The Walking Dead Star Breaks Down Jadis' Fate (Exclusive)

[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.