Rick Grimes Returns in The Walking Dead Series Finale

By Cameron Bonomolo - November 20, 2022 10:35 pm EST

Warning: this story contains spoilers from The Walking Dead series finale, "Rest in Peace." Sunday's final episode of The Walking Dead ends with an answer to the question plaguing fans for years: does Rick Grimes return? At San Diego Comic-Con in July, Andrew Lincoln and Danai Gurira announced they would reunite for the Rick & Michonne spin-off coming to AMC in 2023. Originally planned as a Rick movie trilogy, the new series will reveal what happened to Rick after he was taken away aboard a Civic Republic Military helicopter in the Season 9 episode "What Comes After." It will also answer what became of Michonne, whose exit in the Season 10 episode "What We Become" saw her heading north in search of Rick.

Spoilers ahead.

Four years after Rick's last episode aired in 2018, what came after was a coda scene revealing what became of Rick and Michonne in the time since we last saw them on The Walking Dead. The five-minute epilogue finds Rick and Michonne separated by time and distance, each writing letters to their loved ones back home.

"I think of the dead all the time. And the living who I lost," Rick's letter reads in voiceover. Memories flicker before him, a montage of the dead: Carl. Lori. Shane. Dale. T-Dog. Hershel. Glenn. Rick thinks of the living: Daryl. Carol. Maggie.

"I tried to get to you and your brother again and again. It's too far for the radio now, I know that," Michonne writes to her daughter, Judith Grimes (Cailey Fleming), and the son Rick does not yet know he has: Rick "RJ" Grimes Jr. (Antony Azor). "But I still got you, and you got me. We're connected. We're still connected to everybody we ever loved."

"I think about them all every day," says Rick. "Their faces. What I learned from them. How they made me who I am. So much more than all this made me who I am." Michonne tells their children, "We'll always be together, even when we're apart. We, together, are the strongest thing. We're love, and love is endless."

Rick and Michonne's narration becomes intertwined:

"So we, those gone..."
"...All of our lives..."
"...Those away..."
"...they come in one life."
"We are endless," Michonne says.
"We're together," Rick finishes, memories of Michonne flooding his mind. "Pieces of a whole that just keep going for what we gave each other. One unstoppable life. You showed me that. You gave me that."

But Rick and Michonne are not together. They are in some other place and some other time.

The last time fans saw him, Rick's scruffy hair was short, his grey beard long. Now Rick, covered in grime and barefoot in jeans, has longer hair and a shorter beard. Rick wears a brown and orange worker's jacket bearing the three-circle symbol of the Civic Republic. Elsewhere, Michonne is dressed in a warrior's outfit consisting of a leather harness and tabard, Rick's ring on a necklace around her neck.

Michonne holds the cell phone with a lowercase "rick" and drawings of Judith and Michonne etched into it below Japanese lettering that translates to: "Believe a little bit longer." Also in Michonne's possession are Rick's bag and his cowboy boots she found on Bloodsworth Island in Maryland — clues Rick survived his apparent death in a bridge explosion six years earlier.

"I know you're back there. I know your brother is back there. Just as sure as I know he's out there. Somewhere," Michonne narrates. "Not just as a part of us. He's alive out there." Somewhere out there, Rick sits on a muddy riverbank. His possessions are few: the cellphone, a bag, and his well-worn boots sit next to canned food with the three-circle insignia and a kill stick.

Rick's belongings suggest he's a worker at a Civic Republic Cull Facility, mass walker-clearing decontamination centers seen on The Walking Dead: World Beyond.

In another time, Michonne packs up Rick's belongings that she found on a boat marked "672" washed ashore on Bloodsworth Island. Sometime earlier, Rick places that same phone into a black garbage bag inside his backpack.

"I will find him," Michonne says. "Because I know he's trying to find us."

On the riverbank, Rick steps out over severed walker parts. He folds his handwritten note, stashes it into a glass bottle, and tosses it into the water. The sound of whirring helicopter blades send him scrambling. Rick heaves his bag, throwing it onto a nearby boat: 672. Dozens of zombie bodies litter the water.

The voice of the helicopter pilot booms overhead: "Consignee Grimes! You have been located and are instructed to surrender. Remain in place with your hands up!"

Somewhere else, Michonne wears a soft armor helmet. The katana-wielding warrior rides on horseback into a canyon swarming with a horde of the undead. "Remember what I said. It's what he said. Hold it to your heart. It's true. Forever," Michonne says of the secret saying she shared with Rick and Judith: "WE'RE THE ONES WHO LIVE."

"Come on, Rick," the pilot says. "It's like he told you: there's no escape for the living."

It's revealed Rick is offshore of a post-apocalyptic Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: location of the Civic Republic. A black CRM helicopter like the one that flew him away from Virginia descends before Rick, his hands up. Not surrendering — living to fight another day.

Rick Grimes smiles, and says: "We're the ones who live."

Read our postmortem with episode director Greg Nicotero breaking down the series finale coda. Rick and Michonne return in The Walking Dead: Rick & Michonne, premiering in 2023 on AMC and AMC+.

Stay tuned to ComicBook/TWD and follow @CameronBonomolo and @NewsOfTheDead on Twitter for more TWD Universe coverage.

Trending Now:

The Best Geek News