The Walking Dead’s Rick and Michonne Spinoff: Sneak Peek

AMC is keeping The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live under lock and key. The Rick and Michonne spinoff series starring Andrew Lincoln and Danai Gurira premieres February 25 and pits the long-lost lovers against the shadowy Civic Republic Military: the black-clad authoritarians who shuttled Rick away aboard a helicopter back in season 9 of The Walking Dead. But a secret message has been transmitted from within the Civic Republic — the fortified civilization of post-apocalyptic Philadelphia — to give viewers a brief glimpse of the newest Walking Dead spinoff. 

The 10-second teaser shows a gloved hand inserting a key into a doorknob, unlocking the door, and entering. What (or who?) is behind this door — and why it’s shrouded in secrecy — is a mystery. As we await the first full Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live trailer, promotional images (below) ask the questions: Where’s the missing Rick and Michonne?

Rick vanished with Jadis (Pollyanna McIntosh), who handed over the wounded Alexandrian for entry into the Civic Republic. What little we’ve seen of Rick since showed that he’s spent years trying (and failing) to escape the CRM after being put to work in the organization’s zombie-culling facilities. Michonne, meanwhile, went off in search of Rick to bring him home to their children, Judith (Cailey Fleming) and Rick Jr. (Antony Azor). Michonne happened across Rick’s belongings on Bloodsworth Island and has been trailing him ever since.

We last saw a separate Rick and Michonne in a coda ending The Walking Dead series finale, each trying to make their way back to the other. Their long-awaited reunion in the upcoming series marks more than five years since Lincoln and Gurira’s characters shared a scene in the “What Comes After” episode of season 9.

“These two characters were separated as we know, or don’t, but theywere separated. So we’re bringing them back together but we don’t knowhow,” Gurira said last year on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.”We’ve lost Rick Grimes, we don’t know where he’s been, what’s happenedto him. [Michonne] never doubted that he might still be alive, so we’llsee. A lot of pieces of the puzzle are gonna be figured out.”

The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live — starring Andrew Lincoln, Danai Gurira, Pollyanna McIntosh, Lesley-Ann Brandt, Matt Jeffries, and Terry O’Quinn — premieres Sunday, February 25, on AMC and AMC+. 

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