The Walking Dead Creator Reflects on the Line That Inspired The Ones Who Live

“We’re the ones that live, Rick,” Andrea told Rick Grimes in issue #94 of The Walking Dead comic book. “We’re the ones who survive… time after time, it’s us.” The 2012 issue of Robert Kirkman’s zombie comic inspired a season 5 episode of the AMC television series, where it was Andrew Lincoln’s Rick who first said the line “we’re the ones who live.” In turn, the phrase repeated by Rick and Danai Gurira’s Michonne inspired the title of their spinoff series, The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live.

“This issue also features Andrea’s line, ‘We’re the ones that live.’ Which I believe eventually evolved into ‘We don’t die’ if I’m not mistaken,” Kirkman writes in this week’s Walking Dead Deluxe #94, a reprint presenting the issue in full color for the first time. “It sealed the bond for these two characters and really solidified their connection.”

Part of Volume 16: A Larger World, the issue sees Alexandrians Rick, Andrea, Michonne, and Glenn joining Jesus on a trip to the Hilltop community. (It was around this point that the Rick/Michonne coupling became Richonne official on the TV show — a romantic development that almost happened in the comics.)

“As Andrea’s storyline got adapted to Michonne in the TV series” following her TV counterpart’s premature death in season 3, Kirkman adds, “that line was also the inspiration for the spin-off show titled The Ones Who Live.”

“They went with the more grammatically correct choice, a decision I cannot abide,” Kirkman joked. “Shame on them.”

“It was always this phrase that was pretty wild,” showrunner Scott M. Gimple previously told Entertainment Weekly of The Ones Who Live title. “As much as there were so many people dyingand being able to say, ‘We’re the ones who live.’ But I never took it asjust applying to the living people, because that seemed a little muchto be like, ‘Hey, we’re the ones that live, too bad about all thosepeople we love.’”

“No, to me, it felt like there’s a continuum of arelationship and love that cannot be extinguished,” Gimple explained. “And that is what isforged in this hell that we’ve lived through together. And thetriumphant thing is that we forever lived through each other and beyond.That, to me, seems the message of the whole thing.”

The Walking Dead Deluxe #94 is on sale now from Image Comics.