The Walking Dead cut a “very dark” exchange between Michonne (Danai Gurira) and son Carl Grimes (Chandler Riggs) from Gurira’s final episode, “What We Become,” where a drugged Michonne imagined herself as Negan’s (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) “right hand gal” and a high-ranking member of the Saviors. Fed jimson weed by stranger survivor Virgil (Kevin Carroll), Michonne tripped through key moments from Walking Dead history, corrupted by Michonne picturing herself as a villain. In this alternate version of events, where Michonne allowed Andrea (Laurie Holden) to gruesomely die before gunning down friends Glenn (Steven Yeun) and Heath (Corey Hawkins), Michonne wielded barbwire-wrapped baseball bat Lucille when menacing Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) and his people in a twist on Season 7 episode “The Day Will Come When You Won’t Be.”
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“They had these fantastic doubles who were there, and they did a great job. And then good old imagination,” Gurira told Entertainment Weekly of the process behind inserting Savior Michonne into the scene where it was Abraham (Michael Cudlitz) and Glenn who were killed by Negan. “They put down people there who were dressed as close to the actual people as they could be. And then I connected to them.”
In the real version of events, Michonne, Rick, and Carl were lined up alongside Abraham, Glenn, Daryl (Norman Reedus), Rosita (Christian Serratos), Maggie (Lauren Cohan), Aaron (Ross Marquand), Sasha (Sonequa Martin-Green), and Eugene (Josh McDermitt). In Michonne’s nightmare, it’s Michonne who is bludgeoned to death after Savior Michonne taunts Rick’s people over atrocities committed against sleeping Saviors in Season 6 episode “Not Tomorrow Yet.”
“There was a part that we didn’t end up using where I was in Carl’s face quite a bit. Really awful, but it didn’t make the cut,” Gurira revealed. “I don’t know how these things happen. But there was a double playing Carl, that was very dark. But, that exchange as well, for her to see that. We know how much Michonne loved Carl, but the underbelly of that. And if that hadn’t gone that way.”
“Basically, we recreated the lineup,” Gurira explained. “Of course, [Morgan] was there, and we created the lineup with the doubles and worked it that way, including a double of Michonne.”
A following scene, where Michonne is shot by Daryl before being executed by Rick, similarly rattled Gurira.
“It was awful, awful. No one wants to go down like that,” she said of Michonne’s what-if death scene. “I mean these are people you love, this is your family. So Norman and I shooting that scene, you know, he’s left shooting through the crowd and shooting me. Then Rick’s boots pinning my leg, my arm down. That wasn’t fun. I don’t know how else to tell you.”
New episodes of The Walking Dead Season 10 premiere Sundays on AMC. For all things TWD, follow the author @CameronBonomolo on Twitter.
