[Spoiler alert: This article contains spoilers for The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live.] It took one episode for The Walking Dead to separate Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) and Michonne (Danai Gurira) -- and a single episode to bring them back together. Sunday's "Years" premiere of new series The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live spanned Rick's eight-year absence after the Civic Republic's army helicoptered him away back in season 9 of The Walking Dead, and the episode ended explosively when someone shot down Rick's chopper.

In a full-circle moment, a CRM helicopter came crashing down to reunite Rick and Michonne eight years after a CRM helicopter airlifted him up and away. It was a moment that fans have been waiting for since 2018 -- and one that network AMC wanted to prolong a little while longer.

"I saw people worrying [Rick and Michonne] were only going to meet in episode 6," Gurira, who co-created the six-episode series with Lincoln and showrunner Scott M. Gimple, said during a panel at New York's 92nd Street Y. Gimple penned the premiere's teleplay from a story he co-wrote with Gurira and Lincoln, with the three collaborators choosing to end the episode on a cliffhanger that will continue from Michonne's perspective in episode 2.

"There was a lot of tug of war -- not between us -- with that structure," franchise overseer Gimple said diplomatically. "It was AMC, I don't care," Gurira interjected to laughter.

Gurira, also an executive producer alongside Gimple and Lincoln, added that Dan McDermott, AMC's President of Entertainment and AMC Studios, conceded that the trio made the right decision to reunite Rick and Michonne at the end of the first episode. "'That was great what you guys decided to do with that,'" Gurira recalled, laughing. "It's like, 'Aren't you glad we didn't listen to you?'"

Gurira and Gimple explained the episode's ending in an interview with EW, saying that their decision to structure the Richonne reunion this way "made sense."

"Because we had to get into the meat of the story, which is: What happens when these two people who obviously have been changed by all this time apart come back together? What does that look like with this massive barrier and obstacle of the CRM being between them? How do they get through that? What is it going to be?" Gurira said. "We can't do that until we connect them."

She continued: "I love that the audience gets thrown by the fact that BOOM -- there she is! Just as they think Rick is settling and accepting the fact that Rick is basically broken and going to stay here and not fight it anymore -- just as they feel like they've lost him, he's found. In my mind, that's good drama. So I think that was what was behind the decision."

Eight years after the couple last saw each other at the bridge, Gimple added, "They look like two different people. They are two different people. And I don't mean from each other, I'm saying from themselves. They're different than when the audience last saw them and when they last saw each other. They're completely different people than who they were."

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.

When Morales nicknamed Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) "helicopter boy" on the first season of The Walking Dead, the moniker referred to the sheriff's deputy's attempt to flag down a helicopter he saw flying over downtown Atlanta in the early days of the zombie apocalypse. Call it prescience. Call it coincidence. But eight years after an injured Rick was airlifted away aboard a Civic Republic Military chopper, "helicopter boy" moved through the ranks to become Sergeant Major Rick Grimes: a CRM soldier and helicopter pilot.

CRM Lt. Col. Donald Okafor (Craig Tate) recruited and trained Rick to change the secret army that helicoptered him away from his wife Michonne (Danai Gurira) and daughter Judith on season 9 of The Walking Dead -- a mission made possible after Jadis/Anne (Pollyanna McIntosh) saved Rick's life by handing him over to the CRM. While Jadis was ultimately the link between Rick and this expanded world over on The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live, helicopters have been a recurring motif going back to the very first episode of The Walking Dead.

Season 1 Episode 1: "Days Gone Bye"

After waking up in an abandoned hospital, Rick walked past a graveyard of military vehicles and aircraft -- including a black helicopter. Rick later saw the reflection of an operational helicopter when he rode into zombie-overrun Atlanta on horseback.

Season 2 Episode 13: "Beside the Dying Fire"

The season 2 finale began with a walker herd forming on the streets of Atlanta after trailing the helicopter that Rick saw in the pilot. The herd eventually made its way to rural Georgia to overrun and destroy the Greene family farm.

Season 3 Episode 3: "Walk With Me"

The Governor (David Morrissey) of Woodbury came across a crashed National Guard helicopter that Michonne and Andrea (Laurie Holden) watched go down in smoke.

Season 4 Episode 1: "30 Days Without an Accident"

After Rick's group settled into the prison, Michonne, Daryl (Norman Reedus), Glenn (Steven Yeun) and others went on a supply run into a Big Spot store with a crashed helicopter on its roof that eventually gave way to falling walkers.

Season 7 Episode 10: "New Best Friends"

When Rick first encountered Jadis and the Scavengers at the junkyard, eagle-eyed viewers spotted two background details: a helipad among the heaps and a flying object that some speculated was a helicopter. Savior Simon (Steven Ogg) later questioned Jadis about the helipad in the season 8 episode "The Lost and the Plunderers," which marked the first appearance of the three-ring symbol that we later learned represented the CRM and the Alliance of the Three.

Season 8 Episode 5: "The Big Scary U"

Rick was en route to Jadis' junkyard when he heard and then briefly saw a black helicopter fly overhead before disappearing behind the trees.

Season 8 Episode 14: "Still Gotta Mean Something"

The three-ring symbol was visible on the helicopter that Jadis summoned to the junkyard where she planned to trade Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) for extraction. After a struggle ensued and her flare snuffed out, the CRM helicopter turned around and left without its pickups.

Season 9 Episode 2: "The Bridge"

19 months after Jadis assimilated into the Alexandria Safe-Zone, she was on lookout duty when she saw lights and heard the whirring blades of a circling helicopter in the night sky.

Season 9 Episode 3: "Warning Signs"

When Saviors started going missing and then turning up dead, Jadis was suspected to be the culprit. She tried to convince Father Gabriel (Seth Gilliam) to run away with her to "another place": the first indirect mention of the Civic Republic. "It's far from here, but if we go together, we can get there. It can be different for us. There's only one thing. You can't tell anyone," she told Gabriel of the hidden city of 200,000 survivors eventually revealed on The Walking Dead: World Beyond. "But if you can trust me, and help me with one small part of the deal, we can have a life like you can't imagine."

But Gabriel was going to alert Rick that she'd been trading people, so Jadis knocked him unconscious and told Gabriel: "And all this time... I thought you were a B."

Season 9 Episode 4: "The Obliged"

After designating a captive Rick and Negan as "A's," Jadis planned to have Gabriel bitten by a walker and trade him to the helicopter after she was told extraction required an "A." She ultimately spared Gabriel and abandoned the junkyard.

Season 9 Episode 5: "What Comes After"

Rick was bucked off his horse and impaled on a rebar pipe while trying to reroute a walker herd in "The Obliged." As he passed in and out of consciousness, Rick's hallucinations brought him back to the hospital where he woke up after the outbreak. Outside his window was a flock of helicopters foreshadowing his fateful airlift.

Season 9 Episode 5: "What Comes After"

Rick washed up on a riverbed after blowing up his bridge to save the communities from being overrun and destroyed by a walker herd. Jadis found him and radioed the helicopter pilot: "I have a 'B.' Not an 'A.' I never had an 'A.' He's hurt, but he's strong. Can you help him?" She then insisted that she was trying to save a friend who saved her... and the CRM helicopter airlifted Rick from Virginia to a military hospital at the Civic Republic of Philadelphia. After multiple failed escape attempts, Rick spent the next six years working in consignment on the outskirts of the city, and another two years training as a soldier and pilot in the Civic Republic's military.

Read our rundown on everything you need to know about the CRM, our Rick & Michonne timeline explainer, and our recap about Rick's eight-year disappearance. Stay tuned to ComicBook/TWD and follow on Facebook for more TWD Universe coverage.

The Walking Dead Universe RPG draws heavy inspiration from the comics series turned television franchise, leaning into each of the show's most common tropes to build an RPG that's heavy on conflict but not overly bogged down by rules. The new RPG, built upon Free League Publishing's Year Zero Engine, boils down the unique cadence and focuses of The Walking Dead - survival and exploration, interpersonal conflict, and of course zombie swarms - into easy to use systems that should be easy for players to pick up and use. What's perhaps most impressive about the the new game is that it feels specifically like a Walking Dead RPG as opposed to a generic zombie RPG, one that should appeal to fans of the show without diving too much into the mythos of the franchise.

Over the course of 193 comic issues and 11 seasons of television (not counting the spin-off shows), The Walking Dead built up a familiar formula for telling stories within the zombie apocalypse. A group of survivors established a haven of some kind and regularly went on supply runs while discovering external threats and dealing with interpersonal conflicts within the group. Over the course of the arc (or sometimes several arcs), the various external threats and interpersonal conflicts would eventually boil over, almost always with violent results. The key to The Walking Dead and what separated it from other zombie franchises is that the zombies were presented as an inevitable threat that often cropped up at the worst times, but was often drowned out by the extreme measures the living took to survive in a ruined world.

In The Walking Dead Universe RPG, players use pools of six-sided dice to make skill checks, with a six representing a success. Players typically only need to roll a single six for a success, although direct conflicts with other PCs or other NPCs are resolved with opposed rolls in which the most sixes rolled win. The game also uses a stress system that allows a player to add stress dice (a differently colored d6) to their skill rolls with higher stakes. While players can choose to take a point of stress to re-roll a skill check, rolling a one on a stress dice causes a player to "mess up" (the actual name of the mechanic) and results in a complication, usually an increase of the Threat Level that denotes the overall interest level of the Walkers always lurking in the background. The stress system works similarly to the Alien RPG's stress system, which uses the same game engine as The Walking Dead, but with an emphasis on attracting walkers instead of panicking.

Character creation in The Walking Dead Universe RPG is based around choosing one of 12 different character archetypes, each of which have a handful of unique talents. Players then stat their character's attributes and skills, which flow through to the number of dice used to make skill checks. Character creation also comes with several built-in roleplaying prompts via an Issue - a character flaw and a Drive, which is a motivating factor that allows players to add two extra dice to a single skill roll per session. Players also have two Anchors, who are characters within the survivor group (a PC and an NPC) that can relieve stress when players speak to them. I like that the game blends mechanical options with roleplaying in a clean fashion, providing some easy prompts for players to use during sessions.

While The Walking Dead Universe RPG isn't a combat-focused game system, it acknowledges that violence is a foundational part of the franchise. The game uses a straightforward system to deal with the inevitable conflict that arises from either the living or the dead. Combat is determined by skill rolls (each player character has a close combat skill and a ranged combat skill that provides a baseline) and a small pool of three health, reflecting the general lethality found in The Walking Dead. When a player's health reaches zero, they suffer a critical injury that can either be lethal or non-lethal, although the players can still save their friend if they can find medical attention in time. Again, critical injuries provide players with an additional roleplaying prompt, giving players the choice to abandon their companion or venture into even a potentially more dangerous situation to save their friend.

Battling walkers is generally higher risk than facing off against the living, as a failure means rolling on a "walker attack" table with a variety of harmful effects. As best, players take stress when rolling on the walker attack table and at worst, a player will suffer a sudden and horrible death. There's also a sub-system for facing off against swarm of walkers, with players collectively rolling to see if they can hold off or reduce the zombie swarm. One thing I like about the walker system is that players can choose to sacrifice someone else (either a PC or an NPC) to try to escape the swarm. If a player wins an opposed roll, they escape combat and force the loser to roll on the walker attack table. If the player's attempt fails, they have to roll on the walker attack table. Either way, an attempted sacrifice counts towards the group of checks a player makes against the swarm, since even throwing an (unwilling sacrifice) to the throngs of walkers can provide an opening to get away.

Other key subsystems in The Walking Dead Universe RPG includes discovering and building a haven from walkers, and making supply runs to collect more supplies. The game also focuses on interactions with rival factions, each of whom have their own issues and challenges that drive them. There's almost an assumption that things will break down between a faction and the player group of survivors, although the game doesn't have any specific mechanic or system to determine how a particular group may feel about the players at a given moment. Instead, the game assumes that roleplaying and the game master can create enough conflict or intrigue to build towards a full-fledged endgame.

Based on a readthrough of the rulebook, it appears that Free League has identified the key characteristics of a Walking Dead story and successfully built up a roleplaying game around them. The core mechanics of the Year Zero engine is generally rules light and focuses on quick resolution rather than playing things out using complex tactics and spacing on a map, which generally works well within The Walking Dead Universe. However, players should understand what they're getting into when they jump into The Walking Dead - it's a game where your character can die very quickly based on one poor roll and also one where a player can sacrifice another character in a trying moment. There is a small section on player safety at the start of the book, but players need to make sure that safety tools are agreed upon and in place before the game starts because there's not a lot of "off-ramps" to de-escalate a poor decision or two within the mechanics themselves. The system is also somewhat limited to what kinds of stories you can tell, but then again this is a Walking Dead game and not a wider zombie RPG system. If you're a fan of The Walking Dead and tabletop RPGs and want to build out your own campaign of deadly survivors and other deadly threats, Free League Publishing has provided a strong system for you to try out.

The Walking Dead Universe RPG is available now with both a core rulebook and a Starter Set designed to help ease players into the game.

[Spoiler alert: This article contains spoilers for The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live.] "The world is so much bigger than we knew," a captive Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) wrote in a letter to his wife Michonne (Danai Gurira) during his six-year consignment at the Civic Republic of Philadelphia. "So much better, and so much worse." As the charge of Lt. Col. Okafor (Craig Tate), Consignee Grimes spent another two years moving through the ranks of the Civic Republic Military as Sergeant Major Grimes: a helicopter pilot and soldier serving in the force of 17,000 commanded by Major General Beale (Terry O'Quinn).

The CRM's code is "security and secrecy above all," Rick wrote in his letters. "Everything was about secrets. The army kept the city a secret at all costs. Everything the army did was secret to the city. And then there were the soldiers with those blood-red stripes keeping what they did a secret to the whole force. Secrets on secrets."

CRM Force Command secrets are classified within the Echelon Briefing, which contains "all the info, the whys, the things 90% of our force doesn't know about and 100% of our city doesn't," Okafor told Rick and Sgt. Maj. Pearl Thorne (Lesley-Ann Brandt). The top-secret file includes intel on the "tactical military operations" that former Lt. Col. Elizabeth Kublek (Julia Ormond) and Warrant Officer Jadis Stokes (Pollyanna McIntosh) carried out on Beale's orders over on The Walking Dead: World Beyond -- plot points that were indirectly referenced on the series premiere of The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live, along with callbacks to the earliest seasons of The Walking Dead and Fear the Walking Dead.

The episode began with a Civic Republic news broadcast reporting that the city of Omaha -- one of the three surviving cities on the continent -- had fallen, and that the CRM was investigating if the collapse was caused by pressure from a zombie mass. The Alliance of the Three was now an Alliance of Two.

The Alliance of the Three

The Walking Dead: World Beyond established the Alliance of the Three, represented by the three-ring symbol:

• The Civic Republic of Philadelphia (Population: over 200,000)
• Omaha, Nebraska (Population: 97,407)
• Portland, Oregon (Population: 87,000)

The allied civilizations included another 9,671 survivors of Omaha's smaller satellite community, the Campus Colony. 10 years post-outbreak, in 2020, Beale order Kublek and Stokes to destroy the Omaha Safe-Zone and the Campus Colony. CRM Force Command killed civilians with a chemical strike of chlorine gas, then blew up the walls with explosives and had the communities overrun by zombie herds.

Publicly, the CRM claimed that herds of the dead merged into a massive "mega-cluster" that ran through and destroyed the Omaha and Campus colonies. Secretly, the CRM eliminated two potential threats to the Civic Republic.

On World Beyond, Jadis stated that the CRM's modeling revealed the Alliance would soon become a drain on the CR's resources of food, water, energy, and power. Omaha, the Campus Colony, and Portland had become too reliant on the Civic Republic and would never be fully self-sustaining. To prevent famine and conflict from spreading to "the last light of the world," the Civic Republic's army moved to sever all alliances.

CRM Origins

World Beyond revealed that the CRM agreed to a transition of power to the Civic Republic's Civilian Government after ten years. But a decade later, in 2020, Beale lobbied for an emergency delay of civilian oversight and cited the "tragedies" at Omaha and the Campus Colony as cause for the Civic Republic's army to continue operating independently from the city.

On The Ones Who Live, Beale told Rick that the CRM originated as the Pennsylvania National Guard. True to their motto -- "civilian in peace, soldier in war" -- Beale and the Guard stopped federal forces from bombing Philadelphia at the onset of the outbreak in 2010, then became the Civic Republic's army when the city of Philadelphia was fortified and walled off as the Civic Republic.

Operation Cobalt

As a member of the Air Force, Okafor carried out the bombings of Atlanta, Georgia, and Los Angeles, California, during the military's "Sunset Protocols." Operation Cobalt was the military's last-ditch effort to contain the Wildfire Virus that spread across the globe in August 2010, and these events were depicted on The Walking Dead, Fear the Walking Dead, and The Walking Dead: World Beyond.

On World Beyond, Marine LCpl Jennifer "Huck" Mallick (Annet Mahendru) refused orders to execute civilians during Operation Cobalt and joined her mother, Elizabeth Kublek, in the ranks of the CRM. The Ones Who Live revealed that Okafor went AWOL from the Air Force when he was tasked with "liquidating" Philadelphia. Okafor was en route to Philly when he switched sides, bombing 4,000 Marines -- including his wife, Estelle -- at Lincoln Financial Field. He then joined the ranks of Beale's CRM.

Okafor recruited Rick and Thorne to help him "change the CRM from the inside," but Okafor was KIA during a helicopter flight. As Okafor warned Rick: "There's no escape for the living."

Read our rundown on everything you need to know about the CRM, our Rick & Michonne timeline explainer, and our recap about Rick's eight-year disappearance. Stay tuned to ComicBook/TWD and follow on Facebook for more TWD Universe coverage.

The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live returned in explosive fashion on Sunday, bringing Rick Grimes back to the zombie franchise for the first time since Episode 5 of The Walking Dead's ninth season. Technically, Rick showed up in a credits scene teasing The Ones Who Live following the show's series finale but the season nine exit happened back in 2018, giving The Walking Dead fans nearly six years to miss Andrew Lincoln and his Rick Grimes character. With Rick's return came newcomer to the franchise, Craig Tate as his Okafor character. While Okafor's tenure in the post-apocalyptic drama will have been short-lived, the explosive impact of Tate's role will be felt in the episodes to come.

Spoilers for The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live follow. Tate sat down with ComicBook.com for an exclusive interview, discussing his role on The Ones Who Live and the explosive exit his Okafor character made before the show's premiere wrapped up. "It was already inside the script and throughout the two months of filming, there is always rabbit in the back of your mind that, 'Maybe there's hope, maybe if I do good enough because we haven't shot, okay, week one, week two, okay... We haven't shot this scene yet!'" Tate explained. From the start, he knew Okafor's role was for only one episode but the actor continued to tried to convince himself and those around him that he should stick around. "So, while obviously's going to be on one of the last scenes and it is a little rabbit in the back of your mind, 'Maybe if I wow them enough, it can change the ending,' and 'Nah, nope. Nah, bro, we got to get you out of here man. Thanks for your service.'"

This is The Walking Dead, after all. Countless fan-favorites have experienced the same stages of grief which Tate now has with his role in The Ones Who Live; joining The Walking Dead family only to be killed off before they're quite ready to exit.

Tate had the privilege of playing a character who filled in quite a few blanks for the audience, though. Not only did Okafor reveal details going back to the first seasons of The Walking Dead and Fear the Walking Dead about the bombings which took out entire cities when the apocalypse began but he also answered a long-running question of what "A" and "B" mean. "Scott [Gimple] does a phenomenal job of giving his all to the actual words inside of the script," Tate said of the sequences which provided answers to the hardcore TWD fans. "And from that point on, once we got a director is Bert and Bertie, he just full-on trusted their vision and one the idea that we felt that you guys understand what we're looking for. So it was more so Bert and Bertie and their words of direction, less of Scott, but he was definitely there as a presence."

Still, after a briefing in the ruins of Philadelphia's Lincoln Financial Field, Okafor took his final flight later in the episode. Sat beside Rick Grimes, Okafor learned that his mission to change and improve the CRM had convinced Rick Grimes to join. However, a rocket would blast through the window and blow the character away. "That was all CGI Computer generated images," Tate explained, having sat through the take and being edited out of the shot when his character's body was suddenly everywhere but in the seat. "Inside that single shot that was a hit call to enact a hit. And then from that point on, acting, acting, acting. Then they yell out what they yell out and then just the cameras keep on rolling. Then we do a swing over the Andy [Lincoln], but the portion that you would see was over my right side and I remember that closeup like it was yesterday and then just graphics are quite intricate. So, I was still right there even when I wasn't right there, if that makes any sense. So in that shot, I'm still sitting right there and they just kind of shoot me and then boom, go back to that same phrase with your makeup and all that stuff done up."

As for Okafor's impact going forward, Tate has ideas. "It kind of seems that Okafor will hold this lasting impression going forward on Rick Grimes," Tate said. "But I don't know, maybe he just sees a guy, maybe Rick will see a guy who he was just so opposed to, but he was just so similar to himself. Maybe I guess he'll at the conclusion of it all look back and say, 'This is life.' You look into a crack mirror and you have a hard time noticing who's in front of you because the mirror is cracked. But essentially it's still you you're looking at, and maybe that's what he'll see. That's who Okafor was. It was just a very direct reflection of himself when he probably will have to look at himself and say, 'Man, I didn't like Okafor, I had a problem with Okafor because I had a problem on myself.' I don't know, maybe. You know what I'm saying?"

[Spoiler alert: This article contains spoilers for the series premiere of The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live.] "To injure an opponent is to injure yourself." Those wise words of Morihei Ueshiba were repeated back to Morgan Jones (Lennie James) when he was a man at war with himself on season 7 of The Walking Dead, after his mentor Eastman (John Carroll Lynch) handed down a copy of The Art of Peace in season 6. Morgan would carry that book and Eastman's teachings with him over to Fear the Walking Dead, which received a shout out by way of Easter eggs in the new Walking Dead Rick and Michonne series. To quote Morgan again: "Everything gets a return."

The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live opening credits show a United States map marked with fuel drop sites used by the Civic Republic Military's fleet of helicopters. Not only do the maps highlight the three communities that formed the Alliance of the Three and were represented by the three-ring symbol -- the Civic Republic of Philadelphia; Portland, Oregon; and Omaha, Nebraska -- but Texas is marked with the radioactive sign after nuclear warheads detonated in the season 6 finale of Fear the Walking Dead.

The episode included another nod that's easier to miss. When Sgt. Maj. Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) and Sgt. Maj. Pearl Thorne (Lesley-Ann Brandt) conspire with CRM Lt. Col. Donald Okafor (Craig Tate) and he explains the meaning of "A's" and "B's," Okafor hands them a stack of books and materials to study. Included in the pile of books is The Art of Peace.

Are these Easter eggs hints that Morgan might appear on The Ones Who Live? The character's final episode of Fear the Walking Dead saw him try to radio Rick Grimes with a message: "Man, I'm gonna come and look for you, whether you're at Alexandria or not." Rick has spent the past eight years trapped at the Civic Republic of Philadelphia, the hidden city protected by the CRM -- and its soldiers previously ran afoul of Morgan over on Fear.

"I think one of the great things about the show -- and in fact, about all of the shows -- is that characters get to grow, get to incorporate their experiences into who they are," James recently told ComicBook when asked about potentially reuniting with Lincoln's Rick on The Ones Who Live. " I think if Morgan and Rick stood opposite each other, I think the change in who they were when they first met to who they would be now is humongous. I mean, it's almost kind of indescribable."

"The things they've lost, the things they've learned about themselves, the skills, the terrible, terrible things they've done, and the amazing things they've done," James continued. "Those two men standing opposite each other, the history that passes between them would just be unfathomable. It would be massive. I think back to when that first reunion came in Alexandria [in the season 5 finale], and it was this jaw-dropping moment. Now, so much more has happened since then. It would be incredible."

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 series premiere of The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live.] Rick Grimes has been shot, stabbed, beaten to a bloody pulp, and blown up on a bridge filled with zombies, but the injury-prone survivor made it out of The Walking Dead relatively unscathed. That changed in AMC's new Walking Dead spinoff The Ones Who Live. In the opening minutes of Sunday's "Years" series premiere, a desperate Rick (Andrew Lincoln) chopped off his hand with an ax during a failed attempt to escape the clutches of the CRM. The Walking Dead's latest amputee then cauterized the wound by plunging his arm into a burning walker corpse.

Rick's injury happened while on a voluntary assignment with the Civic Republic's army. Five years into his consignment with the Civic Republic Military, Rick was tethered to a CRM soldier during a level-three hazardous event: protecting the Civic Republic's crops and food stores from being destroyed by a horde of flaming walkers. Rick ran as far as his steel leash allowed, wrapped his belt around his arm as a tourniquet... and severed his left hand at the wrist with a slice of his blade.

Rick suffered a similarly gruesome injury in The Walking Dead comics, which foreshadowed Rick losing a hand during the prison arc. Rick once beat a prisoner so brutally that he broke every finger in his mangled right hand (in The Walking Dead #17):

...and Rick was forced to hack off a zombie-bitten Allen's leg with a hatchet (in The Walking Dead #21):

When Rick, Michonne, and Glenn ran across the Governor of Woodbury, the villain pinned Rick down and cut off his hand with a knife (in The Walking Dead #28). Rick passed out from blood loss and woke up to find that his hand had been amputated.

Rick eventually had the Hilltop's blacksmith, Earl Sutton, make him a prosthetic hand that he debuted with his new look (in The Walking Dead #127):

Rick's TV counterpart also receives a prosthetic hand: a black-gloved fist that unsheathes a single blade with a flick of the wrist.

Lincoln, who co-created The Ones Who Live with co-star Danai Gurira and showrunner Scott M. Gimple, previously told ComicBook that he lobbied for the show to cut off Rick's hand during season 4 of The Walking Dead.

"You know, I campaigned two seasons ago when the Governor was around... I was saying, 'You've gotta do the hand, guys!' And Victor [Scalise], who was in charge of special effects, just said, 'No, no no no. Anybody else, but not you. It'll cost a fortune with green screen and blue screen,'" Lincoln explained to ComicBook in a 2015 interview. "But you know, I'm of the opinion that certainly with where the story seems to be going [in season 6], no one is safe of any long term damage." Rick ultimately made it out of season 6 and The Walking Dead without long term damage... but now the gloves are off.

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 series premiere of The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live.] It's a mystery that spanned three Walking Dead shows: what are "A's" and "B's"? Jadis (Pollyanna McIntosh) was involved with trafficking people to the three-ring group that helicoptered Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) off The Walking Dead, who we later learned are the Civic Republic Military. It was under this binary classification system that Rick, Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), and Father Gabriel (Seth Gilliam) were all captured and designated as "A's," only for Jadis to radio a CRM helicopter that she had a "B": an injured Rick.

The CRM helicopter pilot told Jadis she would need an "A" for extraction from her junkyard to the Civic Republic, a hidden city of 200,000 survivors in Philadelphia. Jadis initially said she had an "A" ready for transport, but after Rick blew up a bridge filled with walkers and washed up on a riverbank, Jadis reached the pilot and told him: "I have a 'B.' Not an 'A.' I never had an 'A.' He's hurt, but he's strong." Jadis saved Rick's life, but then traded him to the Civic Republic's army as her price of admission into the secret civilization where Rick has been trapped for the past eight years.

The "Years" series premiere of The Ones Who Live reveals that Rick spent the first six years after the bridge on consignment as the charge of CRM Lt. Col. Donald Okafor (Craig Tate), who recruited Rick into the military ranks despite his four failed escape attempts. Rick spent the next two years moving up the CRM ranks as a helicopter pilot and soldier with fellow former consignee Pearl Thorne (Lesley-Ann Brandt) as part of Okafor's secret program.

"The CRM designates people they find as A's and B's," Okafor explains. "A's have a strength. A's will die for what they believe in. People follow A's. The people we cross in the world, the few we bring in, they're classified as B's. Everyday people who are just trying to survive. B's get in. A's are sent away and killed, except you two."

Rick and Thorne are "A's," but Okafor convinced CRM Major General Beale (Terry O'Quinn) to allow them into consignment and then the army. Okafor needs strong leaders to move up the ranks and change the CRM from the inside, but without Beale and the army's knowledge -- a Trojan horse. "I believe A's who become soldiers, who become leaders, are the only thing that could possibly change the CRM," Okafor tells his trusted Sergeant Majors.

The Walking Dead: World Beyond revealed the fate of "A's": test subjects for the CRM's zombie experiments. Beale and former CRM Lt. Col. Elizabeth Kublek (Julia Ormond) founded Project Votus -- a study of live test subjects through death to further the CRM's research on reanimation -- but it was CR Research Facility scientist Dr. Lyla Belshaw (Natalie Gold) who conducted the classified experiments.

"A's" are suffocated with a green liquid chlorine gas and then the victim is studied as they turn. Through this research, the CRM aims to figure out what makes the dead turn, what keeps them animated, what slows their decomposition rates, and what feeds their appetities. If the CRM can "turn off those triggers," as Belshaw put it, humanity could "eliminate the dead as a threat and eradicate them from the earth." Essentially, a potential cure for the zombie virus.

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.

"Years" isn't just the title of Sunday's series premiere episode of The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live -- it's how long Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) has been in the clutches of the CRM. Eight years have passed since Rick disappeared on season 9 of The Walking Dead, where the wounded Rick led a walker herd to a bridge and then blew it up to save his family and friends. His wife Michonne (Danai Gurira) thought she watched Rick die, but Jadis/Anne (Pollyanna McIntosh) radioed someone that she had a "B" and airlifted Rick away aboard a Civic Republic Military helicopter to... somewhere.

The Walking Dead: World Beyond dropped clues that Jadis traded Rick to the CRM for entry into the Civic Republic, a hidden city of 200,000 survivors in post-apocalyptic Philadelphia. The series finale of The Walking Dead confirmed this when Rick, shown wearing a jacket with the three-ring symbol of the CRM, tried (and failed) to escape before being recaptured by a helicopter pilot who reminded Rick: "It's like he told you. There's no escape for the living."

That was Rick's third escape attempt. Picking up five years after the bridge, the new series begins with escape attempt number four: Rick cutting off his hand to free himself from a CRM soldier's leash while on assignment killing walkers (called "delts"). As Consignee Grimes, Rick is the charge of CRM Lt. Col. Donald Okafor (Craig Tate), the one who told Rick "there's no escape for the living." He's also the man responsible for saving Rick's life: Okafor convinced Major General Beale (Terry O'Quinn) to allow Rick into consignment.

After his helicopter flight with Jadis, Rick woke up in a military hospital at the C.R.P. (the Civic Republic of Philadelphia). He's spent years working in the outskirts of the city with other consignees, people the Civic Republic's army rescues and then tasks with killing walkers or working in energy, growing food, or water and waste management. After six years of consignment, workers have a path to becoming citizens of the Civic Republic. "Security and secrecy above all. That's the army's code," Rick writes in a letter to Michonne. "So no one can leave, ever."

As it turns out, Okafor protected Rick to recruit him to his covert program with fellow consignee Pearl Thorne (Lesley-Ann Brandt). One year after Rick and Thorne enlist as soldiers in the CRM, Okafor reveals his plans for Sgt. Maj. Grimes and Sgt. Maj. Thorne: to become leaders and join force command within the Civic Republic Military. Okafor needs leaders to help him change the CRM from the inside, explaining why Rick and Thorne -- both designated as "A's" -- were allowed into consignment and the military. (A's are people with strengths, and B's are everyday people just trying to survive. B's get in; A's are sent away and killed to be used as test subjects for the CRM's secret zombie experiments.)

Other CRM secrets will be declassified when Rick and Thorne move up the ranks and receive the top-secret Echelon Briefing: "All the info, the whys, the things 90% of our force doesn't know about and 100% of our city doesn't." Okafor believes that A's who become soldiers will become leaders who can change the CRM, which has been carrying out clandestine "tactical military operations" that eliminated the Omaha Safe-Zone (population: 97,407) and Campus Colony (population: 9,671) communities with a green liquid chlorine gas on World Beyond. With a force of 17,000, this is their chance to save the world.

"He wanted to change things, change the army without them even knowing it. And he wanted my help to do it. I'd play along, but it wasn't my fight," Rick writes in his letter. "Everything was about secrets. The army kept the city a secret at all costs. Everything the army did was secret to the city. And then there were the soldiers with those blood-red stripes keeping what they did a secret to the whole force. Secrets on secrets."

Okafor keeps secrets from Rick, too. He found the message in the bottle that Rick tossed into the water during his escape to Rat Island (in The Walking Dead series finale) and learned about Rick's wife and daughter, and then used that intel to track down Rick's home at the Alexandria Safe-Zone. If Rick were to escape, CRM protocol would have dispatched Okafor to find and kill his charge, Michonne, and anyone else who knew about the Civic Republic in the name of operational security. Security and secrecy above all.

Rick contemplates suicide when he learns that escape puts his family in danger. Okafor moves Rick to Logistics with Thorne to help convert a college in the Cascades to a battle-ready forward operating base where CRM brass will convene for a summit in one year. Rick and Thorne spend the next 12 months converting the college into the CRM Cascades base, and by the time its completed, it's been eight years since the bridge.

"I love you so much. I love you so, so much. I tried. Please just know I tried," Rick writes in a letter to Michonne that he then burns with phones etched with drawings of Michonne and Judith. "I tried... but I failed." There's no escape for the living.

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.

The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live, AMC's new Walking Dead spinoff, begins with Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) about to die by suicide. "I tried. Please know I tried," a despairing Rick intones in voice over. In one hand: an old cell phone etched with a drawing of his wife, Michonne (Danai Gurira). In the other hand: a piece of broken glass he presses against his neck. On Rick's television, a Civic Republic news anchor recounts a city falling to a walker incursion. He sighs, scoffs, and... he'll keep trying. Rick Grimes lives.

A flashback to FIVE YEARS AFTER THE BRIDGE. Consignee Grimes is tethered by the wrist to a black-clad soldier of the Civic Republic Military. Against the backdrop of a fleet of CRM helicopters and glowing red lights, Rick and other leashed CRM consignees wearing jackets with the three-ring symbol are on a voluntary assignment to handle a level-three hazardous event. By eliminating the advance of ignited "delts" -- walkers set ablaze by a fire -- they're protecting crops and food stores for the more than 200,000 people living in the C.R.P.: the Civic Republic of Philadelphia.

Rick runs as far as the tether allows him before he's yanked to the ground. Rick undoes his belt, wraps it around his arm as a tourniquet, readies his ax, and tells himself: "This is how." Then Rick chops off his left hand and makes a run for it into the zombie-filled woods. "Consignee Grimes is breaking protocol," a CRM soldier yells out, chasing after the fleeing amputee. Bleeding out, Rick stabs his ax into a delt's brain and shoves his bloody stump into its smoldering corpse to cauterize his wound. And he almost gets away... until the CRM soldier shoots Rick with a taser that incapacitates his charge.

As he drifts in and out of consciousness, hazy memories flood his mind. Burning crops. Wind turbines that turn into the whirring blades of a helicopter. Alexandria's jail cell. A farm house lit by the glow of flames. Rick and Michonne yell out to each other as the bridge filled with walkers explodes. In another lifetime, Rick and Michonne meet as strangers on a park bench. He's lost, so she points him in the right direction. "You'll get there," she tells him. "I believe in you." Rick asks the friendly stranger dressed in a purple business suit if she works in the area. "It's not where I want to be," she replies. "Are you where you wanna be?"

Rick wakes up. Back in this lifetime, Rick writes a letter to Michonne. "I always thought I would wait to tell you everything when we were finally back together, that it'd just be a story on the porch after the sun went down, when we could barely see each other, but I have to tell you now. Not everything. I can't face everything. This is most of it, but all of it... it was always about getting back to you." Inside Rick's bag are old cell phones with drawings of Michonne and Judith on the glass.

"What happened on the bridge, I didn't think I'd survive. And I woke up in a military hospital. An army found me, a force of thousands, protecting a working, hidden city of hundreds of thousands. Security and secrecy above all. That's the army's code. So no one can leave ever. The city governs itself, completely separate from the military. But it follows that one rule, that law from outside the walls. The people they rescue, they work in the outskirts, killing walkers for energy or growing food or managing the water, the waste."

In post-apocalyptic Philadelphia, Consignee Grimes spends his years clearing delts for the CRM. "After six years of it, they get into the city, away from the army, from the outskirts. They're called consignees. And I was one of them, but I was never gonna go in. I was gonna get away. I was gonna get back to you. God damn it, I was." Consignee Grimes is the charge of CRM Lt. Col. Donald Okafor (Craig Tate), who reminds Rick: "I lobby the head of what is most likely the most powerful military of the planet on your behalf. I am possibly the best friend you ever had."

Okafor spoke with Major General Beale about Rick moving up the ranks, but Rick thinks slumming it out in the outskirts gives him a better chance at escape. "It doesn't," Okafor says. "It just gives you another chance to die." Okafor, his face scarred after an encounter with someone like Rick, believes Consignee Grimes is better suited for his program.

"First time I tried, the army didn't know what to do with me. Because no one tries to escape. No one wants to. Would they put me in jail? Kill me? A lieutenant colonel named Okafor, he convinced them to keep me a consignee, and I kept trying to escape. But I couldn't. I couldn't get back to you. I kept trying to get away. So they put me on a leash when we went out into the world. I couldn't get away. I couldn't get back to you. I was trapped. Okafor protected me because he said he saw something in me. He wanted me to join his program, to join their army, to use my life for them."

"I keep on telling you: for people like us, there's no escape for the living," Okafor reminds Rick, telling him it's time to accept things for what they are. "It cost your hand last time. Next time, it's your life. Do something with it." As Rick looks overhead and watches a CRM helicopter armed with bombs fly away, Consignee Pearl Thorne (Lesley-Ann Brandt) throws a glass at Rick and takes a swig from a half-full bottle of whiskey. It's her way of thanking him: "You showed me I can't get away."

The outskirts of the C.R.P. are a lonely place for Rick Grimes. His only friend is fellow consignee Esteban (Frankie Quinones), a joker who spent two years getting Rick to talk. On a bench facing the Civic Republic across the water, Esteban likens the hidden city to the good life, and the outskirts are Alcatraz. It's Esteban's last day working utilities in the outskirts: starting tomorrow, he'll be inside the Civic Republic's air-conditioned walls with a promotion to Deputy Manager of Water and Power of Ward 3. After six long years, his consignment is over. Rick congratulates Esteban on his citizenship and thanks him "for whatever the hell this is." With Okafor attempting to recruit Rick into the CRM, Esteban suggests he enlist and then make his next move when he's outside the walls.

Rick is fitted with an all-black prosthetic hand that matches his all-black CRM gear. He trains in hand-to-hand combat with his fellow soldier-in-training, Thorne, and trains as a helicopter pilot operating a flight simulator. It's all under the watchful eye of CRM Major General Beale (Terry O'Quinn), who receives a salute from Sergeant Majors Rick Grimes. In a CRM helicopter, Rick is Okafor's co-pilot. "Is this the end of it and the start of something else?" Okafor asks. "It's the end," Rick replies, "and the start."

In the ruins of a stadium, Okafor conspires with Sgt. Maj. Grimes and Sgt. Maj. Thorne. It's been a year since Thorne and Rick enlisted with the CRM, but Okafor's secret program isn't about Thorne and Rick becoming soldiers. "It's about you two becoming leaders," he explains, and he's going to help them become part of CRM force command. "I tried to escape four times," Rick reminds him. "I tried to kill you," adds Thorne of Okafor's facial scar. And that's why they can help him change the CRM from the inside.

Thorne believes in the operational security of the CRM -- the city runs itself, and the military runs the world outside. It may be civilization, Rick argues, but people can't leave. They're not free. Okafor declassifies the "A" and "B" classification system: "The CRM designates people they find as A's and B's. A's have a strength. A's will die for what they believe in. People follow A's. The people we cross in the world, the few we bring in, they're classified as B's. Everyday people who are just trying to survive. B's get in. A's are sent away and killed, except you two." Rick was an "A" before Jadis/Anne (Pollyanna McIntosh) branded him a "B" when she fished him out of the riverbank back at the bridge.

Okafor needs strong leaders like Rick and Thorne. "A's" who become soldiers, who become leaders, are the only thing that can change the CRM from the inside. "Being the monster to fight the monsters, that can't last," says Okafor, who carried out the bombings of Atlanta and Los Angeles as part of the U.S. military's sunset protocols and Operation Cobalt. They'll learn the rest of the CRM secrets when they move up the ranks and receive the Echelon Briefing: "The whys, the things 90% of our force doesn't know about and 100% of our city doesn't." When Rick questions why he'd go along with Okafor's secret briefings if he's an "A," his superior answers: "Because I believe if either one of you had a chance to save the world, you would."

"He wanted to change things, change the army without them even knowing it," Rick writes in his letter to Michonne. "And he wanted my help to do it. I'd play along, but it wasn't my fight." Thorne threatens to kill Rick if he risks her future with the CRM, revealing she was a submarine worker in the South African Navy when Okafor fished her out of the Atlantic Ocean. Thorne fired the shot that grazed Okafor's face when he ruined her attempt to get home, but she's come to accept she'll never see her "someone" ever again. Rick refuses to believe that the people they want to get back to are gone, including his wife. "She's not. They aren't," Thorne says through gritted teeth. "We are."

"Early on, the army had found two other cities, Portland and Omaha. Not as big, not as sophisticated, and not keeping themselves secret. All three cities became an alliance, even though two don't know where the third is. The world is so much bigger than we knew, Michonne, so much better, and so much worse."

Rick meets with Beale, who reveals that the CRM was once the Pennsylvania National Guard. Okafor was with the Air Force when the military bombed Atlanta with napalm and went AWOL rather than carry out orders to bomb Philadelphia. Okafor switched sides, bombing 4,000 Marines at Lincoln Financial Field. Beale then tells Rick that he and Thorne would never have been allowed into the CRM if not for Okafor, who vouched for them to be let into consignment and then the army. When Beale asks if Okafor is up to anything he should know about, Rick lies: No. "You tried to escape four times. Why are you here?" Beale asks. "Do you want to kill? To die? Or is all this just another attempt to escape?" Rick has Beale look into his eyes... and has his answer.

"Everything was about secrets. The army kept the city a secret at all costs. Everything the army did was secret to the city. And then there were the soldiers with those blood-red stripes keeping what they did a secret to the whole force. Secrets on secrets. And the only thing I cared about was holding onto mine."

After another secret meeting with Okafor and Thorne, Rick keeps his own secret: he's studying blue prints for Civic Republic water lines and sewage access tunnels. Rick refuses to stop trying to get home. Esteban, now Ward 3 Water Manager, tips him off to a tunnel that will take Rick due east to a junction about a mile out and provides the code to a padlocked gate. "I have to keep trying. I won't stop," Rick says. "I'm getting there. I'm getting home, or I'm dying. That's it."

It's during a CRM resource run to the Gen-Klor Chemicals plant with Thorne that Rick makes another escape attempt. Rick takes a walker body, cuts off its hand, and leaves it to burn with his dog tags to make it look like Rick died at the abandoned chemical plant. "'There's no escape for the living,' so I had to make sure they thought I was dead." Ruining Rick's plan is a little girl (Alexis Rae Forlenza), whose family were turned into undead delts taken out by the CRM. Rick saves the girl from walkers, but he's forced to abandon his escape attempt when Thorne locates the evacuee. Rick asks Thorne for her help, and she gives it: "He would have found you, and whoever you're running to. He knows about you, Grimes." The resource extraction complete, the CRM rolls out... with Sgt. Maj. Grimes in tow.

Back at base, Rick sneaks into Okafor's room and presses a blade to his throat. He interrogates the Lt. Col. and finds out that Okafor confiscated the message in a bottle that Rick tossed into the water on Rat Island during his third escape (in The Walking Dead series finale). "'I think of the dead all the time,'" Okafor begins, revealing he learned Michonne's name from the note. "Who f---ing knows?" Rick growls. Okafor answers, "Michonne is an unusual name. Not many people out there, but if you start the search around where we picked you up... that's potent information."

Okafor tells Rick that if he escaped the CRM, they would send him to clean up his mess and finally erase Rick. "You are my charge. I'm the one who'd have to kill you and Michonne and anyone else you ran into out there. Just knowing about this--" before Okafor can say anymore, Rick kicks him in the face. He doesn't care why Okafor's red-striped soldiers come back covered in blood or why the helicopters go out with bombs that don't come back. He doesn't care about the Civic Republic or its people. He cares about his wife, and his daughter, and making his own choices that will get him home. Okafor tells Rick he lost everything, including his wife: she was one of the 4,000 Marines who died when Okafor refused to "liquidate" Philly. When Okafor gets the upper hand, Rick urges Okafor to let him go. That doesn't work, so Rick puts Okafor's gun to his head. "Do it. Please." But Okafor won't pull the trigger. Rick Grimes lives another day.

Rick is moved to Logistics with Thorne, where he'll spend the next 12 months converting a college in the Cascades into a forward operating base for the CRM Frontliners. In one year, all of the military's top commanders will convene at a summit there to open the base. Okafor calls it Rick's path to the higher echelons of power, but Rick doesn't want power. "That's the thing," Okafor says. "You already have it."

In Rick's apartment, Thorne turns on the television to the news broadcast from the beginning of the episode. It's reported that the Alliance of Three is now an alliance of two: Omaha has fallen, and nearly 90,000 people are dead (events that happened on The Walking Dead: World Beyond). Thorne believes that Omaha fell because the safe-zone wasn't a secret, reaffirming her believe that what the CR is doing is right. She then tells Rick that the little girl they saved at the chemical plant was the last survivor of her family. The girl hid from the delts for two days before stepping out to die when they found her.

"You and me and that girl, we all want to be somewhere else, with someone else, but we got stuck in the right place. We did," Thorne says. "And you are gonna see that someday. I'm not sorry I stopped you. I'm not sorry I saved your life, even when you didn't want it to be saved." Before she leaves, she drinks to there being "one more good man in this world. One more good man to try and save the world... whether he wants to or not." Rick considers suicide -- after all, there's no escape for the living -- but writes one last letter to Michonne.

"I thought about ending it, just stopping it all. But then -- then it would just be nothing, wouldn't it? All of it, for nothing. I couldn't do it, but I still decided to die. I've been writing you letters the whole time, reaching out, to feel something, writing just to imagine you could read them. This is my last one. The last letter I write to you that you'll never see. I love you. 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. 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."

Another year passes as Rick and Thorne convert the old college in the Cascades into an operational CRM base. "I love you so much. I love you so, so much. I tried. Please just know I tried." Rick holds his letter, and his phones with drawings of Michonne and Judith, and throws them into the fire inside an oil drum. Burning away his old life. "I tried... but I failed."

Rick's dreams of Michonne throughout the episode culminate in that other life where he's stuck at a dead-end job who has lunchtime rendezvous with Michonne. "You're not stuck anywhere," she tells him, admitting she's not where she wants to be, either. "But I'm not stuck. We can make this whole damn world ours if we want to." They kiss... and then this happy dream is consumed by flames, spinning wind turbines, the whirring of helicopter blades, and burning crops.

NOW. Sgt. Maj. Rick Grimes co-pilots a helicopter with Lt. Col. Okafor, who mentions that Rick hardly talks anymore. "I've been thinking about this night when I was a kid. 7 years old. I was thirsty, couldn't sleep, so I went to get some water. Old house, squeaky floorboards, trying not to wake my family," Rick recalls, explaining his recurring nightmare of the burning farmhouse. "I was on the stairs... and I saw a light in the kitchen. It was orange. The crops were burning. I was so scared, I couldn't move. Then, my dad was there. He looked like a monster. Half his body was burnt, but he was there to get me out. He said I didn't need to be scared, that it was just the burning, that the flames were protecting the plants for the next harvest. He said, 'It may look like the end of the world, but it's only just the beginning.' He was so certain, so steady, and... it made me calm. I believed him."

Rick's father survived, and the Grimes' got a new barn and a new house. "Next year, the harvest was the best it ever was. Years later, after my dad died, my mother told me... that it wasn't lightning. That he lit the fire. That the farm was gonna fail... and what he did saved it. He saved us," Rick says. "And it just rocked me. I thought he was the most honest man I knew. My mother said what he did wasn't right. She said that the scars and the pain, it just reminded him... that he saved us. I'm in."

Okafor knows that Rick is the right thing for his plan -- no more "A's and B's, no more Omahas." He then tells Rick, "When you get to that point, swear on the sword. Don't let it take. You'll know." Just then, Okafor is KIA by a whooshing projectile that penetrates the helicopter and impales him. Another explosion rocks the blood-covered chopper, sending it crashing to the ground. Rick radios the base and the soldiers hit their PRBs to send an alert to the downed helicopter, but their attacker is on them.

Another missile takes out two of Rick's soldiers. Then another projectile sends the CRM soldiers flying. A helmeted woman with a sword approaches the soldiers, removing their helmets and slitting their throats. Rick goes for his gun, but the helmeted samurai kicks it out of his hand and swings her sword. The blow is deflected by Rick's gauntlet, and the fight ends with the sword to Rick's throat. The samurai removes the CRM soldier's helmet... revealing the face of the man she lost eight years ago. It's Michonne, in the flesh. Not a dream.

She found him.

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Eight years. That's how much time has passed since season 9 of The Walking Dead separated Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) and Michonne (Danai Gurira), who watched Rick sacrifice himself by blowing up a bridge to save his family and friends from a herd of walkers. (Rick survived the bridge and was airlifted away in a CRM helicopter.) The series then jumped six years into the future to reveal an older Judith Grimes (Cailey Fleming) and her little brother: Michonne and Rick's son, RJ (Antony Azor).

In real time, it's been more than five years since Lincoln departed the flagship series in 2018; Gurira exited the mothership a season later in 2020. After all those years gone "bye," Lincoln and Gurira are returning as Rick and Michonne in new Walking Dead spinoff The Ones Who Live, a six-episode event series premiering Feb. 25 on AMC.

If you stopped watching seasons ago or need a quick refresher, here's everything you need to know to get caught up. (Read our CRM crash course about the Civic Republic Military, our guide on all the ways to watch the new series, and everything else you need to know about The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live.)

The Bridge

19 months after Rick defeated and then spared Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) to end the war with the Saviors, Rick and Michonne were building Carl's (Chandler Riggs) vision for a better future: the new world. As Michonne established a charter between the newly unified people of Alexandria, the Hilltop, the Kingdom, Oceanside, and Sanctuary, Rick oversaw construction on a bridge that would connect all the communities.

After legions of the dead merged into a massive walker herd that threatened to overrun and destroy their civilization, Daryl (Norman Reedus) suggested bringing down the bridge and washing the zombies out to sea. Rick refused to sacrifice the bridge at first... only to sacrifice himself by leading the walkers to the bridge and blowing it up to save his family and friends.

Rick appeared to die in the explosion but was found on alive on a riverbank by Jadis/Anne (Pollyanna McIntosh), who radioed a CRM helicopter that she had a "B." The helicopter with the three-ring symbol airlifted an injured Rick away from Virginia to parts unknown.

Episode: Season 9, Episode 5, "What Comes After"

The Body

In a flashback to about eight months after Rick's disappearance, Daryl and a pregnant Michonne scoured the woods for Rick's body. Daryl refused to return to Alexandria unless he found something, but their exhaustive search only turned up Rick's gun: his mud-covered Colt Python. "Ain't gonna stop looking," Daryl told Michonne of a hunt that took him to the ocean and back. "Not ever."

Episode: Season 9, Episode 14, "Scars"

The Baby

Six years after the bridge, a time skip revealed Michonne and Rick's son, Rick "RJ" Grimes Jr. (The Richonne baby was conceived when Rick suggested "another way to build for the future" in the season 9 episode "Warning Signs.")

Episode: Season 9, Episode 6, "Who Are You Now?"

The Bag

Years after the bridge, Consignee Rick Grimes escaped the Civic Republic of Philadelphia with a handful of possessions: a kill stick, canned food with the three-ring symbol of the CRM, a journal, his cowboy boots, and a phone etched with Japanese lettering and drawings of Michonne and Judith. Rick tossed his bag onto a boat -- marked with the numbers 672 -- before he was recaptured by a CRM helicopter.

Episode: Season 11, Episode 24, "Rest in Peace"

The Boat

Six years after the bridge, Michonne embarked on a mission to a naval base on Bloodsworth Island, Maryland, where Virgil (Kevin Carroll) claimed to know the locations of weapons and munitions to help the survivors in their war against the Whisperers. Instead, Michonne came across boat 672, which Virgil said washed up on the shore during a big storm.

Michonne found Rick's boots, the phone, and a logbook documenting the boat's journey from Tampa Bay, Florida, to Hopewell, Virginia, and then Bridgers Shipyard in New Jersey.

Episode: Season 10, Episode 13, "What We Become"

The Brave Man

Michonne (code name "Daito") reached Judith (code name "Shoto") and RJ (code name "Little Brave Man") over walkie-talkie to tell her children that she found "the Brave Man's" belongings. "If you think he's alive," Judith answered back, "then you have to go find him." Michonne wanted to head home to Alexandria, but Judith urged her to find Rick and bring him home. "What if he needs you more? What if he's trying to come home, too, but no one will help?"

Michonne said she would try and would head north to New Jersey, promising to try to reach Judith on the walkie for as long as she could. Judith told her mom: "Go get him."

Episode: Season 10, Episode 13, "What We Become"

The Belongings

After encountering a mass migration of survivors somewhere between Maryland and New Jersey, Michonne was seen with Rick's bag in the coda sequence ending The Walking Dead series finale. Michonne was years behind Rick, but their timelines will soon intersect on The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live.

Episode: Season 11, Episode 24, "Rest in Peace"

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Matthew Jeffers, who plays Nat on The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live, told ComicBook.com that he likely would never have had a chance to play the role if not for the intervention of co-star Danai Gurira. Speaking with us in support of the new series, Jeffers explained that he had starred alongside Gurira in Richard III and, in his words, 15th Century England brought him to post-apocalyptic Philadelphia, by way of a visit to the stage show by The Ones Who Live executive producer Scott Gimple.

Gurira has had quite a bit of influence on the direction of the new series, even writing an episode of the season, where she told us Scott Gimple told the crew to defer to her as de facto showrunner of the week.

"I did Shakespeare in the Park in 2022 with Danai Gurira, who played Richard III," Jeffers told ComicBook.com. "Really early on, we realized we worked really well together. We didn't have a ton of stage time, but the time that we had, it just clicked. I loved working with her, I think she felt a similar way, so when that show wrapped, a few months later I got a call from my agent, and they were like, 'You have this audition for this new spinoff of The Walking Dead,' and I realized later down the road that it was through that collaboration with Danai, that she wanted to continue the collaboration and invited Scott [Gimple] to see the show. He signed off and the whole team was like, 'Yeah, let's do this.' It was this beautiful confluence of events and really, the most beautiful part of acting is how things lead to more projects. 15th-century England led me to post-apocalyptic Philadelphia. That is, as an actor, that's the dream come true. You show up, you do good work, you take the work seriously, and you hope that that leads to another opportunity, so it's been great."

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

Walking Dead Universe Chief Content Officer Scott M. Gimple serves as showrunner and executive producer with Lincoln, Gurira, Denise Huth (The Walking Dead), and Brian Bockrath (The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon). The cast includes Lesley-Ann Brandt (Lucifer) as Pearl Thorne, Matthew Jeffers (The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel) as Nat, Terry O'Quinn (Lost) as Major General Beale, and Pollyanna McIntosh (The Walking Dead) as Jadis.

The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live premieres Sunday, February 25, on AMC and AMC+.

"Security and secrecy above all" is the motto of the CRM: the Civic Republic Military. The three-ring helicopter group that airlifted an injured Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) away on season 9 of The Walking Dead is shrouded in secrecy, but spinoffs Fear the Walking Dead and The Walking Dead: World Beyond shed light on the mysterious organization that calls itself "the last light of the world." The black-clad helmeted soldiers return in The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live -- with Rick among their ranks. When the new series premieres Feb. 25 on AMC, burning questions about Rick's whereabouts will be answered and CRM secrets will be declassified.

Here is your CRM crash course for everything you need to know about the Walking Dead Universe villains.

The Helicopter

After waking up from a coma in the "Days Gone Bye" pilot episode of The Walking Dead, Rick witnessed a still-operational helicopter when he trekked into post-apocalyptic Atlanta on horseback. He wouldn't see another helicopter until he watched a black chopper fly overhead in The Walking Dead season 8 episode 5, "The Big Scary U."

The "A"

"We take. We don't bother," Scavenger leader Jadis (Pollyanna McIntosh) told Rick when the group tracked the missing Father Gabriel (Seth Gilliam) to a junkyard in The Walking Dead season 7 episode "New Best Friends," where a helipad was visible among the Heaps (more on that later). After Jadis captured Rick in season 8 episode 6, "The King, the Widow, and Rick," she imprisoned him inside a storage container marked with an "A."

The Three-Rings Symbol

The symbol with the three interconnected rings first appeared on canned food in the possession of the junkyard-dwelling Jadis in season 8 episode 10, "The Lost and the Plunderers." Savior Simon (Steven Ogg) questioned Jadis about the helipad and the solar panels, but Jadis said only that the Heaps was "a dump."

Season 8 episode 14, "Still Gotta Mean Something," revealed Jadis lived inside a storage container converted into clean living quarters well-supplied with cans of applesauce... and a suitcase. Jadis prepared another "A" -- a captured Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) -- and then signaled the helicopter with the three-ring symbol, but it departed without her.

"A" or "B"

In season 9 episode 2, "The Bridge," Jadis spotted a helicopter circling in the night sky. In season 9 episode 3, "Warning Signs," she reached a helicopter pilot over walkie talkie. "What do you have? An 'A' or a 'B'?" the pilot asked, telling her: "No pickups. But the deal still stands. Do you have an 'A' or a 'B'?"

Jadis responded that she had nothing to trade. The helicopter pilot told her she would need an "A" in exchange for extraction.

The Hidden City

Jadis later confessed to Father Gabriel that she traded people for food and supplies. "Gabriel, leave with me. There's another place. It's far from here, but if we go together we can get there," she told him of this secret civilization where they could "have a life like you can't imagine." It was the first indirect mention of the Civic Republic, a hidden city of over 200,000 survivors. But when he went to alert Rick, Jadis knocked Gabriel out and said: "All this time... I thought you were a 'B.'" (Like Rick and Negan before him, Gabriel was classified as an "A" when Jadis almost had him bitten by a walker.) "There's only one place left for me to go," Jadis told Gabriel, "and you're the price of admission."

The Trade

After Rick led a zombie herd to a bridge he then blew up to save his family and friends, Jadis found him alive in the riverbed. "I have a 'B.' Not an 'A.' I never had an 'A,'" Jadis told the pilot over walkie talkie, adding her "B" was "hurt, but he's strong." The CRM helicopter then shuttled Rick and Jadis away from Virginia. In The Walking Dead: World Beyond episode "Who Are You?," Jadis confirmed she traded Rick to the Civic Republic's army for admission into the CR: "I gave the CRM something very valuable, and I got a new life," she said. "I know that the Civic Republic is the last light of the world, and my purpose is to create a new era on this planet."

The Reclamation Team

Fear the Walking Dead season 5 episode 5, "The End of Everything," saw Althea (Maggie Grace) encounter CRM soldier and pilot Isabelle (Sydney Lemmon) in Texas after she came across drop maps marked with the CRM logo. Isabelle and Beckett (James Armstrong) were part of Ground 17, but per protocol, Isabelle killed Beckett when he became a "threat to operational security."

"Nobody just walks away, let alone with the maps he carried," Isabelle told Al, explaining that the maps "make what we have, what we're working towards, vulnerable." She then warned the journalist: "If you see someone wearing this jacket, you should be afraid. We are a force who are not living for ourselves or for now. You have your stories, already making every day the past. We have the future."

Isabelle managed to call off a "reclamation team," tasked with covering up all traces of the CRM's existence -- no matter who they have to kill. Al later summoned Isabelle to airlift her friends out of the blast zone when nuclear warheads were detonated in the season 6 episode "The Beginning," and in the season 7 episode "Reclamation," Al and Isabelle went AWOL -- going on the run together, knowing that the CRM would "never stop looking" for them. Because no one gets away alive.

The Civic Republic

The CR made its first appearance in The Walking Dead: World Beyond season 1 episode 3, "The Tyger and the Lamb." Among the population of 200,000 was CRM Lt. Col. Elizabeth Kublek (Julia Ormond). "We have energy, water, medicine, transport, the Council, the courts, the schools, culture, currency, an economy, agriculture, manufacturing, law... we are the last light of the world," Kublek revealed. "We are the last hope. And we, us, enable this population of over 200,000 souls to live. To create the future."

In The Walking Dead: World Beyond season 1 episode 4, Elton (Nicolas Cantu) referred to the Civic Republic as "The Hidden City." "If they have technology and agriculture and sophisticated governmental systems, it'd be smart to stay hidden," Elton posited. "Even if it makes others question their motives."

The Alliance of the Three

The Walking Dead: World Beyond revealed that the three-ring symbol represented the Alliance of the Three: the Civic Republic (population: 200,000); Portland, Oregon (population: 87,000); and Omaha, Nebraska (population: 97,407), plus its satellite, the Campus Colony (population: 9,671) in Lincoln, Nebraska. However, the CRM eliminated the Omaha Safe-Zone and the Campus Colony as part of a clandestine military operation ordered by CRM Major General Beale, who was first mentioned by Kublek in the World Beyond pilot episode "Brave."

The CRM claimed that Omaha and the Campus Colony were overrun by the dead, but Jadis -- now CRM Warrant Officer Jadis Stokes -- helped carry out a military operation to wipe out both civilizations with a bioweapon: a lethal green liquid chlorine gas.

The CRC

A conversation between CRM Staff Sergeant Jennifer Mallick (Annet Mahendru) and discharged CRM soldier Dennis (Maximilian Osinski) shed light on the CRM origins. In the World Beyond episode "Quartervois," it was learned that the Civic Republic Military agreed to a transition of power over to the Civic Republic Council (CRC) and the Civilian Government after a decade. But 10 years later, in 2020, CRM Major General Beale requested an emergency delay of civilian oversight due to the tragedies in Nebraska.

Read an excerpt from an issue of The Civic Republic Tribune:

A transition of power from military leadership to full civilian oversight is a bedrock provision of the Civic Republic's Founding Compact, the foundational document that has guided our city to rebuilding humanity for over nine years. Authors of the document were in agreement that military autonomy was imperative for the early survival of the CR, as well as its stabilization in the years to follow.

Project Votus

On World Beyond, it was revealed that Beale and Kublek founded Project Votus: a project that involves studying live test subjects through death to further research on reanimation. At a Civic Republic Research Facility located in Ithaca, New York, the CR recruited scientists like Dr. Leo Bennett (Joe Holt) and Dr. Lyla Belshaw (Natalie Gold) to develop a cure for the zombie virus. While Bennett researched fungi to accelerate the decay of the dead and eradicate "empties," Belshaw's secret zombie experiments used zombie-bitten test subjects that the CRM classified as "As."

Belshaw created the green chlorine gas that was used to suffocate "A" test subjects and, later, was used as a bioweapon in the CRM's "tactical military operation" that destroyed Omaha and the Campus Colony.

The C.R.P.

The Walking Dead's "Rest in Peace" series finale showed Rick wearing a jacket with the three-ring logo. While he never appeared on World Beyond, the episode titled "Foothold" contained clues about Rick's fate: "Consignee Grimes" was put to work culling walkers at a Civic Republic Cull Facility. At these abandoned arenas and stadiums converted into CR decontamination centers, workers clear zombies on a mass scale to give the Civic Republic a foothold and reclaim entire states overrun by the dead.

CRM prisoner Silas (Hal Cumpston) was similarly remanded to one of six decontamination centers in New York state, each operated by trained Civic Republic Military personnel. Rick, however, has spent the past eight years at the C.R.P.: the Civic Republic of Philadelphia. After six years, Consignees have a path for citizenship into the Civic Republic and can enlist in the CRM. But once you're in... you can never escape.

The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live premieres February 25 on AMC and AMC+. Here's everything else you need to know about the new Walking Dead Rick and Michonne show, and here's all the ways to watch.

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"We're the ones who live." Spoken by Andrew Lincoln's Rick Grimes and Danai Gurira's Michonne on The Walking Dead, those five words would inspire the new Walking Dead spinoff series reuniting Rick and Michonne for the first time in years. First announced as a trilogy of Walking Dead movies following Lincoln's departure from the mothership show in season 9, Lincoln and Gurira collaborated with showrunner Scott M. Gimple to rework the features into a six-episode event series. After years gone "bye," Rick and Michonne return in The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live.

Here's a rundown of everything to know about The Walking Dead Rick and Michonne show, including when and where to watch the new series.

What Is The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live About?

The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live reveals what happened to Rick after Jadis (Pollyanna McIntosh) had him airlifted away in a CRM helicopter on season 9 of The Walking Dead. In season 10, Michonne learned that Rick didn't die in the bridge explosion and then set off to bring him home to their children: Judith and Rick "RJ" Grimes Jr.

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

The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live Cast

Along with Lincoln and Gurira returning as Rick and Michonne, the series stars TWD Universe newcomers Lesley-Ann Brandt (Lucifer) as Civic Republic Military Sgt. Major Pearl Thorne, Terry O'Quinn (Lost) as CRM Major General Beale, Matthew August Jeffers (New Amsterdam) as Nat, and Craig Tate (Snowfall) as CRM Lt. Col. Donald Okafor. Pollyanna McIntosh, who played Jadis on The Walking Dead and returned on The Walking Dead: World Beyond, reprises her role as CRM Warrant Officer Jadis Stokes.

How Many Episodes Is The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live?

The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live is being described as a "six-episode event series."

When and Where to Watch The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live

The new Walking Dead series premieres Sunday, February 25, at 9 p.m. ET on AMC and AMC+. New episodes will release weekly on Sundays.

Cord-cutters who don't have cable can stream The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live with an AMC+ subscription, which begins at $4.99/month for the Monthly With Ads plan or $8.99/month for the Ad-free Monthly plan.

Who Made the New Walking Dead Series?

Lincoln and Gurira developed and co-created The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live with Scott M. Gimple, AMC's TWD Universe chief content officer who showran seasons 4--8 of The Walking Dead. Lincoln and Gurira also serve as executive producers with Gimple, Brian Bockrath (The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon), and longtime Walking Dead executive producers Denise Huth, Greg Nicotero, Gale Anne Hurd, David Alpert and TWD creator Robert Kirkman. Also on board as co-executive producers are episodes 1 & 2 directors Bert & Bertie (Silo), Gabriel Llanas (Avatar: The Last Airbender), Channing Powell (Tales of The Walking Dead), and Ryan DeGard ?(The Walking Dead: Dead City).

The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live Title Explained

"The ones who live" is a phrase that has been repeated throughout The Walking Dead. Rick was the first to say it when he told the residents of the Alexandria Safe-Zone that his group knows how to survive in the season 5 episode "Try," and Michonne reminded him of his words after the Alexandrians were subjugated by Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) and the Saviors.

"We're still alive, Rick. So much has happened. So much that we shouldn't have lived through. In spite of it, or maybe because of it, we did. We're still here. The two of us," Michonne, now Rick's partner, told him in the season 7 episode "Hearts Still Beating." "We're still standing and we're going to keep standing. So what do we do with that? How do we make that mean something? We're the ones who get things done. You said that. We're the ones who live." Michonne repeated it back to Rick again in "Rock in the Road," when the couple took out a walker horde. "We're here. You can smile. We made it," Michonne told him. "We can make it. We're the ones who live."

The words would connect Rick and Michonne in The Walking Dead series finale, "Rest in Peace," where Rick and Michonne wrote letters while separated by time and distance. "We'll always be together, even when we're apart. We, together, are the strongest thing. We're love, and love is endless," Michonne said, her words becoming entwined with Rick's: "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," Rick and Michonne said over a montage of the ones who lived. In the final scene of the series, Judith reminded RJ: "We get to start over. We're the ones who live."

"We're the ones who live, which we had in [The Walking Dead season 11] coda and thankfully got to make the title of this show, It's not just about the ones who are alive, its about those who are living inside of us," Gurira explained to ComicBook. "Those that we carry -- their souls, their spirits. The connection that we have to them, it's very real inside of us. The essence of who they were in the effect they had on us. And the way that they contributed to everyone into the group and for the life of all of us. And for any of us to survive, we've got that. We've all survived. And that being a core thing that keeps us going is that connection."

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It has been more than six years since Chandler Riggs officially exited The Walking Dead and his role of Carl Grimes in a shocking Season 8 episode of AMC's long-running zombie series. Riggs joined the show as a child actor, growing up in front of the world and eventually celebrating his 18th birthday on the show's set. Since leaving the series, Riggs has picked up various roles and started new endeavors but recently went back to work with a few of his TWD co-stars. In a self-made short film. Riggs re-teamed with some of The Walking Dead's young stars.

"Dude, it's been great," Riggs told ComicBook.com on the red carpet for the premiere of The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live. "I've just been... It's been six years since I've been off, six and a half years, oh my God, since I've been off the show and, yeah. Yeah, it's just been a lot of time just in LA trying to start to make things happen. Started my own production company and so doing some directing and producing. I just came off set directing today actually, and just booked it over here." The production company is known as Smooth Blend Films.

The project Riggs is currently working on puts him back in business with The Walking Dead's Sophia actress Madison Lintz and Enid actress Katelyn Nacon. "It's a short film that myself and my roommate both on the production company and we're directing, producing. It's actually with Katelyn and with Madison Lintz who played Sophia on the show and a bunch of other of our actor friends, and it's this fun, cool thriller and we got this just awesome grant from Panavision. So we're just trying to just do everything we can to make it as good as it can be."

There is no word just yet on the title or release date for Riggs' new short film. It's also unclear if he will play any role in the upcoming The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live, set to debut its first episode on Sunday night and centers around Carl's father, Rick Grimes, and his post-apocalyptic mother, Michonne.

As for Riggs' relationship with other Walking Dead co-stars, the actor promised many keep in touch. "We see each other at conventions sometimes and Katelyn who played Enid on the show is a good friend of mine, see her all the time," Riggs said, on the same night he reunited with the show's Rick Grimes actor Andrew Lincoln on the premiere's carpet. "But yeah, I mean it's really events like this, we all come back together. It's great."

It's been over five years since Rick and Michonne were separated on season 9 of The Walking Dead -- and a long eight years in the show's timeline -- but now Andrew Lincoln and Danai Gurira are starring in their own six-episode event series. Originally planned as a trilogy of Rick Grimes movies, The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live takes place during and after the mothership show's last three seasons and follows the couple as they struggle to reunite while facing an unstoppable power: the Civic Republic Military.

Below, read on to find out when and where to watch the new Walking Dead spinoff series and see our guide for everything you need to know about The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live.

The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live: Where to Watch

You can watch The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live on AMC with cable or stream on AMC+ with a subscription.

When Does The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live Start?

The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live premieres Sunday, February 25, at 9 p.m. on AMC. The network confirmed to ComicBook that AMC+ subscribers can stream new Walking Dead episodes early starting at 3 a.m. ET / 12 a.m. PT on Sundays.

How Many Episodes Is The Walking Dead Rick and Michonne Spinoff?

The new Walking Dead series consists of six episodes.

The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live Episodes Release Schedule

• The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live Episode 1: "Years" - February 25 on AMC and AMC+
• The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live Episode 2: "Gone" - March 3 on AMC and AMC+
• The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live Episode 3: "Bye" - March 10 on AMC and AMC+
• The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live Episode 4: "What We" - March 17 on AMC and AMC+
• The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live Episode 5: "Become" - March 24 on AMC and AMC+
• The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live Episode 6: (TBA) - March 31 on AMC and AMC+

How to Watch The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live Online for Free

New AMC+ subscribers can sign up for a free seven-day trial to watch the "Years" series premiere of The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live.

How Much Does AMC+ Cost?

AMC+ plans start at $4.99/month for the Monthly With Ads plan or $8.99/month for the Ad-free Monthly plan.

Watch The Walking Dead: The Return

The Walking Dead: The Return is a 40-minute documentary special following TWD stars Andrew Lincoln and Danai Gurira as they take a trip down memory lane, sharing stories and reminiscing about their time on set. The documentary is exclusive to the Australian streaming service Stan and is not currently available to viewers in the United States, but AMC released a special sneak peek featuring Lincoln and Gurira via YouTube. Watch it below.

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

[Warning: This article contains spoilers for The Walking Dead Deluxe #83.] "The thing to keep in mind about other people's children... they're not our children." With those words, Rick Grimes seemingly suggested abandoning Alexandria on the final page of The Walking Dead #82. Alexandria was overrun after its walls collapsed from the pressure of a massive walker herd, leaving the survivors holed up in a house -- Rick and Carl Grimes, Michonne, Maggie, Sophia, Denise, and Jessie and Ron Anderson -- with no way out.

"I don't mean to sound so insensitive... but if I have to choose between my child or someone else's child, I'm going to choose mine every single time," Rick elaborated in the first panel of issue #83, explaining they would evacuate and find a way to help the others still trapped by the horde. Rick then chopped up a roamer and turned sheets into guts-covered ponchos to disguise the living from the dead, a tactic that would allow the group to push through the zombie masses.

Maggie and Sophia stayed behind, leaving Rick, Carl, Michonne, Denise, and the Andersons to shamble through the horde. But when Ron (younger than his teenage TV counterpart) froze in fear, he drew attention... and was devoured by walkers. Jessie didn't let go of her son and nearly dragged Carl to death as she was eaten alive, forcing Rick to hack off her hand with his hatchet.

After escaping their clutches, Carl and Rick made a run for it... only for a swarmed Douglas Monroe to fire a stray bullet that shot out Carl's eye.

It was a bloody, brutal issue -- one made more horrific when printed in color for the first time in this week's The Walking Dead Deluxe #83. Series creator and script writer Robert Kirkman reflected on Jessie and Ron's deaths in the latest installment of "The Cutting Room Floor":

"This is the 'Carl-gets-his-eye-shot-out' issue. When I have a HUGE event like that in an issue, it's all just a matter of building to that moment," Kirkman wrote. "Also, I've got the Jessie and Ron deaths... which are ROUGH, possibly the saddest and most brutal deaths in the series. I mean, she sees a guy she trusts hack her hand off to kill her to save his son. Sheesh! Top 10 at least, right?"

The horror wouldn't end there. Carl's gunshot wound -- a full panel spread of Rick's son with a chunk of his head missing -- was inspired by Todd McFarlane's '90s Spider-Man run that depicted the aftermath of Kraven the Hunter's suicide by shotgun.

"I wanted to show a CHUNK missing out of Carl's head. A horrifyingly visible GAP, that was the idea," Kirkman wrote. "My inspiration for this moment? The 'Torment' storyline that ran through Spider-Man #1-5. In that story, Kraven has a giant circular void in his head where his eye once was. It, to my thirteen-year-old mind, was the craziest thing ever. So I wanted THAT visual, but I wanted it to be somewhat realistic."

Kirkman envisioned "Carl with his head turned with the wound away from us a little so we could see the gap but still assume there was enough head back there to keep the brain intact." But artist Charlie Adlard drew the straight-on shot that made it into the final issue (and the television series).

"Which honestly, we both know looks like a wound that is impossible to survive," Kirkman continued, "but it was so striking, powerful, and haunting... I just had to keep it unchanged ... I just love the shock and awareness of Carl's face. He KNOWS what happened, and he's terrified."

The Walking Dead Deluxe #83 is on sale now from Image Comics.

The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live feels like a full circle moment not just for fans, but also for its stars Andrew Lincoln and Danai Gurira. The pair, who first started working together when Gurira joined The Walking Dead in its second season, will reunite onscreen for the series, which pits them against a power-mad general played by Terry O'Quinn. The series is being received pretty warmly so far by critics, with a 92% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

What it means for the future of the franchise is anyone's guess, but while speaking with ComicBook.com's Brandon Davis, Lincoln said he wished he could share the show with some of the people they have lost along the way. That includes Scott Wilson, who played Hershel Greene on the show.

"I wish we could share it with Scott Wilson. That's my guy," Lincoln told ComicBook.com, before had and Gurira named a number of crew members who had also passed away. "Those guys with a sort of heart and soul in the spirit of this show and I thought about them a lot actually during this last year. So, yeah, this one's for them."

Garfield and Gurira also shouted out Deej, Purvis, and Chuck. We were unable to clarify which Chuck the pair were talking about, but have reached out for confirmation and will update this story if possible.

"Deej" was David Galbraith, who was the show's focus puller since the pilot. According to executive producer Greg Nicotero, Deej was "a character," and at one point had wanted to get cast as The Governor. Michael Purvis, whom Nicotero described as "another colorful and charismatic guy," worked in transportation -- primarily as a motorcycle wrangler -- from 2015 until it ended. Purvis passed away in August 2023 at 52.

Wilson passed away in 2018, after his character had already died on the show, but that had not stopped him from returning in flashbacks, a Robot Chicken parody, and all the other creative ways that The Walking Dead would periodically find to revisit fan-favorite characters after they had been written out of the series for good.

Wilson was a huge part of the early years of The Walking Dead not just because of his character, but because of the role he played behind the scenes and at conventions. He was beloved by his fellow cast members, and made a big impression on fans at events like Walker Stalker Con.

"I think because I didn't know my dad as much as I would like to, when I find guys that I really respect of that age, I stick to them," Norman Reedus recently told Jon Bernthal on his Real Ones podcast. "I did it with Kris Kristofferson....I just love them. Scott was so open and so honest. The last time I saw Scott, we were all at his house and we were watching his In Cold Blood audition. He's sitting there next to me and he can't speak very well. We're sitting there watching, the room's totally quiet, and I looked over at him and he looked over at me, and I go 'you're such a fucking asshole,' and he just starts laughing."

"We'll always be together, even when we're apart," Michonne wrote in a letter to her children on The Walking Dead series finale. "We're love, and love is endless." That enduring and endless love between Danai Gurira's Michonne and Andrew Lincoln's Rick Grimes is at the heart of new Walking Dead spinoff series The Ones Who Live, which Gurira and Lincoln co-created with showrunner Scott M. Gimple. But it's episode 4, written by Tony Award-nominated playwright and executive producer Gurira herself, that was crafted with love for the most diehard Richonne shippers.

"The episode Danai wrote is pretty incredible," co-star Lesley-Ann Brandt, who plays CRM Sgt. Maj. Pearl Thorne, told ComicBook. "I think it's just for the purists. It's for the hardcore 'Richonners.' That episode is for them."

Brandt described the episode, titled "What We," as "the climax of their love." We can't reveal what that means for Rick and Michonne, but ComicBook's review of the first four (of six) episodes called the Gurira-penned episode 4 "an emotionally-charged masterwork that encapsulates what The Ones Who Live is about."

First announced as a trilogy of Rick Grimes movies, Gurira worked with Lincoln and Gimple to redevelop the planned features into the six-episode event series premiering Feb. 25 on AMC and AMC+. Gurira took creative point on "What We," the culmination of years of unresolved storylines left up in the air after Rick was helicoptered away from The Walking Dead in season 9 and Michonne made it her mission to find him in season 10.

"[Writing episode 4] 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," Gurira told ComicBook. "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.'"

"And so I was the point person for the episode, which allowed me to have a vision on it, but it was very collaborative," Gurira continued. "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."

Gurira also oversaw post-production on the episode helmed by Breaking Bad director of photography turned director Michael Slovis, who was behind the camera on The Walking Dead episodes "Thank You," "Something They Need," and "Worth."

"The amazing Michael Slovis was the director, and he did an incredible job," Gurira said. "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 Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live premieres February 25 and airs Sundays on AMC and AMC+.

Lost star Terry O'Quinn has joined the world of The Walking Dead, and he's ready to upset the status quo a little bit. O'Quinn, who has also appeared in Hawaii Five-0 and Resident Alien, plays Major General Beale in The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live (also known as the Rick and Michonne show), and he played coy about the magnitude of his character's impact on the world of the show. Speaking with ComicBook.com's Brandon Davis about the new series, O'Quinn thought it was "interesting" to hear speculation comparing Beale to Marvel's Thanos -- the big bad who tied the first decade of movies together.

It's an interesting concept, in part, because producers have not ruled out the idea of a crossover story to bring various different Walking Dead universe casts together in the future. Of course, while he himself didn't rule out the "Thanos theory, O'Quinn stopped short of confirming it.

"That's an interesting feeling that you expressed there," O'Quinn said. "You say, 'I feel like he could be,' I say, 'I'm glad it feels like he could be.'"

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

Walking Dead Universe Chief Content Officer Scott M. Gimple serves as showrunner and executive producer with Lincoln, Gurira, Denise Huth (The Walking Dead), and Brian Bockrath (The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon). The cast includes Lesley-Ann Brandt (Lucifer) as Pearl Thorne, Matthew Jeffers (The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel) as Nat, Terry O'Quinn (Lost) as Major General Beale, and Pollyanna McIntosh (The Walking Dead) as Jadis.

The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live premieres Sunday, February 25, on AMC and AMC+.

Terry O'Quinn was, ahem, lost when it came to The Walking Dead. The actor who played John Locke on Lost, Commander Joe White on Hawaii Five-0, and Tom Tavner on Patriot next debuts as CRM Major General Beale on The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live, a character who has been mentioned in the mythology of the Civic Republic Military on The Walking Dead: World Beyond. With the new series (Feb. 25 on AMC) going inside the walls of the Civic Republic, O'Quinn is shedding light on his shadowy character and the moment it dawned on him that he had become part of the Walking Dead Universe.

"It was the zombies, when I finally met the zombies. Because I had told people I hadn't watched The Walking Dead," O'Quinn told ComicBook. "The analogy that I use was there were a lot of trains running at that time and by the time I was aware of that one, it was well down the tracks. So I never really caught up to that."

O'Quinn may not have jumped on the TWD train in time, but with the long-running zombie drama spinning off into new series -- including World Beyond, Dead City, and Daryl Dixon -- the actor had a perfect jumping-on point with help from TWD Universe chief content officer and The Ones Who Live showrunner Scott M. Gimple.

"When Scott called me, I told him I didn't know [The Walking Dead]. He said, 'Well, you shouldn't have to, I can tell you what you need to know,'" O'Quinn continued. "I think -- back in the day when I first saw it -- I saw zombies getting chopped up, and I was like, 'I wanna go to sleep tonight. I just wanna sleep and I don't wanna have that in my head.' But when I saw the zombies, I thought, 'Oh yeah, I'm there now.'"

Also new to the undead franchise is Lucifer actress Lesley-Ann Brandt, who plays CRM Sgt. Major Pearl Thorne, one of the soldiers in Beale's command. Brandt told ComicBook she binged the entire series -- all 11 seasons and 177 episodes -- in less than three weeks to prepare for her role opposite Andrew Lincoln's Rick Grimes.

"It helped that I binged the show from the beginning. I did all the seasons, that's a lot of Walking Dead, and I think I did it in like three weeks," Brandt said. "I felt a responsibility to you, the fans, and also in understanding the tone of the show and what made these two [Rick and Michonne] so special. What was the spark and how does my character come in to help tell that story? And what is my point of view? And what makes me different and similar to these two? Because I think, outside of this world, Michonne and Thorne would have probably been friends. They're two strong women. And I think that plays into a little bit of the chemistry of those two."

Fans will meet Beale and Thorne when The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live -- starring Andrew Lincoln, Danai Gurira, and Pollyanna McIntosh -- premieres February 25 on AMC and AMC+. Stay tuned to ComicBook/TWD and follow on Facebook for more TWD Universe coverage.

It's Negan's favorite four-letter word: "F---." (The Walking Dead dropped F-bombs so frequently in Robert Kirkman's comics that a Negan quote book is nearly just expletives.) So why did AMC's The Walking Dead -- rated TV-MA for gore and graphic violence -- shy away from the "f-dash-dash-dash word" that went un-bleeped on cable contemporaries like Breaking Bad and Mayans M.C.? If Federal Communications Commission regulations on profanity didn't apply to basic cable... why the f*$% did it take so long for The Walking Dead to say the "F-word"?

"At the end of season 4, we could have used one f-bomb for the last line of season 4. 'They're screwing with the wrong people,'" former Walking Dead showrunner Scott M. Gimple told ComicBook. The line, which is delivered by Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) when his group of zombie apocalypse survivors are herded into a train car by the cannibals at Terminus, goes uncensored on the DVD version: "They're f---ing with the wrong people."

"People can do that now a lot on TV," added Gimple of the uncensored swearing that's become more commonplace on television. That includes the Walking Dead spinoffs The Walking Dead: Dead City, The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon, and The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live. (ComicBook can confirm Rick Grimes drops multiple uncensored F-bombs in the new series, among others.)

After years of pushing the envelope in terms of violence, The Walking Dead began to air episodes with uncensored "F-bombs" more often in later seasons. What helped lead to the change? The 2016 FX miniseries The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story.

"[TWD showrunner] Angela Kang and I were talking years ago and the FX O.J. show was on. And Courtney B. Vance, he plays Johnny Cochrane, and he drops an F-bomb directly to camera that's extended," Gimple explained. "It lasts like ten seconds. And it hit us each other immediately, like, 'Wait, how can they do it and we can't?' But we had gone so long without doing it [on The Walking Dead] that it was hard to introduce it in any regular basis because it's almost weird at that point."

The Walking Dead F-Bombs

The Walking Dead released the uncensored alternate version of Rick's "they're screwing with the wrong people" line on the season 4 DVD and Blu-ray. Daryl (Norman Reedus) told Carol (Melissa McBride) "f--- the way it was" when talking about the old world in the season 5 episode "Consumed," and Rick said "f--- this guy" when referring to Paul "Jesus" Rovia (Tom Payne) in the season 6 episode "The Next World." (In the cable version, Rick said: "No, not this guy.")

When introducing the foul-mouthed Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) in the season 6 finale, "Last Day on Earth," AMC reserved the uncut version -- in which Negan utters the "F-word" 23 times in four minutes -- for the DVD and Blu-ray. Lincoln admitted to saying a muted "f--- it" when firing at Negan in the season 8 episode "Mercy," and Daryl dropped another muffled F-bomb in the season 9 episode "The Obliged" when he reminded Rick he "sure as f--- wouldn't have found any of us" if not for Glenn (Steven Yeun).

"You get a specific number of curse words you can say, and then there's a list of what you can and can't do," then-Fear the Walking Dead showrunner Dave Erickson explained to ComicBook in 2017 after that show aired an uncensored "F-word." "I think it was our script coordinator who told me there was an email had come up; there had been a memo saying we could now say 'f---' twice over the course of an entire season."

However, the Kang-run final season of The Walking Dead was allotted more than two: Daryl said it twice in the season 11 episodes "A New Deal" and "Trust"; Mercer (Michael James Shaw) improvised an uncensored "f--- sh-- up" line in "Faith"; Princess (Paola Lazaro) said "f--- that" in season 11 episode "Variant"; and Negan, who said "I am f---ed either way" in "Lockdown," also let fly a comical "what the f---?" when watching variant walkers climbing over a gate in the "Family" penultimate episode of the series. Rosita (Christian Serratos) also got her share of F-bombs, dropping three over the course of season 11 -- including the "Rest in Peace" series finale.

The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live premieres Feb. 25 on AMC and AMC+. Stay tuned to ComicBook/TWD and follow on Facebook for more TWD Universe coverage.

There's just one week until The Walking Dead fans reunite with two of the most beloved characters in the franchise, Andrew Lincoln's Rick Grimes and Danai Gurira's Michonne. In season 9 of The Walking Dead, Rick blew up a bridge to protect his group from invading walkers. He was then picked up via helicopter by the mysterious CRM group and hasn't been seen on the show since. Lincoln's departure came at a time where he wanted to be more present in his family life at home after filming hundreds of episodes of The Walking Dead. When he made the ultimate sacrifice, veryone presumed him dead -- everyone except Michonne. Since then, Michonne's arc has largely centered around finding Rick and bringing him back home to his family because she's found more than a few clues that he may not have perished after all.

That episode aired nearly six years ago. Prior to the six-episode limited series being announced, there were years of planning three Walking Dead films largely centered around Rick that would act as his swan song. However, the pandemic hit and sent everything awry, including the plans for the three films. Thus they were scrapped and replaced with The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live, first announced at SDCC 2022. Lincoln and Gurira, who are executive producers on the series, sat down with Comicbook.com to discuss the show and the long-awaited reunion between Richonne.

"We wrote it, so we knew that we wanted...We've been working for a couple of years and meeting in conference rooms in hotels, spitballing these ideas," Lincoln told Comicbook.com. "And we said, well, how, what is the most insane reunion? Can we imagine? What about this? What about that? And we just thought, well, this, we landed on this and it felt also the structure as you know, is quite unique with the time frames that we've got these two people that have left the show in different time frames. We need to work that out. But also we just thought it would be the most thrilling, insane, emotional reunion. And we're glad that it was a shock."

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

A new Walking Dead spinoff means new episodes with Rick Grimes and Michonne (Andrew Lincoln and Danai Gurira), new cast members (Lesley-Ann Brandt, Craig Tait, and Matthew August Jeffers), a new location (the Civic Republic of Philadelphia), new enemies (Terry O'Quinn's CRM Major General Beale), and -- of course -- new walkers (the explosive Gasman, pictured below). After introducing walker variants on The Walking Dead and amped-up walkers on spinoffs The Walking Dead: World Beyond and The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon, will these new super-zombies make an appearance on The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live?

Only if Rick and Michonne somehow end up overseas. Daryl Dixon revealed man-made walker variants were being shipped across the Atlantic Ocean between America and France, including acid-blooded zombies with a burning touch (br?lant, or "burners") and smarter zombies capable of climbing walls and opening doors.

"There's a big backstory to that, why that's happening in France or even Europe in [Daryl Dixon]," TWD Universe chief content officer Scott M. Gimple told ComicBook when asked if the evolved walkers will shamble into The Ones Who Live. "Before [Daryl Dixon] got running, we saw a glimpse of it at the end of World Beyond, and it really is in Europe."

The Walking Dead: World Beyond's series finale ended with a coda set in a French lab, where a mysterious man gunned down a mysterious woman who mysteriously had video logs once recorded by Atlanta CDC virologist Dr. Edwin Jenner (Noah Emmerich) in the first season of The Walking Dead. When a marooned Daryl Dixon (Norman Reedus) washed ashore in France, it was after the hoodwinked American escaped a cargo ship loaded with the zombie test subjects that were engineered by Dr. Lafleur (Fran?ois Delaive) for Madame Genet's (Anne Charrier) Pouvoir Des Vivants.

"There are, though, walkers in [The Ones Who Live] that I hope people have not seen before, gags we haven't seen before, things that will turn your stomach that you haven't seen before," Gimple added. "But the 'roided up' ones, that's in Europe."

Those "roided up" walkers are what Daryl Dixon showrunner David Zabel calls "Ampers," referring to Dr. Lafleur's serum that "amps up" walkers with enhanced strength, speed, and smarts. In the upcoming second season, The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon - The Book of Carol, Zabel told ComicBook: "We continue telling the story of the threat of the Ampers, the amped-up walkers that Genet is cultivating as an army."

The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live premieres Feb. 25 on AMC and AMC+. Stay tuned to ComicBook/TWD and follow on Facebook for more TWD Universe coverage.

Considering The Walking Dead became a cultural juggernaut in the 2010s it seems impossible to imagine someone that hasn't seen the show in some form, but even the newcomers to the cast of the latest spinoff series are just now getting to it. Speaking with ComicBook.com in an exclusive interview for The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live, Lesley-Ann Brandt (who plays a new character for the franchise named Pearl Thorne) revealed that one of her biggest pieces of preparation for her role was to do her homework and watch the entirety of the flagship The Walking Dead TV series. Not only did she watch all of it to get ready, she watched all 177 episodes in just three weeks.

"It helped that I binged the show from the beginning. I did all the seasons, that's a lot of Walking Dead, and I think I did it in like three weeks. I felt a responsibility to you, the fans, and also in understanding the tone of the show and what made these two (Rick and Michonne) so special. What was the spark and how does my character come in to help tell that story? And what is my point of view? And what makes me different and similar to these two? Because I think, outside of this world, Michonne and Thorne would have probably been friends. They're two strong women. And I think that plays into a little bit of the chemistry of those two."

Lesley-Ann Brandt went on to tease with us that her character Pearl Thorne will force a unique relationship with Andrew Lincoln's Rick Grimes, largely thanks to the surprise similarities they have in their backstories.

"She will forge a very close relationship with Rick and a real comrade. They share a similar...she was trying to get home to her love and had been trying for years. So they share that same struggle. Thorn I think is someone who understands when she made that decision that this is the world she's now in and she commits to it. Whereas, you know, Rick is a bit of a wild horse and it's harder for him to do that. Obviously he has a family, he has Michonne out there. I think she starts out just trying to help him through that and saving his butt a couple of times as they progress through this time at the CRM and at the Civic Republic."

Where can I watch The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live?

The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live will premiere its first episode on AMC and stream on AMC+ on Sunday, February 25, 2024. The six-episode series will premiere new episodes weekly, with the release schedule looking like this:

• The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live Episode 1 release date - Sunday, February 25, 2024
• The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live Episode 2 release date - Sunday, March 3, 2024
• The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live Episode 3 release date - Sunday, March 10, 2024
• The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live Episode 4 release date - Sunday, March 17, 2024
• The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live Episode 5 release date - Sunday, March 24, 2024
• The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live Episode 6 release date - Sunday, March 31, 2024

The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live series is the much anticipated return of Andrew Lincoln as Rick Grimes, filling in the gap of the story about what happened to his character after he left the flagship The Walking Dead series in season 9 while also continuing the story of Danai Gurira's Michonne following The Walking Dead series finale. Other cast members for the series include Pollyanna McIntosh, Lesley-Ann Brandt, Matt Jeffries, and Terry O'Quinn. AMC describes The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live as follows:

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

When The Walking Dead premiered in 2010, actor Andrew Lincoln was just the star of the show, taking on the role of Rick Grimes from Robert Kirkman's comic book series. Flashforward to know and Lincoln is a star, executive producer, and co-creator of the new spinoff series, The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live. It's been a long road for him as an actor, and now that he wears multiple hats on set he has realized that when something goes wrong the only person he can look at is in the mirror. Speaking with ComicBook.com, Andrew Lincoln opened up about the brutal conditions of one scene in The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live, revealing that he was prepared to yell at an executive producer for the series over it.

"I remember being on top of a truck harnessed to the top of a truck at 4 a.m. after a week of night shoots in February in New Jersey. And I was covered in blood and I had wet hair and everybody looked like Cartman, you know, in South Park, they all had these snoods on and I could only see their eyes and the edge of their noses. And I was like, I was on top of this thing covered in blood wet and then it started to snow and I just, and I thought, and I started to cry a solitary tear and I wanted to scream at a producer. And then, and then I realized I was one..this was all my fault."

Why did Andrew Lincoln leave The Walking Dead?

After eight years leading The Walking Dead, Andrew Lincoln departed the series after the first five episodes of The Walking Dead season 9. Speaking in a previous interview when it was confirmed that he would no longer be on the show, Lincoln revealed that it was so he could spend more time with his family. The shooting schedule for The Walking Dead at that point was extensive, forcing him to work in America while his wife and children lived in the UK.

"I mean, there's only so many sports days you can miss and really call yourself a father, so I think it was time for me to get back for some important days and just be around and have some continuity back home," the Rick Grimes actor told Access.

Unlike most characters that left the series though, Lincoln's version of Rick Grimes didn't die from the bite of a walker or by turning into one himself, he just...disappeared. Rescued by a mysterious force and flown away on a helicopter, the upcoming The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live will of course finally answer the question of where he's been and how he reunites with Michonne.

Where can I watch The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live?

The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live will premiere its first episode on AMC and stream on AMC+ on Sunday, February 25, 2024. The six-episode series will premiere new episodes weekly, with the release schedule looking like this:

• The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live Episode 1 release date - Sunday, February 25, 2024
• The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live Episode 2 release date - Sunday, March 3, 2024
• The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live Episode 3 release date - Sunday, March 10, 2024
• The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live Episode 4 release date - Sunday, March 17, 2024
• The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live Episode 5 release date - Sunday, March 24, 2024
• The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live Episode 6 release date - Sunday, March 31, 2024

The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live series is the much anticipated return of Andrew Lincoln as Rick Grimes, filling in the gap of the story about what happened to his character after he left the flagship The Walking Dead series in season 9 while also continuing the story of Danai Gurira's Michonne following The Walking Dead series finale. Other cast members for the series include Pollyanna McIntosh, Lesley-Ann Brandt, Matt Jeffries, and Terry O'Quinn. AMC describes The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live as follows:

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

The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live is a major event in The Walking Dead Universe - and it goes beyond the obvious central focus of Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) and Michonne (Danai Gurira) finally being reunited.

The Ones Who Live will be finally bringing viewers into the ranks of the Civic Republic Military (CRM). The police force of the Civic Republic, and the community they are protecting, are some of the most (if not THE most) advanced groups in the post-apocalyptic world, denoted by the iconic mystery helicopters that have appeared in Walking Dead TV shows.

The CRM also has the most comprehensive knowledge of the world since it fell, and the most complete record of history, as well. That kind of intel no doubt includes answers to some of the biggest questions and or mysteries that Rick Grimes and co. have been hoping and searching for - ever since visiting the CDC in the Season 1 finale of The Walking Dead.

When ComicBook.com attended the press junket for The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live, we got to ask actor Craig Tate (who plays CRM Lt. Col. Donald Okafor in the show) about a particular piece of exposition his character gets to share, which will be a big answer to a lingering Walking Dead mystery: The CRM Classification system.

"Look, a guy like Okafor and a guy like Rick Grimes, you put us in the exact same room - outside of the circumstances we're faced with - and I think they find a really beautiful commonality outside of their forced circumstances. But if you let them get a beer, well these guys are best friends! They have a lot to connect on, right? But as it stands right now, I think that Okafor does see and feel many similarities in a guy like Rick Grimes, who has suffered immense loss in this world where death in itself is a main character, no longer a supporting character. And it's one of those things - it's the orphan syndrome - where a guy like Rick, for example, is afraid - and not even afraid, but so unwilling to allow himself to feel at home in this place, because essentially... his family's his home, right?"

And then, even outside of that, they're nomads! When or if he does get back to where or who, what, he calls family, their world is characterized by a phase of... [nomadic life]," Tate continued. "So you know, civil authority, structure, all those pre-apocalypse things no longer seem like the 'normal.' So he tries to run from that."

The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live premieres February 25th on AMC and AMC+, with new episodes airing Sundays at 9 p.m. ET.

"After" was an affecting episode of television. Set in the aftermath of the Governor's (David Morrissey) devastating attack on the prison that left Hershel (Scott Wilson) headless, baby Judith seemingly eaten by zombies, and the group scattered to the wind, the midseason premiere of The Walking Dead's fourth season saw Carl (Chandler Riggs) and Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) holing up in an abandoned house. After opening a can of whoop-ass on some walkers, a one-shoed Carl then triumphantly opened another can: 112 ounces of traditional homestyle chocolate pudding.

The episode culminated in Carl unloading on his unconscious, half-dead dad -- "I don't need you anymore," a frustrated Carl told a bruised and bloodied Rick before breaking down crying -- and, ultimately, a happy reunion between the Grimes men and Michonne (Danai Gurira). But for Riggs, whose Carl Grimes eventually met his untimely end in The Walking Dead season 8 back in 2017, fans best remember the 2014 episode for that tub of pudding.

"Instantly, my first thought was that pudding," Riggs told ComicBook when asked about the scene that stands out to fans still today. "I didn't think that 10 years later, I'd still be getting cups of pudding."

Riggs attended the Hollywood premiere of The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live, the new spinoff series that sees Rick and Michonne attempt to reunite after they were separated by Jadis (Pollyanna McIntosh) and the Civic Republic Military. Riggs' advice for his TV dad? "Make it back," Riggs said. "Make it back."

The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live -- starring Andrew Lincoln, Danai Gurira, Pollyanna McIntosh, Lesley-Ann Brandt, Matthew Jeffers, and Terry O'Quinn -- premieres Sunday, Feb. 25 on AMC and AMC+. Stay tuned to ComicBook/TWD and follow on Facebook for more TWD Universe coverage.

Scott M. Gimple is teasing the next chapter of The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon. The first season of the Walking Dead spinoff ended with Daryl (Norman Reedus) still stranded overseas in France, where he ended up after an awry detour while searching for Andrew Lincoln's Rick Grimes and Danai Gurira's Michonne. After the revelation that a mysterious someone had "come back," an old friend journeyed to Freeport, Maine, to track down the missing Daryl: Carol (Melissa McBride). And now Daryl and Carol's story will continue in The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon -- The Book of Carol.

Asked when fans should expect Daryl Dixon season 2, executive producer and Walking Dead Universe chief content officer Scott M. Gimple told ComicBook: "I can't say the when of it, because I guess people will kill me." Sacr? bleu!

Gimple did offer that showrunner David Zabel is "working hard" on the new episodes with stars and executive producers Reedus and McBride. "I'm very worried to say too much because I have the finale in my mind, so I'm not going to go that far with it. It's a beautiful season, an intense season," Gimple said in an interview for his new series The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live, likening Daryl Dixon to "an indie French horror movie."

Starring alongside Reedus and McBride are 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. New to the series is The Resident's Manish Dayal as Ash, a survivor who encounters Carol on her mission to find Daryl.

The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon - The Book of Carol comes after McBride bowed out of the once-planned Daryl & Carol spinoff. While fans will have to wait a little longer to see the two characters reunited, McBride made a cameo appearance in the "Coming Home" first season finale.

"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 in our first season finale postmortem. "Norman wanted it, [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 season 1 is now available to own on DVD & Blu-ray. Stay tuned to ComicBook/TWD and follow on Facebook for more TWD Universe coverage.

The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live decided to celebrate Valentine's Day with a brand new promo. As the long-anticipated series focuses on Rick and Michonne, it's only fitting that a romance angle takes center stage. AMC knows their fans adore this pairing pairing and sees nothing wrong with giving people a little bit of violence with their romance as well. So, how do you hammer this home? Well, The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live enlists Phoebe Bridgers' cover of "Nothing Else Matters" by Metallica is probably a good start. From there, the wistful romantic vibe is flowing. But, you know, with zombies sprinkled in there for good measure.

Because the spin off series is such a big event, AMC is also putting out special merchandise centered around Rick and Michonne in their online shop. The Walking Dead fans have soldiered through quite a journey since catching up with these characters.

"Valentine's Day is just about the last holiday you would associate with 'The Walking Dead,' but the truth is that love has been at the heart of this franchise from the very beginning. We were excited by the juxtaposition of the most romantic day of the year and the zombie apocalypse as a way to celebrate Rick and Michonne's long-awaited reunion and love for each other with the fans," Kim Granito, chief marketing officer, AMC Networks said in a statement. "We're dropping a surprise trailer set to the voice of Phoebe Bridgers, social Valentine's Day cards, exclusive merch in our TWD Shop, and to cap it all off we're setting Sphere in Las Vegas on fire."

What Are Rick And Michonne Up Against?

The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live sees Danai Gurira and Andrew Lincoln back in the saddle again. Before the big series premiere, Comicbook.com spoke to both the actress about that subtitle for this spinoff. Gurira took a stab at explaining that title for us. Lincoln was there for moral support in this moment as the duo confronted just how much trauma Rick and Michonne have had to wade through just to get to this point. It turns out that journey has a lot to do with a show called The Ones Who Live.

"I don't think they see it as that. I don't thing they see it as where we go. Things go bad. I think that's all they're thinking about it," Gurira told us. "We're the ones who live, which we had in the coda and thankfully got to make the title of this show, It's not just about the ones who are alive, its about those who are living inside of us."

"Those that we carry their souls, their spirits. The connection that we have to them rather, it's very real inside of us," she continued. You know, the essence of who they were in the effect they had on us. And, the way that they contributed to everyone into the group and for the life of all of us. And for any of us to survive, we've got that. We've all survived. And that being a core thing that keeps us going is that connection."

Are you excited for the new spinoff? Let us know down in the comments!

"It was always about getting back to you," Andrew Lincoln's Rick Grimes intones in voiceover to Danai Gurira's Michonne on The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live. AMC's new spinoff series - which Lincoln and Gurira co-created with TWD Universe chief and former showrunner Scott M. Gimple - was always about the indomitable "Richonne" love story, literally left up in the air after Lincoln and Gurira each departed the zombie drama before the end of its 11-season run. First announced as a Walking Dead movie trilogy, Rick and Michonne make their long-awaited returns in the strikingly cinematic six-episode series premiering February 25th. Intense and intimate, The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live is epic, emotional, and explosive television.

Years after Rick sacrificed himself by leading a walker horde to a bridge he then blew up to save his family and friends in The Walking Dead Season 9, The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live picks up with Rick at the C.R.P.: The Civic Republic of Philadelphia. Jadis (Pollyanna McIntosh) secretly saved-slash-stole Rick from the riverbed and shuttled him away aboard a helicopter piloted by the Civic Republic Military, the mysterious three-rings group that operates with a code: "Security and secrecy above all." No one leaves or escapes, ever, explaining Rick's eight-year absence. Now toiling away culling walkers (called "delts") as Consignee Grimes, he's under the charge of CRM Lt. Col. Donald Okafor (a commanding Craig Tate), who reminds Rick: "There's no escape for the living."

Six years after the bridge, Michonne found Rick's belongings and then embarked on a mission to find "the Brave Man" and bring him home to their children, Judith and Rick Jr. On her journey to find Rick - who she believes and hopes against hope is alive, but can't be certain -- Michonne comes across two straggling strangers, Aiden (Breeda Wool) and Bailey (Andrew Bachelor), part of a mass-migrating group that never stops for anyone who falls behind. Now, with sweetly-sassy pyromaniac and tinkerer Nat (Matthew Jeffers) as her traveling companion, the katana-wielding warrior is on a collision course with the CRM. And there will be as much bloodshed as tears shed.

The 55-minute series premiere, titled "Years," reveals what happened to Rick in the years after that fateful helicopter flight. The teleplay (written by Gimple from a story he co-wrote with Lincoln and Gurira) incorporates flashbacks, time jumps, and Gimple's signature non-linear storytelling from his tenure as showrunner on Seasons 4-8 of The Walking Dead to tell a story that plays like a TV-tailored version of what the first Rick Grimes movie might have been.

Deftly directed by Bert & Bertie (Marvel's Hawkeye, the AMC Studios-produced dystopian drama Silo), "Years" is the most cinematic piece of Walking Dead filmmaking since the Frank Darabont-directed "Days Gone Bye" pilot in 2010. Each episode feels like a mini-movie, and the Gurira-penned Episode 4 is an emotionally charged masterwork that encapsulates what The Ones Who Live is about: If you live for the ones you love, what happens when you lose them? What comes after - and what do you become? (AMC provided the first four of six episodes for review.) The post-Rick episodes of The Walking Dead asked such existential questions, but with the Civic Republic's army acting as an existential threat to Rick and Michonne's love and lives, the series digs into who these characters are apart... and who they are together.

Gimple, Gurira, and Lincoln (also executive producers) have a clear understanding of the characters Rick and Michonne, and their reunion is the fulcrum that the whole story turns on. AMC has asked that reviews not spoil how or when Rick and Michonne reunite, but it shouldn't be a spoiler to say that the Richonne-centric series doesn't keep them apart much longer. Faithful fans who have waited with breathless anticipation since 2018 to see long-lost loves Rick and Michonne together again can rest assured: it's as satisfying as you're expecting, and maybe more subversive than you're expecting. The Richonne relationship is more complicated and complex than it ever was on The Walking Dead, their circumstances the ultimate challenge to the ultimate love story. Rick and Michonne will either save the world - or burn the whole damn thing down. To quote Rick Grimes: "They're f-cking with the wrong people."

"Security and secrecy above all" also applies to the often shocking and spoiler-filled series, its propulsive storytelling and episode-ending cliffhangers sure to leave you chomping at the bit for the next 50-minute chunk of the story. It puts pedal to the metal and almost never slows down, except to flesh out its compelling characters and their dynamics.

With its expansion of the CRM mythology that crossed over to Fear the Walking Dead and The Walking Dead: World Beyond - and with enigmatic new characters like CRM Sergeant Major Pearl Thorne (Lesley-Ann Brandt) and shadowy CRM Major General Beale (Terry O'Quinn) - The Ones Who Live plays out as a conspiracy thriller against the backdrop of the post-zombie apocalypse. Part Prison Break and part World War Z, with such influences as Casablanca and the romantic drama Somewhere in Time, this is The Walking Dead on the scope and scale of a zombie movie blockbuster. It's all superbly acted by the perfect pairing of Lincoln and Gurira.

The Walking Dead spinoffs Dead City and Daryl Dixon have revitalized and revivified AMC's long-running franchise, and the Rick and Michonne show is more proof that there's still a lot of life left in the TWD Universe. After all these years gone "bye," The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live is well worth the wait.

Rating: 5 out of 5

The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live premieres February 25th on AMC and AMC+, with new episodes airing Sundays at 9 p.m. ET.

Not since "As" and "Bs" have letters been so mysterious on The Walking Dead. Back in 2016, the Season 7 episode "Swear" sent Tara (Alanna Masterson) and Heath (Corey Hawkins) on a two-week run scavenging supplies to provide for Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) and the Saviors. Tara was separated from Heath and stumbled across the all-female community Oceanside, only to find Heath's glasses, tire marks from their now-missing RV, and a keycard with the letters "PPP." Heath was never heard from -- or even mentioned -- again, adding to the list of Walking Dead loose ends.

It was eventually confirmed that Jadis (Pollyanna McIntosh) of the Scavengers snatched Heath and traded him to the Civic Republic Military: the same helicopter group that flew away with Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln). A similar (or the same?) "PPP" card appeared with little fanfare on the Maine-set episode of the anthology series Tales of the Walking Dead in the possession of a survivor named Devon (Jessie T. Usher).

"It's like with the CRM -- there's a huge mythology to it," former Walking Dead showrunner Scott M. Gimple told ComicBook in an interview for new spinoff The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live. "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."

Answers may come if or when Hawkins --who left the zombie drama after just six episodes to headline 24: Legacy -- ever returns to the TWD Universe. In 2017, Gimple assured fans that "we definitely have not seen the last of Heath, period," adding: "He will be within The Walking Dead again." The flagship ended in 2022 without answers about Heath's whereabouts, but it remains to be seen whether The Ones Who Live -- which sees Rick trapped in the Civic Republic of Philadelphia with Jadis -- or future episodes of Tales solve the mystery.

The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live premieres Sunday, February 25, on AMC and AMC+. Stay tuned to ComicBook/TWD and follow on Facebook for more TWD Universe coverage.

"This message is for Rick Grimes. It's Morgan Jones. Man, I'm gonna come and look for you, whether you're at Alexandria or not," Lennie James' Morgan told Andrew Lincoln's Rick Grimes over walkie-talkie in his exit episode of Fear the Walking Dead. "I will leave this message every morning at dawn, and I'll leave the walkie on for a few minutes after. Who knows? Maybe you might even be listening." It was a full-circle moment for Rick and Morgan, who met in the "Days Gone Bye" pilot episode of The Walking Dead before parting ways with promises to keep in contact over the radio.

And while they would be twice reunited -- first in The Walking Dead season 3, then season 5 -- Morgan crossed over to Fear before Rick disappeared aboard a CRM helicopter in season 9. (Lincoln next reprises his role in The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live, the spinoff series reuniting him with Danai Gurira's Michonne.) Rick may not be at Alexandria, but as Morgan told his adopted daughter Mo (Zoey Merchant) before embarking on their journey back to Virginia: "It wouldn't be the first time we found our way back to each other."

"I think one of the great things about the show -- and in fact, about all of the shows -- is that characters get to grow, get to incorporate their experiences into who they are," James told ComicBook when asked what a potential Morgan and Rick reunion might look like. " I think if Morgan and Rick stood opposite each other, I think the change in who they were when they first met to who they would be now is humongous. I mean, it's almost kind of indescribable."

"The things they've lost, the things they've learned about themselves, the skills, the terrible, terrible things they've done, and the amazing things they've done," James continued. "Those two men standing opposite each other, the history that passes between them would just be unfathomable. It would be massive. I think back to when that first reunion came in Alexandria [in the season 5 finale], and it was this jaw-dropping moment. Now, so much more has happened since then. It would be incredible."

Fear's eighth and final season underwent a seven-year time jump bringing the spinoff in step with the rest of the Walking Dead Universe, which means it's possible that Rick and Morgan meet again... someday. James previously confirmed to ComicBook that Fear's "All I See Is Red" episode marked "the end of the road" for Morgan -- at least for now.

"In all honesty, every and anything is possible. And I know it's something that a certain percentage of our fans would like. I would show up to work with Andy again any time," James told ComicBook about returning to the Walking Dead Universe for a Morgan and Rick reunion. "But as anybody who knows me knows, I'm fiercely protective of Morgan's story. And as far as I'm concerned, at this particular moment in time, this is the end of the road for Morgan. You'll only see him again if a story comes up within the universe that is just too good to say no to."

The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live premieres Sunday, February 25, on AMC and AMC+. Stay tuned to ComicBook/TWD and follow on Facebook for more TWD Universe coverage.

The ComicBook Nation Crew break down and react to all the new trailers shown during the 2024 Super Bowl - including Deadpool & Wolverine, Wicked: Part One, Twisters, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, Ryan Gosling's The Fall Guy, and Despicable Me 4!

Deadpool & Wolverine Trailer

Everyone deserves a happy ending. In theaters July 26. #DeadpoolWolverine

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes Trailer

Director Wes Ball breathes new life into the global, epic franchise set several generations in the future following Caesar's reign, in which apes are the dominant species living harmoniously and humans have been reduced to living in the shadows. As a new tyrannical ape leader builds his empire, one young ape undertakes a harrowing journey that will cause him to question all that he has known about the past and to make choices that will define a future for apes and humans alike.

Wicked: Part One Trailer

After two decades as one of the most beloved and enduring musicals on the stage, Wicked makes its long-awaited journey to the big screen as a spectacular, generation-defining cinematic event this holiday season.

Wicked, the untold story of the witches of Oz, stars Emmy, Grammy and Tony winning powerhouse Cynthia Erivo (Harriet, Broadway's The Color Purple) as Elphaba, a young woman, misunderstood because of her unusual green skin, who has yet to discover her true power, and Grammy-winning, multi-platinum recording artist and global superstar Ariana Grande as Glinda, a popular young woman, gilded by privilege and ambition, who has yet to discover her true heart.

The two meet as students at Shiz University in the fantastical Land of Oz and forge an unlikely but profound friendship. Following an encounter with The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, their friendship reaches a crossroads and their lives take very different paths. Glinda's unflinching desire for popularity sees her seduced by power, while Elphaba's determination to remain true to herself, and to those around her, will have unexpected and shocking consequences on her future. Their extraordinary adventures in Oz will ultimately see them fulfill their destinies as Glinda the Good and the Wicked Witch of the West.

Twisters Trailer

From the producers of the Jurassic, Bourne and Indiana Jones series comes Twisters, a current-day chapter of the 1996 blockbuster, Twister. Directed by Lee Isaac Chung, the Oscar(R) nominated writer-director of Minari, Twisters stars Golden Globe nominee Daisy Edgar-Jones (Where the Crawdads Sing, Normal People) and Glen Powell (Anyone But You, Top Gun: Maverick) as opposing forces who come together to try to predict, and possibly tame, the immense power of tornadoes.

Edgar-Jones stars as Kate Cooper, a former storm chaser haunted by a devastating encounter with a tornado during her college years who now studies storm patterns on screens safely in New York City. She is lured back to the open plains by her friend, Javi (Golden Globe nominee Anthony Ramos, In the Heights) to test a groundbreaking new tracking system. There, she crosses paths with Tyler Owens (Powell), the charming and reckless social-media superstar who thrives on posting his storm-chasing adventures with his raucous crew, the more dangerous the better.

As storm season intensifies, terrifying phenomena never seen before are unleashed, and Kate, Tyler and their competing teams find themselves squarely in the paths of multiple storm systems converging over central Oklahoma in the fight of their lives.

The Fall Guy Trailer

From real life stunt man and director David Leitch, the blockbuster director of Bullet Train, Deadpool 2, Atomic Blonde and Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw and the producer of John Wick, Nobody and Violent Night, comes his most personal film yet. A new hilarious, hard-driving, all-star apex-action thriller and love letter to action movies and the hard-working and under-appreciated crew of people who make them: The Fall Guy.

Oscar(R) nominee Ryan Gosling (Barbie, La La Land, Drive) stars as Colt Seavers, a battle-scarred stuntman who, having left the business a year earlier to focus on both his physical and mental health, is drafted back into service when the star of a mega-budget studio movie-being directed by his ex, Jody Moreno, played by Golden Globe winner Emily Blunt (Oppenheimer, A Quiet Place films, Sicario)-goes missing.

While the film's ruthless producer (Emmy winner Hannah Waddingham; Ted Lasso), maneuvers to keep the disappearance of star Tom Ryder (Golden Globe winner Aaron Taylor-Johnson; Bullet Train) a secret from the studio and the media, Colt performs the film's most outrageous stunts while trying (with limited success) to charm his way back into Jody's good graces. But as the mystery around the missing star deepens, Colt will find himself ensnared in a sinister, criminal plot that will push him to the edge of a fall more dangerous than any stunt.

Inspired by the hit 1980s TV series, The Fall Guy also stars Winston Duke (Black Panther franchise) and Academy Award(R) nominee Stephanie Hsu (Everything Everywhere All at Once).

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Look alive, football fans. AMC Networks ushered in halftime with an exclusive sneak peek at The Walking Dead Rick and Michonne show, titled The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live, during Sunday's Super Bowl LVIII. Featuring the show's cast and creators -- including stars Andrew Lincoln and Danai Gurira, who co-created the new six-episode series with showrunner Scott M. Gimple -- the Super Bowl halftime special shows fiery footage from the Walking Dead spinoff focused on long-lost lovers Rick Grimes (Lincoln) and Michonne (Gurira).

Watch the Walking Dead Super Bowl sneak peek below.

The official synopsis for the new series premiering February 25 on AMC and AMC+: "The love story of Rick Grimes and Michonne is changed by a changed world. Kept apart by distance. By an unstoppable power. Can they find each other and who they were in a situation unlike any they've ever known?" That unstoppable power is the Civic Republic Military: the shadowy group that years ago shuttled Rick away aboard a helicopter with Jadis (Pollyanna McIntosh, who also returns in The Ones Who Live).

AMC also announced that TWD: The Ones Who Live Cast Diaries -- special bonus episodes featuring exclusive interviews with the cast and creators -- will release weekly on Thursdays throughout the season starting Feb. 29, exclusively on AMC+.

Gimple serves as showrunner and executive producer with Lincoln, Gurira, Denise Huth (The Walking Dead), and Brian Bockrath (The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon). The cast includes Lesley-Ann Brandt (Lucifer) as Pearl Thorne, Matthew Jeffers (The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel) as Nat, Terry O'Quinn (Lost) as Major General Beale, and Pollyanna McIntosh (The Walking Dead: World Beyond) as Jadis.

"We've been working for a couple of years, meeting in hotel rooms around the world and sitting down in conference rooms in hotels, spitballing these ideas. And we said, 'What is the most insane reunion we can imagine?'" Lincoln told ComicBook about the new series that was reworked from a planned Walking Dead movie trilogy. "We landed on this, and the structure is quite unique with the timeframes that we've got these two people that have left the show in different timeframes. We needed to work that out, but also, we just thought it would be the most thrilling, insane, emotional reunion."

Lincoln noted that the Richonne series "is a love story," adding: "It's an epic love story. Every frame should inform their love -- or deny their love. Essentially, that was it. That was the story."

The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live premieres Sunday, February 25, on AMC and AMC+. Stay tuned to ComicBook/TWD and follow on Facebook for more TWD Universe coverage.

Check out all of the commercials and trailers that debuted during the NFL's big game! Watch Super Bowl LVIII Live on CBS, Nickelodeon, and Paramount+ and see all of the coverage of the game on CBS Sports.

The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live will not only reunite the flagship series' co-stars Andrew Lincoln (Rick Grimes) and Danai Gurira (Michonne) but it will introduce a number of new faces to the Walking Dead universe, including Lucifer's Lesley-Ann Brandt. Brandt plays Pearl Thorne, an operative for CRM who is a completely original character to the show, she's not in the comics. During a recent media junket for The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live, Brandt tells Comicbook.com how she booked the role of Pearl Thorne and how Lincoln was fundamental in convincing her to become a member of the Walking Dead universe.

"Um I auditioned -- I had a couple of projects actually at the time and I got them both. I actually had COVID when I booked this job," Brandt said. "So I was taking care of my son. We both had COVID and I did it on Zoom, like I sent in a tape, did it on Zoom. I booked another job as well and I got to the point where I had to choose between two projects. You know, and we, we tried to make both work with one shot in Vancouver, one shot in where we shot in New Jersey. It was just very hard. So I made the decision to come with The Walking Dead after lovely Andy Lincoln wrote me an email through our agency and he just said, 'please do our show. We loved your take, we love that you are native South African.' and I think I made the right choice. But yeah, I auditioned and then I did a little read with Andy, Danai and Scott. And the costume directors were on Zoom as well. And, yeah, and then I got the job."

The six-episode limited series follows on the heels of Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Lauren Cohan's Dead City and Norman Reedus' Daryl Dixon series, both of which have been great successes for AMC and have been green lit for second seasons. It will be Lincoln's first time stepping back into the boots of Rick Grimes since he departed the series in season 9 to spend more time with his family. Originally, the concept for a Rick Grimes centric project was three films, the first of which would chronicle Rick's journey after being captured by the mysterious CRM group following him sacrificing himself by blowing up the bridge to save his group from getting swarmed by walkers.

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

The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live premieres February 25 on AMC and AMC+.

2024 marks fourteen years of The Walking Dead Universe on television. Over 170 episodes and sixteen seasons of the flagship The Walking Dead TV series along with six different spinoff TV shows later and it's one of the biggest franchises in television storytelling of all time. But what if there was one thing that they could go back and change about the show...what would it be? Speaking with ComicBook.com in an exclusive interview for the upcoming The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live, we asked The Walking Dead CCO Scott Gimple this exact question. Be it a story point, or something they would later revisit, what would he change about The Walking Dead? His answer was a little more sentimental.

"Oh my word. Oh dear. I don't know, man. I don't like having regrets and even if I have them, I don't even wanna share them. I will say a regret I have, which is not like a story of regret. But when we did the premiere in Madison Square Garden, I got into like a conversation with somebody in the green room. I don't know if it was Norman (Reedus) or somebody else and I never sat down to watch it in that crowd and I regret that all the time not watching the show on the big screen. I think it was 601. I don't know what I was doing because I could call Norman now. I don't know if we were talking, I was talking to somebody else but I majorly regret not sitting in the audience for that one. It was an amazing event and I was in a green room."

The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live cast

The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live series is the much anticipated return of Andrew Lincoln as Rick Grimes, filling in the gap of the story about what happened to his character after he left the flagship The Walking Dead series in season 9 and taking the place of the previously announced trilogy of feature films that would focus on the character. In addition to the return of Andrew Lincoln as Rick Grimes,The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Liv will also continuing the story of Danai Gurira's Michonne following The Walking Dead series finale and her pursuit of a reunion with Rick

They're not the only cast members from the other shows that will appear in the series either with Pollyanna McIntosh's Jadis Stokes aka Anne also set to appear, picking up from her appearances in The Walking Dead (where she picked up Rick and mysteriously fled with him) and The Walking Dead: World Beyond (where it was confirmed she works for the Civic Republic Military). Other cast members in the series include Lesley-Ann Brandt, Matt Jeffries, and Terry O'Quinn, who plays the role of Beale, The Major General of the Civic Republic Military.

When does The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live start?

The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live will premiere its first episode on AMC on Sunday, February 25, 2024. The six-episode series will premiere new episodes weekly, with the release schedule looking like this:

• The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live Episode 1 release date - Sunday, February 25, 2024
• The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live Episode 2 release date - Sunday, March 3, 2024
• The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live Episode 3 release date - Sunday, March 10, 2024
• The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live Episode 4 release date - Sunday, March 17, 2024
• The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live Episode 5 release date - Sunday, March 24, 2024
• The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live Episode 6 release date - Sunday, March 31, 2024

AMC describes The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live as follows:

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

The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live premieres in just a few short weeks on AMC and AMC+ but if you can't wait that long for a dose of gore, the series will have an exclusive first look during this year's Super Bowl halftime show. The footage, which will feature the cast and creators, will be available on The Walking Dead's Facebook page and YouTube channel.

The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live is the latest addition to The Walking Dead universe following the successful debuts of Dead City starring Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Lauren Cohan as well as The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon led by Norman Reedus. The series reunites the flagship series main co-stars Andrew Lincoln as Rick Grimes and Danai Gurira as Michonne. Originally, the series was slated as three movies that would track Rick after he blew up a bridge to save his group in season nine. He was then picked up by Anne/Jadis (Pollyanna McIntosh) and the mysterious CRM group. Lincoln hasn't been seen on any Walking Dead programming since as he departed the series to spend more time with his family.

What is The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live About?

The six-episode limited series The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live picks up with Rick and Michonne who are years removed from one another. Though the world has changed just as much as they have, Michonne hasn't given up on finding Rick and finally bringing him home. There have been clues that Rick is still among the living, including Michonne finding a phone with a message in season 10 as well as his cowboy boots. She radios Judith to let her know that "the brave man" may be alive.

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

The series is helmed by The Walking Dead Universe's Chief Content Officer Scott M. Gimple who serves as showrunner and an executive producer with Lincoln, Gurira, Denise Huth (The Walking Dead), and Brian Bockrath (The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon). Alongside Lincoln and Gurira, Lesley-Ann Brandt (Pearl Thorne), Matthew Jeffers (Nat), and Terry O'Quinn (Major General Beale) also star.

The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live premieres February 25 on AMC and AMC+.

The Walking Dead: The One Who Live got a title explainer from Danai Gurira. Head of the big premiere for the new series, Comicbook.com spoke to both the actress and Andrew Lincoln about the title of this spinoff. It's no secret that Walking Dead fans have been waiting for the Rick and Michonne show for years now. Finally, after both characters have carried several metric tons of trauma, we get to investigate what they've been up to. That small fact goes a long way to describing why this series is titled the way it is.

"I don't think they see it as that. I don't thing they see it as where we go. Things go bad. I think that's all they're thinking about it," Gurira began. "We're the ones who live, which we had in the coda and thankfully got to make the title of this show, It's not just about the ones who are alive, its about those who are living inside of us."

"Those that we carry their souls, their spirits. The connection that we have to them rather, it's very real inside of us," she added. You know, the essence of who they were in the effect they had on us. And, the way that they contributed to everyone into the group and for the life of all of us. And for any of us to survive, we've got that. We've all survived. And that being a core thing that keeps us going is that connection."

Gurira Steps Into A New Role

Gurira wasn't done talking-to us though. She told ComicBook.com about the process of writing and producing an episode herself. Brandon Davis ended up wondering about the journey to get here. Clearly, there was some joy for Gurira getting to write an episode for a character she's played for a while now.

"Joy is the word -- happy, no," Gurira chuckled. "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.' And so I was the point person for the episode, which allowed me to have a vision on it, but it was very collaborative.

"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 jave 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," she added. "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."

Ares you excited for more Walking Dead? Let us know down in the comments!

Terry O'Quinn is best known for his role as John Locke on ABC's LOST, a stoic character who goes to great lengths to share his mystical theories on why he and the other passengers of Oceanic 815 were stranded on the island. It's a character that would likely get into loads of trouble during a zombie outbreak according to O'Quinn himself.

"I don't know. He'd probably do something to cause trouble," O'Quinn tells us in support of The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live. "He'd probably try to convince them all, 'Come with me it'll all be okay. We'll be good. I'm gonna bring you back, I'm sure. I believe.'"

While John Locke can't join The Walking Dead Universe, O'Quinn's latest role comes as Beale, a general of the franchise's Civic Republic Military. According to O'Quinn, Major General Beale large operates outside of the Civic Republic.

"He is the leader of the Civic Republic military and it operates pretty independently of the Civic Republic government. So he doesn't really have to deal with them very much. And he's held in high esteem. He's kind of a hero. He has a long military history. He served two terms in Vietnam and went to officer training school. And he's had to make some decisions in terms of who lives and who dies and how to deal with the mass of walking dead," O'Quinn told Entertainment Weekly. "He has a big army, but he has about 2,000 of his front liners. They're his elite corps and they do most of the work, be it dirty or not dirty. He makes decisions based on what he thinks will help his community survive. And it's completely that he's trying to make sure that this city survives, so he makes some tough decisions.

The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live -- starring Andrew Lincoln as Rick Grimes, Danai Gurira as Michonne, and Pollyanna McIntosh, Lesley-Ann Brandt, Matt Jeffries, and Terry O'Quinn -- premieres Sunday, February 25, on AMC and AMC+.

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

Despite 193 issues of The Walking Dead comic, 177 episodes of The Walking Dead TV series, and six other The Walking Dead spinoff TV shows, one fan theory has prevailed: the whole thing is a dream happening in Rick Grimes' mind as he lies in a coma in a hospital bed. Like so many "it was all a dream" style fan theories, the "Rick is in a coma" theory was seemingly born from a hope that things would all work out for all the characters whose horrible fate we had to witness, not to mention the ongoing trope of "it was all a dream" seen in shows like Newhart and St. Elsewhere. But it can't be true... right?

Speaking with ComicBook.com in an exclusive interview for the upcoming The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live TV series, we asked The Walking Dead CCO and series executive producer Scott Gimple if he had a favorite fan theory from all his years working on The Walking Dead and its many spinoffs. Having been a part of the series since its second season, Gimple has seen it all, and he was quick to note the Rick Grimes Coma theory as one he's surprised people appear to still be into.

"You know what? I try not to read too much of that stuff because I never want to like, you know, inadvertently take any of that stuff even though I love fan theories. But, I do like people who still believe that Rick is still in that bed and he's still in a coma. I mean, that's always, but that's like, even from the comic...That's not like a spoiler....He's awake."

When does The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live start?

The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live will premiere its first episode on AMC on Sunday, February 25, 2024. The six-episode series will premiere new episodes weekly, with the release schedule looking like this:

• The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live Episode 1 release date - Sunday, February 25, 2024
• The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live Episode 2 release date - Sunday, March 3, 2024
• The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live Episode 3 release date - Sunday, March 10, 2024
• The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live Episode 4 release date - Sunday, March 17, 2024
• The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live Episode 5 release date - Sunday, March 24, 2024
• The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live Episode 6 release date - Sunday, March 31, 2024

The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live series is the much anticipated return of Andrew Lincoln as Rick Grimes, filling in the gap of the story about what happened to his character after he left the flagship The Walking Dead series in season 9 while also continuing the story of Danai Gurira's Michonne following The Walking Dead series finale. Other cast members for the series include Pollyanna McIntosh, Lesley-Ann Brandt, Matt Jeffries, and Terry O'Quinn. AMC describes The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live as follows:

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

AMC is gearing up to release the next installment to The Walking Dead franchise, The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live. Scott Gimple recently participated in a press junket to promote the series which follows Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) and Michonne (Danai Gurira) who have been separated from one another for years after Rick blew up a bridge to protect his people. A helicopter would appear and Grimes, pretty worse for wear, would get whisked away by Anne (Pollyanna McIntosh) and the CRM.

Michonne has spent every day since trying to track him down as documented on The Walking Dead. If they can find each other will they still be the same people as they once were? Will the love they have for each other be restored? The lingering question amongst fans is what will happen when the series concludes? Will Rick and Michonne be the 'ones who live' to see them reunite with their family and group or will one -- or possibly even both -- of them end up in trouble?

Will Rick Grimes' Story Continue?

"I mean, there's things that go down in the show, but that said, it was definitely a 'never say never' situation," Gimple said. "Never say never with this group is generally trending in an optimistic direction. But uh, then there's a lot of other stuff we're getting in the meantime. The next Daryl season is amazing and then Dead City is ramping up right now. We have other things we're cooking up but this was amazing because it was family. It was doing it in a way it hadn't been done before with Danai, with Andy, and really cracking this story together. And it's amazing to me that the story we came up, even episode to episode, 'this will be episode one, this will be episode two,' 'these will be the big turns, this is what happens'. That's what wound up being the show and we did it together and it very much felt like playing in a band."

Since Lincoln's departure on the flagship series in season 9, fans have been clamoring to get the beloved character back. Prior to The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live series being greenlit at AMC, a trilogy of films about the titular character had been announced in 2018. A teaser was then revealed at SDCC in 2019 that gave a glimpse at what the films could look like. Updates would drop sporadically in the years following until plans for the films were officially axed. But it wasn't all bad news because instead, a limited series that would see both Lincoln and Gurira reprise their roles as the beloved Rick and Michonne was announced at SDCC 2022.

The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live will premiere on February 25th, on AMC and AMC+.

The Walking Dead Universe is headed for its own Avengers-style event, according to Scott Gimple.

Gimple was recently doing the press junket for the new Walking Dead spinoff series The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live, which will catch fans up with Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) and Michonne (Danai Gurira), after Rick vanished and Michonne went to look for him, in the later seasons of The Walking Dead main series. There's been a lot of speculation about how the limited series will end - with Rick and Michonne happily reunited, or one - or both - of them ending up dead. If they are, indeed, 'the ones who live,' the Walking Dead fans are going to want to see Rick and MIchonne reconnect with their daughter Judith, son Rick Jr., and the rest of the survivors of Alexandria and the other communities.

Scott Gimple Teases Walking Dead Universe Crossover Event

"Well I don't want to give too much away on this, but I will say that they cool thing about all these [shows] is what you were referring to before: you don't have to see any of these [shows] to watch any of these [shows]. But, if you are watching them all, you get little rewards that you might not have noticed, and I want to keep doing that. So yes, this story does potentially flow into other stories - and certainly, my overall hopes and dreams are to pull everything together at some point. Whether temporarily, or on more of a long-term basis."

At this point, there have been seven TV shows in The Walking Dead franchise:

1. The Walking Dead
2. Fear the Walking Dead
3. The Walking Dead: World Beyond
4. Tales of the Walking Dead
5. The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon
6. The Walking Dead: Dead City
7. The Walking Ded: The Ones Who Live

Obviously, fans are hoping to see about five of the shows brought together into some kind of larger crossover event - the two obvious exclusions being The Walking Dead: World Beyond and Tales of the Walking Dead. That's not to say those two series don't have characters or storylines that Gimple could mine for a crossover event - but it's not where the overwhelming majority of fan interest lies.

Main Walking Dead series characters like Morgan Jones (Lennie James), Daryl Dixon (Norman Reedus), Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), Maggie (Lauren Cohan), Rick, and Michonne have all been on their own respective journeys since breaking off from the Alexandria / Hilltop communities. All of them have been personally transformed and had their view of the world (and those who may be controlling) altered. Seeing them come back together (the toughest survivors and their allies) would indeed be THE next even in TWD series to get viewers back in - especially if The Ones Who Live gets that momentum started.

The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live will premiere on February 25th, on AMC and AMC+.

After living with the character of Michonne for more than a decade, The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live star Danai Gurira had a chance to write an episode of her new spinoff. Michonne, who serves as the series lead on The Ones Who Live alongside Andrew Lincoln's Rick Grimes, first appeared on The Walking Dead in 2012's "Beneath the Dying Fire," an episode in the show's second season. She was key to The Walking Dead's massive popularity, becoming the most-watched show on TV for a few years at its height, and the idea of reuniting her with Rick was an irresistible one to fans, who have been looking forward to this spinoff since it was announced.

Speaking with ComicBook.com about the upcoming show, Gurira discussed the process of writing and producing the episode a little bit. Brandon Davis, who has covered the show for almost as long as Gurira has been involved with it, asked about the joy of writing an episode for this character she is so closely associated with.

"Joy is the word -- happy, no," Gurira joked. "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.' And so I was the point person for the episode, which allowed me to have a vision on it, but it was very collaborative. 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 jave 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."

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

Walking Dead Universe Chief Content Officer Scott M. Gimple serves as showrunner and executive producer with Lincoln, Gurira, Denise Huth (The Walking Dead), and Brian Bockrath (The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon). The cast includes Lesley-Ann Brandt (Lucifer) as Pearl Thorne, Matthew Jeffers (The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel) as Nat, Terry O'Quinn (Lost) as Major General Beale, and Pollyanna McIntosh (The Walking Dead) as Jadis.

The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live premieres Sunday, February 25, on AMC and AMC+.

It's been more than five years since we saw Rick (Andrew Lincoln) and Michonne (Danai Gurira) together on The Walking Dead -- and the wait for the Richonne reunion is almost over. After reprising their roles as the long-lost lovers for a coda sequence that ended the 2022 series finale of The Walking Dead -- a separated Rick and Michonne were in different places and different times -- the pair reunite for The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live. Lincoln and Gurira, who serve as executive producers, co-created the new six-episode series with showrunner Scott M. Gimple and co-wrote the story for the Gimple-penned series premiere (Feb. 25 on AMC and AMC+).

"We wrote it, so we knew what we wanted," Lincoln told ComicBook in an exclusive interview. "We've been working for a couple of years, meeting in hotel rooms around the world and sitting down in conference rooms in hotels, spitballing these ideas. And we said, 'What is the most insane reunion we can imagine?' We landed on this, and the structure is quite unique with the timeframes that we've got these two people that have left the show in different timeframes. We needed to work that out, but also, we just thought it would be the most thrilling, insane, emotional reunion."

Originally planned as a Walking Dead movie trilogy, the series reveals what happened to Rick after his fateful helicopter flight with Jadis (Pollyanna McIntosh) on season 9 of The Walking Dead. Meanwhile, Michonne searches for Rick, who was whisked away aboard a helicopter by the Civic Republic Military: an oppressive military force headed by Major Generale Beale (Terry O'Quinn).

As for how Rick and Michonne's love story factors into their years-long attempts to reunite, Lincoln said, "That's the story."

"Danai was the one that was beating the drum largely on this, as well, and it is a love story. It's an epic love story. Every frame should inform their love -- or deny their love," Lincoln said. "Essentially, that was it. That was the story."

That love story not only connects Rick and Michonne to each other, but to their children: Judith and Rick "RJ" Grimes Jr. (Michonne and Rick's son was the result of a Richonne love scene in season 9, but Rick was presumed dead just before conception.) Rick and Michonne's mission: make their way back to each other and their loved ones back home. Alive.

Lincoln's hope is that "Rick, maybe, and Michonne make it at the end of this story alive, hopefully." After all, the Grimes are the ones who live.

The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live premieres Sunday, Feb. 25 on AMC and AMC+. Stay tuned to ComicBook/TWD and follow on Facebook for more TWD Universe coverage.