Rick and Michonne Walking Dead Spinoff Casts Terry O’Quinn, Pollyanna McIntosh

Terry O’Quinn is going from The Island to the Civic Republic. The Emmy-winning actor, who played fan-favorite John Locke on Lost, has been cast in the Rick and Michonne Walking Dead spin-off series starring Andrew Lincoln and Danai Gurira. AMC announced at New York Comic Con on Thursday that O’Quinn will play Major General Beale — until now the unseen, shadowy leader of the Civic Republic Military — in The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live. The network also confirmed that Pollyanna McIntosh, who previously reprised her Walking Dead role on limited series The Walking Dead: World Beyond, will return as CRM Warrant Officer Jadis Stokes. 

Alongside Lincoln and Gurira, reprising their iconic roles as Rick Grimes and Michonne, the new series also stars TWD Universe newcomers Lesley-Ann Brandt (Lucifer) as Pearl and Matt Jeffries as Nat. See the just-revealed first-look images below, and watch the new teaser trailer here. 

Beale was first mentioned on The Walking Dead: World Beyond, ordering the “tactical military operation” that wiped out Nebraska’s Omaha Safe-Zone and the satellite Campus Colony — killing more than 110,000 people — as part of a plot that threatened another 87,000 survivors from Portland, part of the Civic Republic-aligned Alliance of the Three. That series also revealed that Beale, along with CRM Lieutenant Colonel Elizabeth Kublek (Julia Ormond), founded Project Votus, which involves human and zombie test subjects labeled as either an “A” or “B.”

The CRM is the mysterious group that Jadis called to shuttle Rick away aboard a helicopter on season 9 of The Walking Dead. More than six years have passed since Rick disappeared and was presumed killed in a bridge explosion, but World Beyond revealed that Jadis trafficked Rick to the CRM in exchange for entry into the Civic Republic, a secret civilization of 200,000 people in fortified Philadelphia. Designated “Consignee Grimes,” Rick repeatedly tried — and failed — to escape the CRM. Rick has been put to work at a Civic Republic Cull Facility, decontamination centers where CR military personnel perform mass zombie cullings as part of the CRM’s efforts to clear entire states of the undead.

Beale was also referenced on The Walking Dead coda when a CRM helicopter pilot told an escaping Rick: “Come on, Rick. It’s like he told you: there’s no escape for the living.”

The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live “presents an epic love story of two characters changed by a changed world,” per AMC’s description. “Kept apart by distance. By an unstoppable power. By the ghosts of who they were. Rick and Michonne are thrown into another world, built on a war against the dead… And ultimately, a war against the living. Can they find each other and who they were in a place and situation unlike any they’ve ever known before? Are they enemies? Lovers? Victims? Victors? Without each other, are they even alive — or will they find that they, too, are the Walking Dead?”

Scott M. Gimple, Chief Content Officer of AMC’s The Walking Dead Universe, serves as showrunner and executive producer alongside Lincoln, Gurira, Denise Huth (The Walking Dead) and Brian Bockrath (The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon). The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live premieres February 2024 on AMC and AMC+.

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