Everything to Know About The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live

“We’re the ones who live.” Spoken by Andrew Lincoln’s Rick Grimes and Danai Gurira’s Michonne on The Walking Dead, those five words would inspire the new Walking Dead spinoff series reuniting Rick and Michonne for the first time in years. First announced as a trilogy of Walking Dead movies following Lincoln’s departure from the mothership show in season 9, Lincoln and Gurira collaborated with showrunner Scott M. Gimple to rework the features into a six-episode event series. After years gone “bye,” Rick and Michonne return in The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live. 

Here’s a rundown of everything to know about The Walking Dead Rick and Michonne show, including when and where to watch the new series.

What Is The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live About?

The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live reveals what happened to Rick after Jadis (Pollyanna McIntosh) had him airlifted away in a CRM helicopter on season 9 of The Walking Dead. In season 10, Michonne learned that Rick didn’t die in the bridge explosion and then set off to bring him home to their children: Judith and Rick “RJ” Grimes Jr.

“The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live presents an epic lovestory of two characters changed by a changed world. Kept apart bydistance. By an unstoppable power. By the ghosts of who they were,”the official synopsis reads. “Rick and Michonne are thrown into anotherworld, built on a war against the dead… And ultimately, a war againstthe living. Can they find each other and who they were in a place andsituation unlike any they’ve ever known before? Are they enemies?Lovers? Victims? Victors? Without each other, are they even alive — orwill they find that they, too, are the Walking Dead?”

The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live Cast

Along with Lincoln and Gurira returning as Rick and Michonne, the series stars TWD Universe newcomers Lesley-Ann Brandt (Lucifer) as Civic Republic Military Sgt. Major Pearl Thorne, Terry O’Quinn (Lost) as CRM Major General Beale, Matthew August Jeffers (New Amsterdam) as Nat, and Craig Tate (Snowfall) as CRM Lt. Col. Donald Okafor. Pollyanna McIntosh, who played Jadis on The Walking Dead and returned on The Walking Dead: World Beyond, reprises her role as CRM Warrant Officer Jadis Stokes. 

How Many Episodes Is The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live?

The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live is being described as a “six-episode event series.” 

When and Where to Watch The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live

The new Walking Dead series premieres Sunday, February 25, at 9 p.m. ET on AMC and AMC+. New episodes will release weekly on Sundays.

Cord-cutters who don’t have cable can stream The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live with an AMC+ subscription, which begins at $4.99/month for the Monthly With Ads plan or $8.99/month for the Ad-free Monthly plan. 

Who Made the New Walking Dead Series?

Lincoln and Gurira developed and co-created The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live with Scott M. Gimple, AMC’s TWD Universe chief content officer who showran seasons 4—8 of The Walking Dead. Lincoln and Gurira also serve as executive producers with Gimple, Brian Bockrath (The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon), and longtime Walking Dead executive producers Denise Huth, Greg Nicotero, Gale Anne Hurd, David Alpert and TWD creator Robert Kirkman. Also on board as co-executive producers are episodes 1 & 2 directors Bert & Bertie (Silo), Gabriel Llanas (Avatar: The Last Airbender), Channing Powell (Tales of The Walking Dead), and Ryan DeGard 
(The Walking Dead: Dead City).

The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live Title Explained

“The ones who live” is a phrase that has been repeated throughout The Walking Dead. Rick was the first to say it when he told the residents of the Alexandria Safe-Zone that his group knows how to survive in the season 5 episode “Try,” and Michonne reminded him of his words after the Alexandrians were subjugated by Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) and the Saviors. 

“We’re still alive, Rick. So much has happened. So much that we shouldn’t have lived through. In spite of it, or maybe because of it, we did. We’re still here. The two of us,” Michonne, now Rick’s partner, told him in the season 7 episode “Hearts Still Beating.” “We’re still standing and we’re going to keep standing. So what do we do with that? How do we make that mean something? We’re the ones who get things done. You said that. We’re the ones who live.” Michonne repeated it back to Rick again in “Rock in the Road,” when the couple took out a walker horde. “We’re here. You can smile. We made it,” Michonne told him. “We can make it. We’re the ones who live.”

The words would connect Rick and Michonne in The Walking Dead series finale, “Rest in Peace,” where Rick and Michonne wrote letters while separated by time and distance. “We’ll always be together, even when we’re apart. We, together, are the strongest thing. We’re love, and love is endless,” Michonne said, her words becoming entwined with Rick’s: “So we, those gone, all of our lives, those away, they come in one life. We are endless. We’re together, pieces of a whole that just keep going for what we gave each other. One unstoppable life.”

“We’re the ones who live,” Rick and Michonne said over a montage of the ones who lived. In the final scene of the series, Judith reminded RJ: “We get to start over. We’re the ones who live.”

“We’re the ones who live,which we had in [The Walking Dead season 11] coda and thankfully got to make the title of thisshow, It’s not just about the ones who are alive, its about those whoare living inside of us,” Gurira explained to ComicBook. “Thosethat we carry — their souls, their spirits. The connection that we haveto them, it’s very real inside of us. Theessence of who they were in the effect they had on us. And the way thatthey contributed to everyone into the group and for the life of all ofus. And for any of us to survive, we’ve got that. We’ve all survived.And that being a core thing that keeps us going is that connection.”

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