The following is a spoiler-free advance review of the first four episodes of The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live, which premieres Sunday, Febraury 25 on AMC and AMC+.
The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live marks a strong, welcome return for previous franchise anchors Andrew Lincoln and Danai Gurira. The spin-off is emotional, gripping, and very wise when it comes to explaining where their characters wound up after they peeled off from The Walking Dead.
That’s paramount, right? Not just explaining their long absence and what Rick Grimes (Lincoln) and Michonne (Gurira) have been doing but also, in a way, justifying their departures from the parent series within a story that tricks us into thinking everyone involved knew what they were doing the entire time. The Ones Who Live accomplishes this in spades, though not without falling into some tired storytelling traps.
Gurira’s Michonne is a revelation in this mini-saga. In an almost meta manner, her headstrong (and heartstrong) love for Rick fights back against what could otherwise be frustrating, unnatural plot devices. Every time she runs into one – whether it’s characters avoiding the simple conversation that would solve their problem or someone taking an exceedingly noble route (rather than a believably human one) – Michonne is there to smash these clichés down in the dirt.
Lincoln is in top form as well, playing a fundamentally shattered Rick. His anguish is key to all of this: When Lincoln left The Walking Dead in 2018, viewers had to reckon with why Rick never returned after flying away in that Civic Republic Military helicopter. Something must’ve gone horribly awry: Rick’s a tooth-and-nail fighter, and it would seem like no force on Earth could stop him from getting back to his loved ones. Addressing these questions is the herculean task of The Ones Who Live – and the show nails it. It takes us through the agony, the defeat, the shame, and then the cerebral rewiring that happens to the traumatized. And, through four of its six episodes, it all makes for some moving “full circle” Walking Dead.
This miniseries also gives us our first (actually) interesting immersion into the CRM. We’ve met this Three Circles “As and Bs” army before – on both Fear the Walking Dead and The Walking Dead: World Beyond (which was solely about that corner of the post-outbreak world) – but without Rick there to immediately answer the most burning of questions, it all just felt like stalling. No, we didn’t really want to know “more about the group who took Rick.” Just give us Rick and tell us his story!
During season 9 of The Walking Dead, fans wondered if the CRM was the Commonwealth (the antagonists of the comics’ final arc, and subsequently the show’s, too), but it wasn’t. Which made their existence even stranger: Why present a villainous group that’s way more powerful than the actual endgame? There were many missteps with The Walking Dead’s final years, and this was merely one of them.
Fortunately, between Dead City, Daryl Dixon, and now The Ones Who Live, vastly superior Walking Dead TV is at our doorstep. Too little, too late? Hard to say, but these shows are fine dining compared to the prison food of the Commonwealth arc. And The Ones Who Live has an advantage on its predecessors: Lincoln and Gurira are the best performers in the franchise. On top of that, their characters have the one love story that remains. Their fates are tied to the “hope” that these dystopian series rely on to rise above excessive bleakness. It doesn’t matter when you checked out of The Walking Dead (because you did, numbers don’t lie) – The Ones Who Live is worth the brief return to the fold.
The credits on The Ones Who Live signal a more in-house, hands-on approach, and the desire to get this one right: Scott Gimple – the former Walking Dead boss who now oversees the entire franchise for AMC – is back in the showrunner’s chair, with a main story he crafted with Gurira. (In fact, they share the premiere’s “story by” with Lincoln.) After advancing their kinetic style with the middle episodes of Hawkeye, British directing duo Bert & Bertie manage to open up The One Who Live’s world in a powerful way, tracking the characters across long stretches of time while still managing to maintain heart and emotional integrity. They direct the first two episodes, which are very much a “here’s what you missed” block – a difficult task, but the stories that unfold within are stunning. The Ones Who Live is a love story and it never forgets that.
There is a frustratingly long list of information this review can’t divulge – some I get, for spoilers’ sake, while others are confoundingly benign – but what you’ll find in The Ones Who Live are two people waging a war to get back to one another. And after most of the physical dangers are met head on, emotional hurdles remain. There’s a “time out” that occurs that you’ll wish a lot of other shows would attempt with characters who aren’t on the same page for half-assed reasons. Amid the grandeur of the CRM and its plans for the world, there’s a unique theme about humanity’s next steps forward. What do we do after everything falls apart? It’s about making small stories important within a movement obsessed with the “big picture.”
Rounding out the cast are Craig Tate, Lesley-Ann Brandt, Terry O’Quinn, and – of course – a returning Pollyanna McIntosh, while Matthew August Jeffers provides a pivotal part of Michonne’s journey. They’re all important in varying ways, making it even more irritating to look back at most of The Walking Dead’s final years and all the new characters who retreated into an indistinguishable “blah” after their initial moments in the spotlight. The Ones Who Live is focused on telling a complete tale, with little wasted movement, showcasing how much you have to scrape and claw to find and foster true love and intimacy in a world dedicated to survival at all costs.