The Walking Dead Explains Michonne's Rick Phone

[Warning: This article contains spoilers for The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live episode 3.] It started with a cell phone, a mysterious message, and a pair of cowboy boots. When Michonne (Danai Gurira) happened across a stranger named Virgil (Kevin Carroll) who led her to a naval base on Bloodsworth Island, she believed she was tracking down weapons and munitions to help fight the Whisperer war. Instead, Michonne's mission ended with her finding a boat containing Rick's (Andrew Lincoln) belongings — his boots and an iPhone etched with Japanese lettering, a lowercase "rick," and a white-line portrait of Michonne and Judith on the glass.

That discovery set into motion a chain of events that led Michonne to Bridgers Terminal shipyard in New Jersey, a dead end where she found nothing but piles of shoeless bodies burned past the point of recognition. Michonne's companion, Nat (Matthew August Jeffers), then translated the hopeful meaning of the words on Rick's phone: "Believe a little bit longer." Just when it looked like all hope was lost, fate intervened to bring Michonne and Rick back together — in the clutches of the inescapable Civic Republic Military.

Episode 3 of The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live, titled "Bye," saw Michonne enter the Civic Republic, a thriving civilization of 200,000 people living in walled-off Philadelphia. It's there that she came across Benjiro's Portraiture and Art, a booth that uses old electronics as canvases for the artwork of Benjiro (Julian Cihi). 

Michonne recognized Benjiro's style as the portrait on Rick's phone, and Benjiro recognized Michonne as the woman that Rick described in his drawings. "Always you and the girl. He would come every few months and ask for a new one," Benjiro said, adding that it took Rick three years before he'd open up and say his family's names. "He said he wanted the drawings for until he saw you again. Here you are. He knew he'd see you. He knew it."

But Rick, who spent six years in CRM consignment and another two years moving up the ranks in the Civic Republic's army, stopped believing he'd ever see his family again. So Benjiro told him: Believe a little bit longer.

We saw Rick stuff his things into a bag he then tossed onto a boat during his third escape attempt from the CRM in The Walking Dead's "Rest in Peace" series finale. It was the very same boat that Michonne found washed ashore on Bloodsworth Island in the season 10 episode "What We Become," which ended with Michonne headed north to New Jersey when she came across Aiden (Breeda Wool) and Bailey (Andrew Bachelor) and their massive caravan. Nat told Michonne, "You can believe he's out there, that he's not gone. You can believe a little longer and still go home to your kids. You can know when to go. You can do both." And just when it seemed that Michonne stopped believing... she found him.

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