The Walking Dead Showrunner Explains Michonne’s Exit

The Walking Dead sent Michonne off from the TV series and into its larger world with Sunday night’s Episode 10×13. For Danai Gurira‘s final outing as the character she debuted as in 2012, a massive caravan would be strolling by her location and she would join it for a new journey. Of course, the destination of that journey in her mind is wherever Rick Grimes is — something which will play out in the upcoming series of films promised by Scott Gimple following Rick’s finals episode in Season 9. As it turns out, the collaboration between The Walking Dead showrunner Angela Kang and Gimple called for this to be the starting point for Michonne in the larger universe.

“We coordinated with Scott Gimple on what he needed the end point in the episode to be in order to set up the handoff to the TWD Universe,” Kang told Insider. “One thing that emerged early on as feeling critically important to all of us on the writing side as well as Danai was the idea of concrete evidence of Rick’s presence and a direction to go in. The boots are an iconic part of Rick’s costume, would’ve been on his person at the time of the bridge explosion, and would be immediately recognizable to Michonne, so that’s how we came to have this first clue.”

Of course, the iPhone with an important phrase carved into it certainly did not steer Michonne away from heading off to look for Mr. Grimes. “Believe a little bit longer,” the symbols translate to. “The phone is obviously a hint at some larger story that took place,” Kang says.

What will be interesting to see is how Michonne’s caravan of more than a thousand survivors will interact with the group which took Rick Grimes away from Alexandria. The logo on the helicopter represented a group referred to as CRM, revealed to be a military group which is going to be sprawling a large portion of the country with a lot of survivors. Could Michonne and Rick end up coming face to face with allegiances to groups which end up in a disagreement?

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