The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live Reveals What Happened to Michonne

[Spoiler alert: This article contains spoilers for The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live episode 2.] “I found something.” With those three words, Michonne (Danai Gurira) informed her daughter Judith Grimes that she had a lead on “the Brave Man”: the long-missing Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln). Now believing that the husband she lost six years earlier was alive, Michonne embarked on a mission to find Rick — one that would see her depart The Walking Dead and return years later on The Ones Who Live. It’s there that the couple finally reunited at the crash site of a downed CRM helicopter, with the shocked Michonne telling Rick: “I found you.”

It was the culmination of a journey that started years ago on The Walking Dead season 10 episode “What We Become,” which ended with Michonne heading north to New Jersey when she happened across Aiden (Breeda Wool) and Bailey (Andrew Bachelor): a pair of stragglers left behind by their massive caravans of survivors. Michonne chose to help the strangers, a decision that would ultimately lead her back to Rick.

Sunday’s “Gone” episode of The Ones Who Live picked up where “What We Become” left off: with Michonne, Aiden, and Bailey back among the ranks of Elle’s (Erin Anderson) nomadic convoy of hundreds traveling with horses, carriages, trucks, trailers, and RVs. Elle explained that their mobile community doesn’t stop for anyone — not even her own sister, Aiden — because by trying to save a few, they could lose many. 

Nat (Matthew August Jeffers), the group’s pyromaniac tinkerer, had enough of Elle’s system of leaving people behind and splintered from the group with Aiden, Bailey, and a few dozen other survivors. With her journey north impeded by a mass migration they called the Wailing — a five-mile-wide walker herd — Nat equipped Michonne with weapons and a suit of armor, then split the horde with long-burning chemical fires on opposite sides of the valley. The trio accompanied Michonne to the Delaware border to aid in her search for Rick, with Michonne offering to bring them home with her to Alexandria.

While en route to Bridgers Terminal in New Jersey — the last logged location of the boat where Michonne found Rick’s boots and a cell phone with drawings of Michonne and Judith on the glass — a Civic Republic Military helicopter carried out an air strike that wiped out Michonne’s group with chlorine gas. (The Walking Dead: World Beyond revealed that the green liquid chlorine gas is a CRM bioweapon that chemically bonds itself to moisture inside the body to trigger severe bronchial spasms and excessive fluids in the lungs, effectively “drowning” victims from the inside out.)

Michonne managed to find oxygen masks at a nearby medical plaza, but had to tearfully put down a reanimated Aiden and Bailey with her sword. Michonne and Nat holed up in an abandoned shopping mall, where they spent more than a year recuperating from the CRM’s attack. 

Once they were strong enough to continue their trek to New Jersey, the duo reached Bridgers Terminal… and found a shipwrecked boat surrounded by piles of burned bodies. Many of the corpses were shoeless and burned past the point of recognition, making it impossible for Michonne to identify Rick’s body. Nat then told Michonne the meaning of the Japanese lettering on Rick’s phone: Believe a little bit longer. “It’s been so long,” Michonne said, breaking down crying. “If he were alive… he would’ve found his way.” Nat told her that she couldn’t know for sure that Rick is dead. “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 said. “You can know when to go. You can do both. It’s not giving up.”

In the present-day timeline, Michonne and Nat were making their way through Pennsylvania to Virginia when they spotted another CRM helicopter. Nat shot it down with a rocket launcher, killing its pilot: CRM Lt. Col. Donald Okafor (Craig Tate). Michonne killed the CRM soldiers on board, and nearly sliced the throat of a final helmeted soldier that she unmasked as Rick. Reunited for the first time in eight years, Rick told Michonne, “I’m not with them.”

But their happy reunion was short-lived: a dying CRM soldier shot and killed Nat, whose dying words reminded Michonne that she can still believe and know when to go. With another CRM helicopter en route to the crash site, Rick told Michonne that they would be separated while the Civic Republic’s army designated her as either an “A” or a “B.”

Rick instructed Michonne to lie about herself, her name, and where she came from as he covered up the crash. He then promised to find her as soon as it was safe. As Michonne was interrogated by a CRM council in designation intake, she claimed her name was “Dana” and that she was part of a community in Georgia that fell months ago. The Civic Republic of Philadelphia accepted “Dana” as a consignee and put her on walker-clearing duty, the same work that Rick was assigned during his six-year consignment. 

Rick promised Michonne that they’d get away, but the episode ended with them trapped by the CRM… and Rick’s superior, Warrant Officer Jadis Stokes (Pollyanna McIntosh), who threatened to kill Rick and Michonne’s loved ones back at Alexandria should they try to escape together.

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.