The Walking Dead’s Perfect Comic Easter Egg with Ezekiel and Michonne Relationship

The Walking Dead has been known to pack Easter eggs into its new hours on Sunday nights. Sometimes those Easter eggs reference other horror properties as Greg Nicotero pays homage to properties he enjoys. Other times the AMC zombie series references its comic book source material. However, those reference typically mean the show is following the story laid out by Robert Kirkman‘s original story. In Sunday night’s episode 10×04, a major deviation was acknowledged in a subtle manner as Ezekiel and Michonne sat talking about their lives — which are very different lives by comparison to the ones those characters lived in the comics.

In The Walking Dead comics, Ezekiel and Michonne were romantically involved. Prior to Ezekiel getting killed by Alpha in the pike sequence (yet anther major change), the former King decided he was going to confess his love to Michonne. He never did get to do that, though. This whole relationship was referenced in clever fashion during Episode 10×04 (Silence the Whisperers) after Michonne told Ezekiel, “We would never work.”

Ezekiel’s response to Michonne saying the two characters could never be in a relationship was: “Maybe in another universe.” It’s a clever reference to the comic book universe in which the two characters were together.

“That was in the script and it was funny to me because it was twofold for me that made it really funny because as far as Ezekiel and Michonne in the comic book, it’s a nice little call to that,” King Ezekiel actor Khary Payton tells ComicBook.com. “It also cracked me up because Danai [Gurira] and I, we have a lot of fun together. We also argue like nobody’s business together and we would kill each other. And so when she said it would never work, I started laughing because just looking at the Danai I was like, ‘Yeah, you’d either kill me or I’d kill you.’ It’d be scandalous. It’d be all over, one of us would be dead. I just thought that was so funny.”

As far as the kiss the two characters exchange earlier in the episode, Payton thinks that might just be their little secret. “I guess you’ll have to keep watching. I don’t think it’s something that either Michonne or Ezekiel need to broadcast,” he says. “This was about as intimate a conversation as you can have without actually being intimate, you know?”

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The Walking Dead airs Sundays at 9pm ET on AMC.