The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live Episode 2 Recap: "Gone"

SIX YEARS AFTER THE BRIDGE. "My name is Michonne. I lost someone years ago," Michonne (Danai Gurira) says over a flashback to Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) sacrificing himself on the bridge. "But I just found out that he might — I just found out that he's alive." 

Michonne found Rick's phone and a ship ledger that last logged its location in Bridgers Terminal, New Jersey. She was headed north when she came across Aiden (Breeda Wool) and Bailey (Andrew Bachelor), a pair of stragglers who said their group — a massive caravan of survivors — wouldn't wait for them. But Michonne didn't leave them behind. 

"I saw two people who needed me, your people, and I helped them. That's it. No other reason. No agenda," Michonne tells Elle (Erin Anderson). "But I see what you have, and I've still got a long way to go. So, I need to ask for some help myself, and if you're not in a position to give it, I understand, and I will be on my way." 

Michonne requests a horse, but first, Elle wants to know more about Michonne and her community. She's eager to resume her search for Rick, but Elle says Michonne could be an asset to her people if she doesn't find her missing "someone." She corrects herself to say that they could both be part of this community. 

"We have a community. We have kids. Kids who need to see their father, kids who I need to see," Michonne says, firm. "So I have to find him, and I have to go. Now." She's en route to Bridgers Terminal, north of here, in New Jersey. Elle is Aiden's sister, so she does Michonne the courtesy of warning her about The Wailing: a mass migration of millions of walkers from the tri-state area that gather to move south.

 Elle suggests Michonne stay with them until the migration is over and it's safer to head north. "They say you don't stop for anyone, ever," Michonne replies. "Not even your own sister." Elle explains that their community doesn't stop for anyone because by "trying to save two, we could lose 200. This is how we've survived." To that, Michonne replies: "But not everyone, right?"

It's not a community Michonne wants to be part of — and neither does a fired-up Nat (Matthew August Jeffers), who enters the trailer to explode on Elle. The rear guard tried to stop him from going after Aiden and Bailey, so he's going after them alone. "She was your sister, and they were my friends," Nat says. "This system is bullshit. We're strong enough to stop. We're strong enough to save people. What the hell is the point otherwise?"

In his fury, Nat didn't see Aiden and Bailey. Michonne watches the happy reunion with a smile. He's surprised that a stranger stopped to help them when their own people's protocol is to keep moving. If she rides with them from now on, she rides VIP. "Even if I didn't have somewhere to be," Michonne responds, "I don't leave people behind." Neither does Nat, who rewards Michonne's benevolence with her pick of horses. The trailer is part of a caravan of hundreds of survivors — some on horseback, in trucks and other vehicles, all moving as one.

As Michonne tries to reach Judith over walkie-talkie, Nat warns her that trying to get through the five-mild-wide hordes of The Wailing is a "suicide mission." She agrees to stay until tomorrow so Nat can equip her with custom-made weapons and a samurai suit of armor to protect her from the dead.

At the Delaware border, Michonne asks her newfound friends why they stay with a group that leaves people to die. Nat didn't like it before, either, but "it was he same thing then, right?" Maybe they're stupid, or afraid, but being left behind is better than being alone. Michonne's walkie will be out of range soon, if she's not already, so Nat gives her another way to talk to her kids back home: a journal.

Michonne makes it to the five-mile-wide Wailing and loads a "screamstick": a custom-made rocket launcher that fires projectiles with a whirring "scream." When a rocket strikes a Gas Man walker carrying jerrycans, the resulting explosion blasts a hole in the herd and knocks Michonne off her horse. She grips her katana to slice her way through the five-mile-wide Wailing... only to watch the sea of walkers separate, their attention turned toward a purple explosion in the belly of the valley. Aiden, Bailey, Nat, and other like-minded survivors splintered from the caravan to come back for Michonne.

"We didn't want to be afraid and stupid anymore," Bailey says. "Turns out, others felt the same way." As they wait for the fires to split the Wailings, Nat explains the purple light: his idea to clear valleys with chemicals that create "huge, localized, long-lasting burns." He palms a lighter, flicking it open and shut, telling Michonne that he planned to split from the caravan a long time ago. But he stuck around, and then years went by. "It was time to go a long time ago. I knew it," he confesses, adding that a lot of their people felt the same way. "I know how to build things, I know how to burn things. But it takes more than that at the end of the world. You showed them that. You showed me that." They're with her all the way. In return, Michonne tells them that when she gets Rick, they'll come back home with her to Alexandria. "It's just going to take a little building," Michonne says. To that, Nat responds: "That I can do."

Michonne realizes that Aiden is pregnant. She was craving honey, so Aiden and Bailey split off to scavenge a big-box store. That's why they were out there when Michonne found them. Aiden is pregnant and Bailey hurt his ankle, so Michonne suggests they take some of the others and head to Alexandria without her. But they're close to Bridgers Terminal, and the expecting parents want to be there when Michonne finds Rick. She insists that they go to Alexandria, so Aiden says they will... after she finds Rick.

The next day, Michonne and Nat walk alongside the smaller convoy of horses, wagons, trucks, and RVs. A little person, Nat reveals that his father abandoned him and his mother because he "didn't want a 'little' little kid." Nat started burning things and blowing things up in the woods until his stepdad — a man named Danger — redirected Nat's talents. Instead of burning, Nat started building: a truck lift and runners, a temperature gauge for the stove, a timer so he wouldn't leave the sink running. It's Danger's lighter that Nat carries with him, a relic from one of the few people he ever liked. As the caravan crosses through an abandoned town, they watch a helicopter fly overhead. It circles around, flies towards them... and drops a load of green chlorine gas.

Nat tells the survivors to cover their mouths with fabric and wet it with their canteens, but it's too late. In a haze of lethal green gas, people scream and cough as they drown in their own lungs. Some have died and reanimated. Their eyes burning and bloodied, Nat and Michonne take cover inside a nearby store with Aiden and Bailey. "Go back to them," Aiden tells Michonne through the foam forming in her mouth. "Go back to your babies. Don't risk it." They're suffocating, so Michonne goes to raid a medical plaza for oxygen tanks. She tells Bailey to tie Aiden to the bed.

By the time Michonne returns with the little red wagon loaded with oxygen tanks, she finds a reanimated Aiden strapped to the bed. Michonne sobs and puts Aiden down with a stab to the brain, then stabs a zombified Bailey. They're all dead, except for Nat, who couldn't bring himself to kill his friends. "She was right," he tells Michonne. "When you can, you need to go home. It's been too long. He's gone."

Michonne and Nat spend the next year holed up in an abandoned shopping mall as they recover from the CRM's chlorine gas strike that burned out their lungs and throats. Surviving off canned tomato sauce and other supplies scavenged from the food court, they build up their strength and their lungs with huffs from oxygen masks. Michonne has Rick's boots, which she found on the boat that led her to Bridgers Shipyard.

"I told you. I knew when to go. And I didn't. And they all died," Nat tells Michonne. "You gotta know when to go. You gotta know when to go, you gotta know when to give up." She reminds him that Danger didn't give up on him, or his mom. "You gotta think it was 'cause of love," she says. She has another of Rick's belongings: a cell phone with Japanese lettering and drawings of Michonne and Judith etched onto the glass. She's marked a map that will lead Nat to Alexandria. Aiden and Bailey were supposed to go. They didn't. They died. She doesn't want the same happening to him, but he refuses to leave her behind. "This is all I got. You," he tells her, as he flicks Danger's lighter open and shut. "Is it about wanting to see how it ends?" she asks. As he studies the flame, he tells her, "Nope. I know how it ends."

Michonne and Nat arrive at Bridgers Terminal to find a decaying, half-sunken ship scrawled with the words "SAFE HARBOR"... and piles of burned bodies. The corpses, most of them shoeless, are unidentifiable and indistinguishable from the next. But Michonne spends the entire night searching them anyway, scouring for any sign of Rick. She pulls Rick's boots from her bag and holds them to her chest as she sobs. She felt Rick. She still feels him. Nat tells her what the phone says in Japanese: "Believe a little bit longer." She should go home, he reminds her, but she can still believe he's out there.

Michonne confesses the truth she didn't want to believe: "All this time, it's been right in front of me. It's been so long. If he were alive... he would've found his way." As she breaks down crying, Nat tells her she can't know for sure that Rick is gone. "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," he says. "You can know when to go. You can do both. I can do it with you. I will. It's not giving up." She'll believe a little bit longer.

NOW. Michonne and Nat have continued their trek when they see it: a CRM helicopter. Nat unpacks a makeshift rocket launcher, lights a fuse, aims, fires... and misses. He fires another projectile that hits the chopper, and CRM Lt. Col. Donald Okafor (Craig Tate) is KIA as he explodes into bits of blood and body parts. Another round brings down the helicopter, and another blast knocks the crashed soldiers off their feet. "I got them," Michonne says through gritted teeth, unsheathing her sword. "Unless you get them first." Michonne thinks of Aiden and Bailey as she removes the soldiers' helmets, allowing her to slice their throats and look into their eyes as they die. She remembers what Rick told her all those years ago: "You can lose me." She thinks of her children, Judith and RJ. And then she finds him: Rick. He's not gone.

Rick and Michonne embrace. "I found you!" she sobs, having believed a little bit longer. Rick asks if Judith is alive. Michonne tells him their daughter is okay. "I'm not with them," a shocked Rick says, but she already knows. They kiss and hold each other, crying. But just as soon as they've found each other, they're torn apart. The Civic Republic Military is answering the distress signal that was sent when the helicopter went down. They're coming.

Rick instructs Michonne to say she has another name. That she came out of the forest and saw the soldiers being attacked. She was part of a community that fell years ago, someplace small. And don't call the dead walkers. "Don't show them who you are," Rick tells her. "Strong. A leader. You hide it." Hide that she's an A. Rick and Michonne have to go back with the CRM. "Michonne, I promise," he tells his wife. "I'll make it so we get away." Michonne, still stunned, is in disbelief that she found Rick.

And so is Nat, surprised to see Rick alive. "He's not with them," Michonne tells him. Before Nat can ask any more questions, a CRM soldier fires a fatal shot with his dying breath. Rick rushes over and kills the soldier as Michonne holds a dying Nat in her arms. "Is it still him?" he asks her. "Can you tell?" It is, and she can. "See? You can still believe and know when..." Nat dies. Michonne mourns the friend who helped her get to Rick. But there's no time for anything except covering up who she is to Rick. He confiscates her journal, the radio, the phone, the boots — anything that could tell them about her or Alexandria. Rick places Michonne's sword in Nat's hand and comes up with their cover story: he had the sword, she took one of the soldier's guns off the ground and stopped him.

"We're gonna be separated, but I'll find you as soon as it's safe. I promise," Rick swears. He instructs her to put her hands up. The CRM needs to see him with his gun on her. "We will get away. I love you!" As the CRM helicopter descends, Michonne smiles. They're the ones who live... and they're going to get away.

At the CRM base on the outskirts of the Civic Republic of Philadelphia, Michonne is in designation intake and sits before a CRM council. She tells them her name is "Dana," and invents a backstory: she was in Georgia for a long time with her boyfriend and about 40 people, including her sister, Elle. But then her community fell. Her weapon of choice was a bo staff, but she lost it months ago and has been making do with a knife ever since. "This is a place of law. We are on a base on the outskirts of a city that is a remnant of the life we knew," a high-ranking CRM officer tells Michonne. "Its security is our top priority, which means you can never leave. How do you feel about that?"

Looking at her reflection in two-way glass, Michonne/"Dana" answers: "I feel that what's here, it's what I've been looking for. It's what I've been trying to believe in just a little while longer." Later, she's Consignee Dana Bethune — wearing the same brown and orange jacket with the three-circle symbol that Rick wore during his six-year consignment with the Civic Republic's army. She's pulled aside by CRM soldier — Rick. He tells them they believed her, because she's here. Michonne notices Rick's prosthetic hand, so he explains: "It happened a long time ago, one of the last times I tried to get home." Her face contorts in confusion: "One of the last times?"

"They had me trapped. They don't have me anymore," Rick replies. "We will get away. Together. They're okay? She's okay?" Michonne reaffirms that Judith is okay, but there's something else she has to tell him. "She's us, Rick. The rest when we get away." She then tells Rick that the CRM is killing people out there. She asks if he's had to commit those atrocities, but he hasn't: the CRM soldiers with the blood-red stripes go out and come back covered in blood. "Most of us don't know what they do. I didn't know," Rick says, "but I knew. I was stuck here." Rick also knows they can't stop them. "Could we try?" Michonne asks. "We'd never get back," Rick says, almost coldly. "Sorry about your friend." He hands over Danger's lighter.

"He should have lived. They all should have lived," Michonne tells Rick. "I'm here now. We're here together now. And we're gonna get home." They share a secret kiss, and then Sgt. Maj. Grimes and Consignee Bethune go their separate ways. Meanwhile, a decorated CRM officer watches "Dana's" taped interview. The mysterious figure than unlocks Rick's apartment and waits inside. Michonne scopes out the CRM base on the outskirts of the C.R.P., looking out at an unstoppable fleet of helicopters, vehicles, and soldiers as she flicks open Nat's lighter engraved with the word "DANGER."

Rick returns to his apartment and is surprised to see Warrant Officer Jadis Stokes (Pollyanna McIntosh). She apologizes for the B&E, but she's conducting an off-the-books investigation. "Let's keep certain things between you and me, as we have," she says, feigning surprise that his wife found him after all these years. "If anyone could, she could." Jadis knows that Michonne was with "the little one," and that it was her sword clasped in his hands. But she's keeping that off the books. 

"This doesn't fall under our longstanding deal," Jadis tells Rick. "You have to know that if you try to escape with her, I will make sure that all those people that you love die, including a few that I like very much. You have to know that. I'm certain that you do. I've had to do things like that. My hands are already covered in blood. They can't get any bloodier." He listens to his superior officer with fire in his eyes.

Jadis then asks Rick a question: "Rick, what the f--- are you doing?"

New episodes of The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live premiere Sundays on AMC and AMC+. Stay tuned to ComicBook/TWD and follow on Facebook for more TWD Universe coverage.