Jadis was bitten on the neck by a zombified camper that Rick and Michonne rescued earlier in the episode. She spent her final moments explaining that the dossier was her way of protecting herself and the CRM -- and then told Rick and Michonne where they could find the file so they could destroy it and go home. Rather than grant Jadis' dying wish that they not interfere with the CRM Plan to "bring back the world," Michonne told her they were going to help the Civic Republic end the CRM.

As she succumbed to the walker's bite, Jadis asked Rick to do what he said he would do, and the episode ended with Rick killing Jadis by mercifully shooting her in the head. It was an ultimately redemptive ending for a foe who became a friend on The Walking Dead, and a foe who regained her humanity as Anne after becoming a full-fledged villain on The Walking Dead: World Beyond and The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live.

"She's really set herself up in a situation where she's kind of friendless and loveless in the world she's in, and that's necessary for her to do the things she's doing [with the CRM]," McIntosh told ComicBook in a postmortem interview. It was Gabriel's act of love and friendship that helped save Jadis/Anne, and in turn, could help Rick and Michonne save Alexandria with the dossier.

"I think that, ultimately, Jadis does what Jadis feels is right. And sometimes it's not what we feel is right, but she always does what she feels is right, and I think here is just the same," McIntosh said. "It's not lost on her that she gets to soothe Gabriel to some degree when he gets to see them eventually, she hopes, and that she gets to tell him through that act that he was right, again. And that that's who, ultimately, she needs to be, and needed to be, and was."

Not only did Anne live up to Gabriel's faith in her, but giving up the dossier was "showing respect to Rick and Michonne, as well, which she always had. She always had that respect," McIntosh said. "So, ultimately, she's allowed -- it's very tricky to say that, because they did it themselves -- but she's given over to what is, and she's grateful for it, she's grateful for what can be. Because she's never going to get to have that love."

"But if she had succeeded with the CRM, if the CRM had succeeded where she felt they could, there would be a world in which love and all its joys and freedoms and art and everything else could be possible again. And I really think that that's where she was at, ultimately," she continued. "'I have to go through this in order for that to be possible, and I don't get to have any of those things in the meantime. Because if I did, I wouldn't be able to do these things. But this is my sacrifice.'"

The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live finale airs Sunday, March 31, on AMC and AMC+. Stay tuned to ComicBook/TWD and follow on Facebook for more TWD Universe coverage.

[Warning: This article contains spoilers for The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live episode 5.] Is this the last time we'll see Rick and Michonne? AMC has released the trailer for the season (or series?) finale of The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live, which airs March 31. The ominously-titled "The Last Time" features the just-married Michonne (Danai Gurira) and Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) as they infiltrate the CRM base where Jadis (Pollyanna McIntosh) stashed a dossier containing intel on Alexandria. Now that Jadis is dead, Rick and Michonne's mission is clear: Rick reports to Major General Beale (Terry O'Quinn) for the top-secret Echelon Briefing, and Michonne retrieves the dossier. And then, Michonne says, they finally "go home together."

The footage shows Rick handing himself over to the Civic Republic Military as Michonne dons the blood-red-striped uniform of the Frontliner Corps to sneak into the Cascadia Forward Operating Base, where Beale and the army's top brass have gathered for the CRM Summit. "After this next moment, everything will change," Beale says ominously over glimpses of Rick being pummeled in a fight with another CRM soldier. The trailer also shows footage of Rick and Michonne opening what appears to be caches of the chlorine gas that the CRM used to wipe out the populations of the Omaha Safe-Zone and the Campus Colony.

It all comes to a boiling point after Rick and Michonne told a dying Jadis their plan to burn the CRM to the ground upon Rick receiving the Echelon Briefing, which Okafor (Craig Tate) once said contains "all the info, the whys, the things 90% of our force doesn't know about and 100% of our city doesn't." Secrets that turned Rick's commanding officer, Command Sergeant Major Pearl Thorne (Lesley-Ann Brandt), into a true believer.

"We are coming for them," Michonne told Jadis. "We're gonna get the dossier. And then the CRM, we're gonna stop them. He's gonna get the Echelon Briefing and find out everything that they do that the city doesn't know about. The city I saw won't stand for what they are, and we're gonna help the city stop them, because the CRM is not the answer. And they must end."

The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live episode 6 premieres Sunday, March 31, on AMC and AMC+. Stay tuned to ComicBook/TWD and follow on Facebook for more TWD Universe coverage.

A hooded figure walks through the woods with a machete. As a helicopter flies overhead, he looks to the heavens: it's Father Gabriel (Seth Gilliam). The collared priest stabs the walker and, his eyes turned to the skies, says a prayer: "Our Father, who art in heaven..."

Tony Bennett's "The Good Life" plays as Rick (Andrew Lincoln) and Michonne (Danai Gurira) head home. In a montage, the honeymooners find a van stocked with boxes of playfully-named "Tasteful Noods" ramen and set up camp in small town, Wyoming, scavenging their way across the Cowboy State. At a rest stop off Three Pines Trail, Rick and Michonne scope out a roadside store. She scoffs at a spinning rack stocked with souvenir license plates. There are no "Michonnes," but there is a "Junior," which Rick considers bringing home to their son, RJ. No one's ever called Rick Jr. "Junior," so bringing himself back is more than enough. While Michonne pokes around the store, Rick palms a "Michelle" necklace, snaps off every letter except the "M," and pockets the gift.

Rick has another gift: the baking soda and spearmint toothpaste he promised to find her nearly a decade earlier. "It only took a couple of lifetimes," she says with a chuckle. "I was in love with my son's best friend," Rick confesses. "I didn't know what to do. Then you asked for that toothpaste." They embrace. The couple's luck holds up as they find keys to Three Pines Cabin, a woodside getaway where they can hunker down for the night.

"You know, I never let go. I denied it, and I pushed you away, but I never let go," Rick assures Michonne. She takes his face in her hands. "I didn't know," she says. Their attention turns toward a sign that Michonne admires: "The people from the people." It's part of a larger U.S. National Park Service Ranger Station sign with the words, "Protect the park from the people, the people from the park, and the people from the people."

They hear screams, so Rick and Michonne rescue a trio of unkempt campers from walkers with stone-like skin. They work in tandem, with Rick using his prosthetic fist to punch cracks into the walker's reinforced head that Michonne then stabs with the rebar she's using in lieu of her sword. The strangers explain that the area's zombies get crusty from Yellowstone's steam vents and become calcified; others are muddy wet. "You got your baked and you're boiled," explains Dalton (Will Brill), who seems harmless enough. They look hungry, Michonne notes, so Rick hands over bags of ramen noodles from their backpack stuffed with Tasteful Noods. Tina (Han Van Sciver) happily thanks the two strangers for their generosity, but Red (Ben Dickey) draws his red gun to rob Rick and Michonne. Tina tries to talk him down, but he's too desperate to not take advantage of the kindness of strangers.

Rick and Michonne - calm, confident, collected - give Red the chance to roll it back and walk away with a "thank you," but he keeps them at gunpoint. They swiftly disarm Red and Dalton, turning the tables (and their guns) on the would-be bandits. They want a promise that Red's gang will let people be, a fair trade for letting them live. "Why would you care about saving anybody's skin other than your own? You look after you," Red replies, genuinely confounded by their altruism. Rick's swagger with gun in hand gives Dalton a one-way ticket to pee-pee pants city: he pisses himself in fear.

"We saved you, and the only people in danger of being killed - it isn't the helpers here," Rick says. Michonne, backing him up, wants Red to give her a reason not to pull the trigger. "Why don't you just promise, and we'll believe you?" He promises to let people be, so Rick and Michonne leave them be. But not before snatching back their bags of noodles. No Tasteful Noods for bad dudes. They unload the gun and toss it into the woods with a warning to wait until they leave. Later, at the cabin, Michonne mulls over leaving them a gun. Rick, confident in his doubts that they'll come after them, then asks about what she said: "The people from the people."

The phrase is stuck in Michonne's head. "Protect the people from the people." Over a bottle of dusted-off whisky, Rick and Michonne talk about helping that family without thought or hesitation. It felt good, Rick admits. "Us against the world," Michonne smiles. Clinking their glasses in a toast, Rick adds, "Or saving it." As the couple enjoys their romantic getaway, a stalking black-clad figure disables their fishing line trip wire outside the cabin.

THREE YEARS AGO. A praying Father Gabriel fills his canteen from a brook when he looks up to see Jadis (Pollyanna McIntosh) - the woman he knew as Anne. Gabriel embraces her with a hug and a question: "Is this coming back?" She just wanted to see her once-boyfriend, but with a caveat that he can't tell anyone she was here. Gabriel tells her he was using Eugene's ham radio with Rosita's help trying to find Anne after she disappeared, only for her to find him. "You left because you were being judged for things in your past, instead of who you were trying to be." But she was up to something, and he trusted her - and that was a mistake, she confesses. He reminds her that Rick brought her into Alexandria because he believed people could change. Gabriel then informs Anne that Rick died trying to bring people together, so she pretends as if she's learning Rick's fate for the first time. Rick was caught in the explosion of the bridge he destroyed to stop an incoming herd, Gabriel explains, adding that his mistake wasn't trusting Anne. "It was losing my faith in you." When he asks for her forgiveness, she responds with what seems like sincere remorse: "What about all the people who can't forgive you?" she asks. "What about the ones you made gone? How do you live with that?"

"Prayer. Amends. Talk," the priest answers. But Anne can't talk about the things she's done. She's keeping Gabriel and Alexandria a secret from her people, so he assures her she has "clergy confidentiality." He'll keep their meetings secret.

In the present, Jadis stirs a sleeping Rick and Michonne awake at gunpoint - with Red's red gun - and orders the couple to tie themselves to the bed. A begrudging Michonne and Rick comply, all the while openly discussing their next move. They suspect she's alone, and she's acting on her own behalf - not the CRM's. Jadis explains that she was suspicious of their disappearance, so she was with a CRM reclamation team when she investigated their helicopter wreck. Rather than pull any soldiers from the CRM Summit, she flew herself to the nearest jump point, supplied up, and borrowed an emergency vehicle to return to the crash site, but it had become rubble by the time she returned. Rick and Michonne's road trip through the mountains left bread crumbs - dead walkers and ramen wrappers down Highway 90, the most direct route to Virginia.

That confirms to Rick and Michonne that the CRM doesn't know Jadis has found them, and her mistake was not killing them in their sleep. Jadis monologues about someone else she killed - a confidante who was "monumental" in her development as CRM Warrant Officer Jadis Stokes - but there were things left unsaid. It's not a mistake she'll make a second time. Jadis insists she's a true believer in the Civic Republic. She's not Anne anymore. "You think I'm still her. I'm not. I'm not that woman from the heaps, either," she says. "'We take, we don't bother.' Didn't work. I am decorated Warrant Officer Jadis Stokes of the Civic Republic Military, defender of the Republic." She's not selfishly taking anymore - everything she does, everything she's done, has been for the Republic.

If Jadis were to let Rick and Michonne escape and make it home, and then another enterprising warrant officer were to find them, her connection to Alexandria would be discovered... and her important work with the CRM would end. She cannot allow that to happen.

"I saved your life," Jadis reminds Rick. To that, Michonne fires back: "You took it! You took it from him, you took it from me, you took it from our children. All those years they grew up with their father. All those years I didn't know if he was alive or dead." Rick tells Anne what she really did when she saved him: "You stole our family." Jadis tells them she didn't kill them because she wanted to thank them. By dying here, in secret, Alexandria will remain safe, and the Grimes children will inherit a better world. "You could have made other choices, but you didn't lose here," she says. "You won a different way. It's the end of your story. Let that be your peace."

Jadis opens fire, sending Rick and Michonne scurrying for cover. Rick ducks beneath the bed and overturns the bullet-riddled mattress onto Jadis, disarming her long enough for a hand-tied Michonne to grab a small axe she then plunges into Jadis' side. Michonne opens fire on a fleeing Jadis, but Rick smacks the gun away. They have to go.

TWO YEARS AGO. Anne, in another secret meeting with Gabriel, asks about Rick's wife. Gabriel tells her that Michonne is away helping people and asks why she called Michonne Rick's "wife." She wasn't "officially," he explains, as if that matters anymore. He recalls how, one day, Rick told Gabriel that he should marry them. That maybe Rick and Michonne should be wed on the bridge that they were building to unite the communities. Gabriel couldn't see the future that Rick envisioned until, as if by fate, Gabriel happened across a ring he found in the forest. Gabriel kept the ring and thought to put it somewhere that Rick would find it, because he could suddenly see that "someday." But then the bridge happened... and that future, he thought, died with Rick. Anne tells Gabriel she spent the past year anticipating their annual visit. Sitting there in the woods, talking with Gabriel, almost makes her feel like how it was - like who she was. "The other 364 days back there, it's less about personal connection and more about responsibility," she says, "to something greater than myself. Even if that means I have to do things that are difficult. Even cruel." Gabriel says that her doubts suggests that's a sign that isn't who she is. "It's about survival. It's about what comes after. Survival of others," she explains. "And that part of me that I've harnessed, it has kept me alive, and maybe it can keep the rest of the world alive, too." Gabriel tells her that the Whisperers compromised Alexandria's walls, and their community is starving. He asks if she and her people could help, but she shuts him down. "Please know that my remorse is real," she says. A disappointed Gabriel laments that she expresses remorse as she does "cruel and difficult things." She goes to leave, so Gabriel puts the ring in her hand. It's a "symbol of faith, of love," he says. "Maybe it will give you something you need. Giving it to you is giving me something that I need." She asks if they'll still meet at the same time, at the same place, at the same time, one year from now. "If I'm alive," Gabriel says.

In Wyoming, a half-dead Jadis drives her vehicle through the woods as Rick and Michonne's yellow truck gives chase. Rick reminds Michonne that they can't kill Jadis because she left a file about Alexandria for the CRM to find. It's BECAUSE she'll destroy Alexandria, Michonne argues, that Jadis has to die. She destroys. She robbed them of Rick being there when his son was born... she can't take anymore. When Rick asks what they do after she's dead, Michonne answers, "Whatever we have to do." Michonne rams Jadis' car into a drop-off, sending her careening into a walker-filled ditch. Michonne goes in for the kill, only to find the car abandoned, so she asks Rick to point out the CRM jump point near by.

Meanwhile, a bloodied Jadis stumbles across Red, Dalton, and Tina, and feigns that she's a hapless stranger in need of help. If they can help get her to the jump point a few miles away, she says, she can bring them back to her community that has walls and food. She looks at Tina, and notes that she's tall. Elsewhere, Rick tells Michonne that the CRM has bases across the country from each other. They need to know where Jadis stashed the dossier with intel on Alexandria, which means they need to take her alive. Rick notes that she hates being called "Anne," so he thinks Anne is still inside Jadis somewhere. "We'll keep it safe," Michonne says of their home, "but she's gonna die." Rick counters that they need to keep home safe without risking anything. Maybe they can help her see things the way Michonne helped Rick see things. If they can't, Michonne finishes the thought - "Then I can kill her." They follow Jadis' bloody trail to a geyser visitor center and corner a shambling, hooded Jadis... who is actually Tina, strong-armed into posing as Jadis' double. She's sorry, but Jadis promised them shelter if they lured Rick and Michonne into her trap. With Red, Dalton, and Tina, that's Jadis' four to their two. "People are a resource," Jadis reminds Rick, who tries to talk the trio out of working with Jadis. There's still time to roll it back... until there's not.

Rick and Michonne make short work of Red and Dalton, but in the chaos, Tina is swarmed and devoured by walkers. Jadis shoots as Rick and Michonne make a run for it. Red, Dalton, and Tina don't make it.

ONE YEAR AGO. Anne is surprised Gabriel showed up for their annual talk after denying Alexandria assistance. He doesn't understand her community or her commitment to them, but he knows something about the part of herself she's scared of losing. She fears it may already be gone. Even year she returns, she's done worse things. "I know why they're done. I believe in what we're trying to do. But there's the Plan and the 'why.' And then there's the blood," she says. It's her confessional, but she can't tell the priest everything. It's Gabriel's turn to confide in Anne. He looks forward to their one-day-a-year meetings. "I look forward to these days, to have this, to have you to myself. This secret, these days," he confesses. "I have you, and that proves that you're still here, Anne." She kisses him. He asks her to come with him back to Alexandria and assures her that her community can remain a secret, but she can't - and won't - leave them. All he knows about her group is that they horde supplies while others starve. "You think that the purpose of what we do is to make people suffer?" she asks, indignant. "That I'd be part of a group like that? Is that what you think of me?" He knows she's not them. But she is. "I did this," she says. "This was me." She apologizes for coming back and making herself vulnerable... and for turning Gabriel into a loose end. She then turns her gun on Gabriel.

In the present, Rick and Michonne are in a standoff with Jadis. "I live for the cause, and I will die for the cause," she tells Rick. "I'm not a traitor. Not like you." As Rick pokes his head around a corner, Jadis fires a bullet that grazes Rick's forehead. With Michonne taking point, Jadis reminds the couple, "You two together - you are unstoppable. But that won't save your kids. You kill me, they're dead. I die from my wounds, they're dead. I get killed by walkers, they're dead." Jadis steps out into the line of fire, right into the path of walkers, daring Michonne to shoot her dead or let the dead have her flesh. Before a walker can sink its teeth into Jadis' neck, Michonne guns down the walkers and takes cover as Jadis returns fire. She calls out to former Sgt. Maj. Grimes, telling him that Major General Beale was going to give Rick the Echelon Briefing upon his return from the CRM's Cascades base. "Your eyes would have been opened to the true size and scope of what the CRM is gonna do to bring this world back," she says, scolding Rick for letting Michonne pull him away from the last light of the world. And now the fates of their family and friends are sealed.

Rick tells Jadis he doesn't believe she wants to kill everyone back home. But it's not about "want," she replies. "It's about keeping your humanity or saving humanity, and it is a choice. I've chosen my community. I've chosen my life. So, who's gonna die today? The two of you? Or me and everyone back home?" Michonne makes a show of surrendering - "Rick, there has to be a sacrifice. Since I found you, all that I've done has been for us. But now I see this can't end with us going home." Michonne tells Jadis there's a deal to be made so they can all live - and Alexandria. Michonne will get her to the jump point, and Rick will go back with Jadis on one condition: they'll say Rick was injured in the helicopter crash, the lone survivor, and he'll go back to working toward the CRM's future if Michonne gets away and Jadis keeps Alexandria secret. Jadis agrees to the deal, so Michonne surrenders her weapon and leaves. Rick and Jadis show themselves. "I was a fool to think I could take you down with you two together, which is why I agreed to your deal," Jadis tells Rick, red gun in hand. "I don't trust you, either, but I respect you, Rick."

One year earlier, Anne has her gun on Gabriel. He tells her she's lying to herself. "You don't keep coming back here," he says. "You never left." Anne tells him she's wrong, but hesitates to pull the trigger. "Make me understand," Gabriel tells Anne. "Show me who you are."

In the present, Jadis has her gun to Rick... and Michonne shows herself, gun to Jadis' head. Rick and Michonne double-crossed her before she could double-cross them. Michonne threatens to kill Jadis to save Rick, but before she can, a zombified Tina attacks Jadis and bites her throat. Rick and Michonne take out the undead Dalton and Tina, but it's too late: Jadis suffered a walker's bite to her neck that she won't survive.

"Everything I've ever had or lost. My people, my friends, everyone," she says over memories of Anne and Gabriel, of Jadis and the Scavengers, of Jadis killing Jennifer "Huck" Mallick. "I was tired of losing. I was finally part of something that could last. And I couldn't lose another community. My old one. And my new one. I knew if I didn't kill you all, somehow, some way, you'd come for the CRM. So I drew up the dossier to protect myself and make sure you couldn't. I thought, in my death, it was worth it. I'd chosen a side, right? I thought I had. Back and forth. Jadis, Anne, Alexandrians, CRM."

One year ago, Anne refuses to shoot Gabriel. "You came to me to help you find an answer. You just found it," Gabriel tells her. "I'll see you next year, Anne." A dying Jadis/Anne tells Rick and Michonne that Gabriel helped her find her answer. She tells them that the dossier is in her room at the Cascadia Base. "Just destroy it and go home." But another caveat: The CRM will bring the world back, so her dying wish is that Rick and Michonne don't go after them. "No," Michonne says. "Because we are coming for them. We're going to get the dossier... and then the CRM, we're gonna stop them." Michonne tells Jadis that Rick will get the Echelon Briefing and find out everything the CRM does that the Civic Republic doesn't know about, and they're going to help the city stop them. "Because, Anne," Michonne says, sympathetically, the CRM is not the answer, and they must end. We're gonna do that." When Rick tells Anne that she kept them alive for a reason, she shares her only regret: "I wish I'd died an artist. It was never about survival in that life. It was just about truth. And this is mine. The end of my story. My peace." Anne removes the ring necklace that Gabriel gifted her and hands it over to Rick.

"On the bridge, you told Gabriel you wanted to marry her. He found this, and he wanted to give it to you," she says, shocking Rick. "You weren't dreaming, Rick. Go ahead. Do what you said you would do. Please." Rick pockets the ring and then mercifully shoots Anne in the head.

Rick and Michonne make their way to the helicopter jump point. He tells her that what Michonne said before, it wasn't just for Jadis. "You couldn't have changed them by yourself, Rick," Michonne replies. "But together? The whole damn world - I see how he could make it better, and if we can, Rick, we have to." But the world can wait. Rick, ring in hand, tells the love of his life: "It's a broken world, Michonne, and you're the only thing that puts it back together. 'Til my last breath, I am yours." Rick gets to his knees to propose. Michonne, overcome with emotion, tells him she never could have imagined this.
But it could only ever have been you," she says with a tearful smile. "I'm yours." Rick and Michonne, husband and wife, embrace with a kiss.

Elsewhere, Father Gabriel dutifully waits for Anne on the one-year anniversary of their last meeting. As time passes, he knows it was their last. In Wyoming, an "A" marker sits atop a humble grave built from rocks. In the distance, the chuffing of a CRM helicopter as it flies overhead. The end of Anne's story.

New episodes of The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live premiere Sundays on AMC and AMC+. Stay tuned to ComicBook/TWD and follow on Facebook for more TWD Universe coverage.

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The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live aired a very special episode on Sunday night. It was the fourth episode of the six coming the show's first season and offered all of the Rick and Michonne drama a fan could ask for, plus plenty of walker slaying. However, those things are staples in The Walking Dead franchise by now. What made this episode so special is the fact that it was written by Danai Gurira. Gurira has played Michonne on The Walking Dead since the show's third season and serves as an executive producer on The Ones Who Live, along with her Rick Grimes co-star Andrew Lincoln. However, it was her pen which crafted the many words flying between Michonne and Rick in the well-received episode.

"Joy is the word -- happy, no," Gurira told ComicBook.com ahead of The Ones Who Live's premiere. "Joy has nothing to do with emotion; joy is something deeper. It was a lot of work, and of course it was going on simultaneously with all the other work that one has to do in this show. We had already arced the series, the three of us, so we knew what this episode needed to be. And of course, there's a process of getting the episode to where you want it to be, and Gimple was like, 'She's the showrunner of that episode, don't come to talk to me.'"

Scott Gimple has been serving as the chief content officer for the entirety of the Walking Dead franchise since The Walking Dead entered its ninth season, formerly serving as showrunner on the flagship show for a few seasons prior. Now, he has entrusted Gurira to put her playwright skills on display with the saga's latest spinoff.

"I was the point person for the episode, which allowed me to have a vision on it, but it was very collaborative," Gurira explaned. "They were reading every draft, they were giving their thoughts, their notes. And also the episode before it was being tweaked, and as that tweaks, I have to tweak because they have to work together. So ultimately it was a process, but I loved what it came to be. And I was in charge of the post of it, as well, with the editor, and the amazing Michael Slovis was the director, and he did an incredible job. It's interesting explaining -- it's such a familiar story, but I was explaining a very different chapter of it to people, in a way that we hadn't explored these narratives as a whole for the series, and this episode was definitely part of that. It was great, it was very collaborative, it was also very solitary, and very little sleep."

The episode scored a 9-out-of-10 score in ComicBook's weekly recap and review video. Fans were clamoring for it on social media. Gurira put her Michonne character through a range of emotions for the zombie drama's latest hour, having her argue with Lincoln's Rick about his stance on the CRM, returning to Alexandria, and more. Not only was the writing impressive, but Gurira and Lincoln also packed impressive performances into the emotional roller coaster of an episode. While it featured plenty of fun zombie kills and life-threatening stakes (like Michonne being trapped under a chandelier and helicopter hurling missiles at a nearby building), the episode titled, "What We," also had major moments like Michonne telling Rick about his son back in Alexandria who has never known about or met. It was a pivotal hour for the series, all crafted by Gurira's script.

Are you enjoying The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live? Share your thoughts in the comment section! The series has two more episodes, airing Sunday nights on AMC.

[Spoiler alert: This article contains spoilers for The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live episode 4.] Rick and Michonne are the ones who love. Not only did the recently reunited couple become emotionally and physically intimate for the first time in nearly a decade, but this week's "What We" episode saw Rick (Andrew Lincoln) open up to Michonne (Danai Gurira) about what the CRM really took from him: his loved ones. Rick confessed that he started to forget his son, Carl (who died more than nine years earlier in season 8 of The Walking Dead), and that his memories of Michonne started to fade the longer he was unable to escape the clutches of the Civic Republic Military.

"You and I fell in love in different ways, and it kept me going. And then you were gone, too," Rick told Michonne of his dreams from the first episode. "I couldn't see your face anymore, just like I couldn't see Carl's. I can't live without you. Without you, I die. And I figured out how to do that. I know how to be dead and live now. You can't just come back here, make me come alive again if I don't know if I won't lose you again. What if I lose you and I can't figure out how to die all over again?"

It was his fear of losing Michonne that made Rick believe he needed to stay behind and change the CRM from the inside, the only way to protect his family from Jadis (Pollyanna McIntosh). But it was the memory of his son -- and a portrait of Carl created by the artist Benjiro -- that convinced Rick to go AWOL and return home with Michonne, the couple taking advantage of a helicopter crash to make the army think they died in the wreck.

That decision was reached after Rick gave himself to his wife emotionally and physically, with Michonne helping him heal from years of pent up traumas and grief.

"We're proposing a love story. So at some point, they have to make love. It's really that simple," Gurira, who also wrote the episode, told EW. "I think the goal for that scene in my head was that it shall not be a typical love scene. It shall not be, 'Oh, when they copulate and it's so lovely' -- it shall not be that. It needed to have a character moment in it that allowed for something to shift. Even if the audience doesn't fully get what it is."

Added series co-creator and showrunner Scott M. Gimple, "It's very much part of the story, and there's a whole story to that sex scene. It isn't just like them going at it. There's an arc to the sex scene story being told there. And with these characters in that episode, it isn't until they're put in danger and have to fight beside one another that they click that they are suddenly just one person. And then at the end of that physicality of surviving together, it leads to a different kind of physicality of them truly getting together and truly touching one another.'"

The scene was the climax of an action sequence where Michonne and Rick, cut off by the zombified tenants of the high-rise building where they holed up after jumping out of their helicopter, retreated to an apartment to consummate their renewed relationship after saving each other from the walker horde.

"It is something that happens that is about people that connected having a moment in their most vulnerable place. So it was a very crucial thing to me that that love scene did not just be a love scene," Gurira explained. "The key thing was of course, the fact that Rick has PTSD and that's very much what's driving a lot of his behavior and being in a place of that level of vulnerability, back with the love of his life in that way."

"It's also the thing he fears, the loss of her. It manifests itself in a way that is visceral and leads to the lovemaking not just being about love, but the revealing of pain and trauma and fear," she continued. "That informs Michonne, that she can't just blast him into making sense. There's something deeper going on here that he can't verbalize. She has to help him get through in a different way. So she gets to see him, as well, as he reveals what's really in there, the wound. That's going to happen most likely in that most vulnerable space. So it's a love story, and at some point, we've got to see some lovemaking."

As for Rick's trepidation in the love scene, Lincoln added, "It's about him wanting her and then fearing what he's about to unlock again. He gets to sort of articulate it in the scene further in the episode, when he gets to say that 'I can't do this again. I haven't got the capacity to do this again. I've worked out how to die and live again.'"

Rick had already accepted he had to let Michonne go when he "decided to die" and commit himself to Okafor's (Craig Tate) mission to remake the CRM. But by the end of episode 4, Michonne has brought Rick back to life.

"It is an absolutely necessary scene that allows Michonne to realize that there's something really broken here, more broken than she's ever anticipated. It's not just resolved by their intimacy. It explains a lot of his behavior prior to this meeting," Lincoln said. "So the scene was about a real intimacy, a sort of frightening intimacy. This is a part of his personality he has shut down. It's almost like he's trying to stop himself from feeling this love again. She sees that and she just says, 'Just trust. We're back. We're the same...' I find it very moving. I think it's a very, very moving scene, because it's about them connecting in a way that he's had to deny for seven years. He's denied that connection for the sake of living on in this half-life for the CRM."

New episodes of The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live premiere Sundays on AMC and AMC+. Stay tuned to ComicBook/TWD and follow on Facebook for more TWD Universe coverage.

[Spoiler alert: This article contains spoilers for The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live episode 4.] "I think of the dead all the time. And about the living, who I lost," Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) once wrote in a letter to his wife Michonne (Danai Gurira). But after years of trying and failing to escape the CRM-- the inescapable military force that helicoptered him away from an exploding bridge back in season 9 of The Walking Dead -- Rick contemplated suicide. "I couldn't do it, but I still decided to die," Rick wrote in another letter that he then burned along with reminders of the long-lost loved ones he let go.

"I don't see the dead anymore, or the ones I lost, or the sun, the sky, or the water. I don't see you anymore," Rick's letter read. "I just see what's ahead. Metal rotors and gun oil and blood. What I have to do, what I can do to help save the world, even if you don't know I ever did that. I love you so much. I love you so, so much. I tried. Please just know I tried."

The first episode of The Ones Who Live ended with Rick dedicating himself to Okafor's (Craig Tate) mission to change the CRM from the inside, only for those plans to go up in smoke when Michonne's friend Nat (Matthew August Jeffers) shot down their helicopter. As fate would have it, Rick and Michonne ended up aboard another CRM chopper that crashed into the side of a high-rise building, giving the couple an opportunity to fake their deaths and go home to their children without fear of retribution from Jadis (Pollyanna McIntosh).

Except Rick, convinced that the only way to protect his family from the CRM was to stay behind to ensure their safety, tried to get Michonne to leave without him. On Sunday's episode 4 of The Ones Who Live, titled "What We," Michonne finally learned what the CRM really took from Rick: the memory of his dead son, Carl Grimes (Chandler Riggs).

"They took Carl. I lost him again. When I got taken, I fought and I fought, and I tried to get away," Rick said through sobs. "I'd meet up with Carl in my dreams. And that's how I survived in here. It kept me alive. And then one day, he was just gone. He just left. But then I started dreaming of you. And there you were. You and I fell in love in different ways, and it kept me going. And then you were gone, too. I couldn't see your face anymore, just like I couldn't see Carl's. I can't live without you. Without you, I die. And I figured out how to do that. I know how to be dead and live now. You can't just come back here, make me come alive again if I don't know if I won't lose you again. What if I lose you and I can't figure out how to die all over again? I can't. I need to get ahead of it, Michonne. I can't. When I saw you, I got so scared, and... I needed to get ahead of it. I had to. At least if I think you will live on longer than me without knowing if you do, I can just believe that it's true. Knowing... Seeing that loss? I can't. I won't survive that, Michonne. I just won't."

The heart-wrenching scene, interspersed with footage from The Walking Dead's "Wrath" season 8 finale, showed young Carl fading from his father's memories until he disappeared completely. The original episode flashed back to pre-apocalypse times as Rick, in his sheriff's uniform, walked hand-in-hand with a three-year-old Carl. It was a happy memory, one that Carl recalled in a letter he wrote for his father to read after his death.

"You told me about the walks we'd take when I was three. You holding my hand around the neighborhood, all the way to Ross' farm. I didn't know that I remembered them, but I do. Because I see the sun, and the corn, and that cow that walked up to the fence and looked me in the eye," Carl's letter read in part. "And you told me about all that stuff, but it isn't just that stuff. It's how I felt. Holding your hand, I felt happy and special. I felt safe."

When Rick defeated and then spared his archnemesis Negan to end the war with the Saviors -- honoring Carl's last wish -- Rick narrated a letter he wrote to his son. "Dear Carl. I remember. I forgot who I was. You made me remember," Rick wrote in his letter. "I remember that feeling, walking with you that day. Like I finally knew who I was for the first time in my life. Thing is, we were walking side-by-side, but you were bringing me somewhere. Bringing me here. Bringing all of us to the new world, Carl. You showed me the new world. You made it real. I see it. I remember. Dad."

On The Ones Who Live, it was Michonne evoking Carl's memory that made Rick remember who he is. "If Carl were here right now, what would he say? What would he want you to do with this new chance to be with those you love?" she asked him. "Despite all the odds, all the years, I found you, Rick. I came here through the hell that we have both been through to take you home. You think that's all for nothing? For us to just go our separate ways? No. We go home, Rick, and we figure out how to protect it together. That's how we make it all make sense. We love on each other, as hard as we can, while we can."

After all, the new world's gonna need Rick Grimes.

New episodes of The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live premiere Sundays on AMC and AMC+. Stay tuned to ComicBook/TWD and follow on Facebook for more TWD Universe coverage.

[Spoiler alert: This article contains spoilers for The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live episode 4.] There are only two episodes left of The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live. Sunday's "What We" episode ended with Rick (Andrew Lincoln) and Michonne (Danai Gurira) headed home to Alexandria, a decision the couple reached only after Michonne convinced her soldier husband to go on the run from the Civic Republic Military. Believing that the army would think they died in a helicopter crash (that was then destroyed by another CRM chopper dispatched to cover up evidence of their existence), the presumed-dead duo made their escape in a hybrid electric car equipped with enough ethanol fuel to get them home.

Not so fast. While it seemed as if Rick and Michonne made a clean getaway, the first look at The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live episode 5 shows a shadowy figure lurking outside the cozy cabin where the couple has holed up on their journey home. The trailer, which you can watch above, also sees Rick and Michonne fending off both the living and the dead... and engaging in a high-speed car chase as they're pursued by a mysterious someone.

Who is that trailing Rick and Michonne? Spoiler alert: the series trailer revealed Jadis (Pollyanna McIntosh) to be behind the wheel of the vehicle in hot pursuit of the yellow truck. As CRM Warrant Officer, Jadis is tasked with investigating "corruption, ineptitude, and betrayal" within the military's ranks, and as she warned, the CRM can't allow Rick and Michonne to escape with knowledge of the Civic Republic and its army. And neither will she.

"At the end of [episode 4], [Rick and Michonne] are in a really good place. They have connected and they faced some things, and they've gotten honest. It's like the dream has come true," showrunner and series co-creator Scott M. Gimple said on AMC+'s TWD: The Ones Who Live Episode Insider. "They can go back to their lives and they can leave that fear behind, and leave that trauma behind, and leave that anger behind. And we probably should have ended it right there, and everything would have been cool... but this is The Walking Dead."

Buckle up, because that sounds ominous. Episode 5 of The Ones Who Live, titled "Become," premieres Sunday, March 24, on AMC and AMC+. Stay tuned to ComicBook/TWD and follow on Facebook for more TWD Universe coverage.

[Warning: This article contains spoilers for The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live episode 4.] Ever the good soldier, Rick Grimes was willing to sacrifice his life for the mission. But his wife, Michonne, was not. Sunday's episode of The Ones Who Live, "What We," began with Rick (Andrew Lincoln) and Michonne (Danai Gurira) at an impasse while holed up in the high-rise building where their helicopter crashed after Michonne's mid-air attempt to escape the CRM. The intimate, emotional episode penned by Gurira saw the couple work to mend their broken relationship as they tried to save the other -- albeit with dramatically different mindsets about how they'd keep each other alive.

Rick, convinced that he must stay behind to change the CRM and ensure their family's safety, and Michonne, unwilling to let Rick sacrifice their life together for Okafor's (Craig Tate) mission, spent the episode in a deadlock. The couple's crossroads brought to light revelations -- Rick finally learned he has an almost eight-year-old son, Rick Jr. -- and deep-buried traumas, with Michonne connecting with Rick to get him to open up about how the CRM changed him. "What did they do to you?" she asked. "What did they take from you?"

"Carl. They took Carl. I lost him again. When I got taken, I fought and I fought, and I tried to get away," Rick said. "I'd meet up with Carl in my dreams. And that's how I survived in here. It kept me alive. And then one day, he was just gone. He just left. But then I started dreaming of you. And there you were. You and I fell in love in different ways, and it kept me going. And then you were gone, too. I couldn't see your face anymore, just like I couldn't see Carl's. I can't live without you. Without you, I die. And I figured out how to do that. I know how to be dead and live now. You can't just come back here, make me come alive again if I don't know if I won't lose you again. What if I lose you, and I can't figure out how to die all over again? I need to get ahead of it, Michonne. I can't. When I saw you, I got so scared, and... I needed to get ahead of it. I had to. At least if I think you will live on longer than me, without knowing if you do, I can just believe that it's true. Seeing that loss? I can't. I won't survive that, Michonne. I just won't."

"Rick's behavior is so erratic, and bizarre, and uncharacteristic, and hurtful, that I think she has no other alternative but to pull him out of a helicopter," Lincoln explained on TWD: The Ones Who Live Episode Insider. "She realizes that this trauma that's happened to him has changed him, irrevocably, and turned him into someone that she doesn't recognize. And he acknowledges that."

Added Gurira, who wrote the episode, "At the core of it is that she has to become the right vessel to help him to his healing, and she's not there yet. Because she had an expectation about what their reunion would be, and he is not meeting that expectation. So she has to get through the hurt of that, and she has to get through taking that personally."

Though there was never any love lost between Rick and Michonne, he had already accepted that he'd never see her again when he gave himself to Okafor's mission. Showrunner Scott M. Gimple noted that Rick lost Michonne -- and then lost himself. "He's lost a certain perspective and an ability to go into things with a certain fearlessness that maybe he doesn't possess currently, for all the things he's lost," Gimple said. "Because he's seeing this thing that he let go, his everything. She's right in front of him and he's with her, and this means he'll lose her, and that screws him up. We start with anger, but in seeing the fear and the trauma, she realizes, 'You aren't who you were. But I can remind you, and I can lead you back there.'"

Michonne reminding Rick with memories of Carl was the ultimate breakthrough. The episode ended with the couple, confident that the CRM would think they died in the helicopter crash, setting out together to return home to their children. "What's most important is they need to get to their truth with one another. That's who they are," Gurira said. "And it's that type of crazy love that they have for each other that causes that moment to come to life, and allows him to finally break through the walls of his own imprisonment that he's been in because of this trauma and because of this captivity."

New episodes of The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live premiere Sundays on AMC and AMC+. Stay tuned to ComicBook/TWD and follow on Facebook for more TWD Universe coverage.

"I'm comin' home, I've done my time. Now I've got to know what is and isn't mine. If you received my letter telling you I'd soon be free, then you'll know just what to do. If you still want me, tie a yellow ribbon 'round the ole oak tree. It's been three long years, do you still want me? If I don't see a ribbon round the ole oak tree, I'll stay on the bus, forget about us. Put the blame on me if I don't see a yellow ribbon 'round the ole oak tree. Bus driver, please look for me. 'Cause I couldn't bear to see what I might see. I'm really still in prison and my love, she holds the key."

Tony Orlando and Dawn's "Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree" plays as Rick (Andrew Lincoln) and Michonne (Danai Gurira) emerge from the stormy waters where they leapt free from a CRM helicopter mid-air. The couple take a "time out" in an automated apartment with working electricity and evidence that someone lives (lived?) here. Michonne, furious about Rick's attempt to get her to escape the Civic Republic Military without him, presses him to write another letter -- this one addressed to his children. Children, plural.

"I'm not gonna be the one to tell them that I found their father and he sent me away and chose not to come home to them," she says as Rick's realization sets in: Children? Michonne tells Rick that they have a son, named Rick Jr., and that she was pregnant when the bridge happened. RJ is nearly eight years old now, and he's never met his father. Rather than ask about their children, Rick asks Michonne to hand over the PRB to alert the Civic Republic's army to their location. This infuriates Michonne, who doesn't recognize this black-clad Rick, soldier of the CRM, who told his wife that "everything we had is broken" and "it's over."

"I am trying to keep you and them alive," Rick explains. "You have no idea who we're dealing with." They're dealing with Jadis (Pollyanna McIntosh) and a military force so secret that they leave no trace of their existence. Jadis warned him: if Rick and Michonne escape together, the CRM will hunt them down, erase them, kill their loved ones, and destroy their home at Alexandria. Michonne's actions risk exposing them, thwarting Rick's efforts to keep her alive. The couple is at an impasse, each trying to save the other.

"I don't like who you are with them. What they make you," Michonne says, her face contorting in contempt. "It isn't you." He shoots back: "You think I want this?" Before she can answer, he again asks her to hand over the PRB. But for Michonne, pressing the PRB is game over -- the CRM wins. "Look at me," Rick says, submitting to a fate he had no choice but to accept. "They won a long time ago. They won the day Jadis brought me here." Rick tells Michonne how Jadis was working with the CRM when she was running away from Alexandria, and how she found him half dead on the riverbank after the bridge. "She will destroy our home if I try to leave," a desperate Rick explains. He was making Jadis let Michonne go when she torpedoed those plans. Rick was willing to sacrifice himself if it meant Michonne got away... but it's not a sacrifice that Michonne is willing to make.

"You want me to go?" Michonne asks, almost afraid of the answer. "I want you to live," Rick replies. "She's threatened by us because, together, you and me, she thinks we can do anything." Michonne believes -- she knows -- they can stop her. But it has to be them together, and only together. Rick reminds her what the CRM did to Nat (Matthew August Jeffers) and her friends, a fate he wants to spare happening to everyone they know at Alexandria. Even if they make it home in time, what happens next? Michonne suggests they kill Jadis, so Rick informs her about Jadis' contingency plan: if Jadis dies, she's made it so that the CRM can find them. There's no escape.

If Rick can't leave with Michonne, and if Michonne won't leave without Rick, she suggests they go back to the CRM -- together -- find her evidence, kill Jadis, and then go home. Together. "Do you think we can do anything?" she asks her husband. "Because I do. What did they do to you?" Rick doesn't answer. He says they need to go back. She asks him again: "And after that? Do you still love me?" Rick tells his wife, "Always. I've never stopped loving you."

Roaring thunder and a flash of lightning reveals their crashed helicopter embedded in the side of the building. Michonne saved their lives, and she's still trying to save their lives. "It's gone. So we're gone," Michonne realizes. "We can go home." She believes that Jadis and the CRM will think Rick and Michonne died in the crash, but Rick isn't pulling the ripcord just yet. "I'm not going home," he tells her.

Michonne has come to see things more clearly in the light of day. She remembers what Nat said to her: "I know how it ends." She seethes how Rick's son -- "The one you haven't asked anything about" -- calls himself "Little Brave Man" and recounts the tale of "The Brave Man." She recites Nat's words again: "I know how it ends." She reminds him that his people killed her friend, but Rick makes a point to say they're not his people. "He said that to me once when I said I had to keep looking for you. He knew how it ended, but he still had my back. I was so sure he was wrong, but he wasn't," Michonne says. "'Cause here I am. I found you. But I didn't."

She can't understand Rick's mentality. They just found their way out. The CRM thinks they're dead. "And you want to stay with an army that kept you against your will for years?" Rick doesn't want to... he has to, to make sure she's protected. To make sure they don't come for their home -- their children. Rick sacrificing himself and staying behind is the only way to make sure that doesn't happen. Rick's been looking the other way as the soldiers with the blood-red stripes killed innocent people, so staying with the CRM is how he makes sure Judith and RJ are protected. It was Okafor (Craig Tate) who saved Rick's life, and it's Okafor who wanted Rick to become part of the CRM, move up, and change it from the inside. Rick had just given up on ever seeing his family again, and with nothing left, gave himself to Okafor's mission... and then Michonne crashed into the life he thought was over.

Michonne asks if Rick remembers the life they built. The life they had. She tells him how what they were building kept people alive. She tells him how she saw Rick as a prisoner of this army and knew they had to escape. She tells him that you don't choose to stay in prison. When the doors open, you leave. The life they had was one where they were crawling around in the dirt and losing people they love, Rick counters, and the CRM "felt like a way or a chance to stop that. Not to surrender to it -- to fight, for everyone."

"This place is not your responsibility," Michonne tells Rick. "You have a family." Okafor is gone, and Thorne (Lesley-Ann Brandt) is "one of them now," so Rick is the only one left to continue his mission. Michonne counters that was Okafor's mission -- not Rick's. He's trying to keep his family safe by maybe changing the CRM, who might come after their home and put them in danger? For those uncertainties, Michonne asks him, "You won't come home with me, to your life? Your kids?" For Rick, it's not a choice. "I don't want to do this," Rick reminds her. "I have to."

Michonne believed a little bit longer, but Rick's rejection forces her to leave -- to go home to her kids without him. "You're lying, and you'll see it, and it'll be too late," Michonne says, shutting the door on her and Rick's relationship as she leaves broken-hearted and empty-handed. Like Nat said, you gotta know when to go... and it's time to go. Rick remains behind in the apartment, stood at the threshold of the biggest decision of his life. The door opens, and Rick chases Michonne.

The whirring blades of another CRM helicopter and the groans and growls of the dead are the soundtrack to Rick and Michonne's escape as they fight their way through a horde of the dead to reach the ground floor. The helicopter fires a missile at the crash site, covering up any and all evidence of their existence... and nearly bringing the building down with it. The explosion causes the building to buckle, forcing Rick and Michonne past a wall of walkers and into the lower levels of the building.

Rick and Michonne come across a stronghold. Inside the room is a letter left by the corpse of Lakshmi Patel, the building's last-living tenant. The letter reveals that the building belongs to Greenwood, a self-sustaining community of like-minded innovators living off the grid to create a new and hopeful tomorrow. Greenwood's motto, "Progress and Redemption Through Innovation," became a "sick joke," Lakshmi's letter reads, so she took her own life. "I cannot go another day continuing to watch our mission die. I am sorry. Let me be remembered as one who refused to leave the world the same way I found it."

Michonne sees Greenwood as an example of what happens when people try to save the world their own way. Rick assures Michonne he'll find a way to stop the CRM from killing innocent people, and she still doesn't get it. "This is about ending the enemy," he says, disputing Michonne's claim that this isn't him. He'd give everything -- his hand, his life -- for her. "That's not me? This is what I need to do to keep you safe!" To that, Michonne says, gently: "The only time I feel safe is when I'm with you. We don't have to be afraid, Rick." But he is, and they do. "I'm not the Brave Man," he responds. "You shouldn't have come."

She unloads on Rick for choosing the CRM over her and their family. She doesn't know who Rick is anymore. But when the collapsing building starts to come crashing down on them, Rick refuses to leave Michonne as she's pinned between debris and walkers. The couple are trapped by the mass of dead, so they retreat upstairs to the half of the building not yet buckling beneath the weight of the world coming down around them. Back in the safety of Lakshmi's apartment, the near-death experience has shown Michonne that she knows who Rick is. He's the man she's loved and lost, then lost and loved again. Rick and Michonne fall into bed together and embrace that love for the first time in years.

The next scene is postcoital, with Rick and Michonne cuddled up in bed as he asks about his son. She tells him he's stubborn, "just like his daddy," to which Rick replies, "just like his mama." Most of all, she says, RJ has his father's good, kind heart, and that's what most reminds her of Rick. Talk turns to the fate of the Greenwood community -- the walkers being so thin suggests that they starved. Even if they had crops, Rick says, crops fail. Recalling the story about his father's farm, "One bad harvest... something has to burn to bring it back." If he can change the CRM -- burn down the bad to bring back the good -- there's a real chance for future generations to grow out of that.

Michonne shares her own piece of history: the "X" scar on her back that happened when she was seven months pregnant with their son. She tells him how she eventually stopped looking for Rick's body after the bridge, and how she kept believing that he wasn't gone forever. She still believes that. Looking at Rick's amputated hand, it's proof of what Rick was willing to do to try and get away... to get home to her. He's still trying. But he's not there yet. He could have pressed the button, but he didn't. "You say you can't go home, but I don't think you can go back," Michonne tells him. "I'm sorry for what they did to you."

The building begins to give way, so Rick says it's time to leave. "Nat used to say, 'You got to know when to go,'" Michonne tells him, and it's not time to go. They're not going anywhere until they decide: what's next? She asks him to tell her why he went after her when she left. She needs to hear him say it. "You're the love of my life," Rick tells Michonne. "I couldn't just let you go. It felt like my heart ripped itself out of my chest and walked out the door." So why, then, can't he come home with her? Why can't they be together?

She confesses that she hasn't spoken to Judith in a long time. She was out of range and then holed up in a mall healing with Nat for an entire year after a CRM helicopter bombed them with chlorine gas. "They've taken so much from us," Michonne says. "Why give them any more?" His hope in the CRM, Rick's sacrifice -- "It's not real. We, your family, are real. I'm real," she tells him. "Our love? This? It doesn't get denied." What Rick is doing is hurting her. He's hurting her. "This is not how you love. What did they do to you? What did they take from you?"

Rick's despair is over Carl. "They took Carl. I lost him again," he confesses. Rick dreamed of his son. He dreamed of the walks he would take with Carl to the Ross' farm when his son was three years old. "I'd meet up with Carl in my dreams, and that's how I survived in here," Rick says. It kept him alive. Rick fought to get away, again and again, but he couldn't escape. And then Carl was gone. Rick started dreaming of Michonne. They would fall in love in different ways, and it kept him going... and then she was gone, too, burned away by the CRM. "I couldn't see your face anymore, just like I couldn't see Carl's. I can't live without you. Without you, I die," Rick tells Michonne. "And I figured out how to do that. I know how to be dead and live now." But if Rick loses Michonne again, he won't be able to "figure out how to die all over again."

"At least if I think you will live on longer than me without knowing if you do, I can just believe that it's true," Rick sobs. But seeing that loss, losing Michonne? "I won't survive that," he says. "I just won't." Michonne gives Rick a phone with Carl's portrait and asks him what Carl would want for his father. "Despite all the odds, all the years, I found you, Rick. I came here through the hell that we have both been through to take you home. You think that's all for nothing? For us to just go our separate ways? No," Michonne tells him, softly. "We go home, Rick, and we figure out how to protect it together. That's how we make it all make sense. We love on each other, as hard as we can, while we can."

That love doesn't get denied. Rick and Michonne escape the building as it crumbles, burning away as their love burns anew. The couple comes across one last gift from Greenwood -- a hybrid electric car with enough tanks of ethanol to get home -- and hop in. "Clearly, they thought they could do anything," Michonne says of the community of innovators that is now ash and rubble. "But we can," replies Rick, quoting something Michonne told him in his dreams: "'We can make this world damn world ours if we want to.'"

New episodes of The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live premiere Sundays on AMC and AMC+. Stay tuned to ComicBook/TWD and follow on Facebook for more TWD Universe coverage.