Is Michonne With The Perimeter on The Walking Dead: World Beyond?

Is Rick Grimes beyond The Perimeter on The Walking Dead: World Beyond? AMC’s Walking Dead Universe expands with a new community revealed in the Season 2 premiere, “Konsekans,” which could connect the spin-off to Michonne’s (Danai Gurira) exit from The Walking Dead. In Season 10, Episode 13, “What We Become,” she sails to Bloodsworth Island with Virgil (Kevin Carroll) to find weapons and end The Whisperer War. Michonne ultimately sets off searching for Rick (Andrew Lincoln) after finding clues he survived his apparent death in Season 9, unaware Jadis (Pollyanna McIntosh) flew Rick to safety aboard a Civic Republic Military helicopter.

What We Become

“What We Become” ends with Michonne finding Rick’s boots and a cellphone etched with the image of Michonne and her daughter Judith Grimes (Cailey Fleming). “Rick” is scratched on the phone marked with Japanese characters, translated to “believe a little bit longer.” Walking Dead showrunner Angela Kang confirmed Rick did not write the message on the phone, telling EW: “It was a message to Rick from somebody, somehow on this boat.”   

Michonne also finds a logbook that visited Tampa Bay, Florida; Hopewell, Virginia; and Bridgers Shipyard, New Jersey. The state is home to a shipyard located near the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania border. 

A teaser for The Walking Dead Movie shows a helicopter flying towards what appears to be the Philadelphia skyline, hinting that is where the helicopter with the Three Circle symbol takes Rick and Jadis in Season 9, Episode 5, “What Comes After.” 

Michonne leaves from Maryland, headed north to find Rick and bring him home to their children. She comes across a large caravan of migrants traveling with horsedrawn wagons and moving in one direction. Michonne stops to help stragglers Aiden (Breeda Wool) and Bailey (Andrew Bachelor), both wearing cowhide coats and falling behind their organized group that appears to be nomadic.

The Migrant Caravan 

Kang told EW that Michonne’s new group is “a question for Scott Gimple,” co-creator of World Beyond and chief content officer of The Walking Dead Universe. 

“[The migrants] kind of have a whole different way of dress. They’re dressed in animal skins. They’re traveling in kind of this very organized caravan,” Kang explained. “Everything we know about the three rings group [the Civic Republic] is they’ve got people shuttling people about by helicopter up and down the coast. So yeah, we’ll see what adventures await.”

We last see Michonne traveling north “somewhere in between” Virginia and New Jersey, Kang confirmed. Michonne is now on a collision course with the Walking Dead movie trilogy from Gimple and Robert Kirkman. 

The Perimeter 

World Beyond Season 2 Episode 1, “Konsekans,” finds Iris (Aliyah Royale) and Felix (Nico Tortorella) taking refuge with CRM fugitive Will (Jelani Alladin) at The Perimeter, a secure community surrounded by miles of wall. The Perimeter is outside of a Civic Republic research center in New York State, where Dr. Lyla Belshaw (Natalie Gold) experiments on “empties,” a.k.a. walkers, and biochemist/geneticist Dr. Leo Bennett (Joe Holt) researches a cure to the zombie virus. 

Once an abandoned farm town, The Perimeter was purchased pre-apocalypse and turned into an artist colony. A decade into the zombie apocalypse, it’s home to a currently unknown number of survivors, who built up The Perimeter and brought in more people. Indira (Anna Khaja) is the head of the council and The Perimeter’s leader. 

Will explains it’s rare for the CRM to cross into Perimeter territory because of Indira’s deal with the organization: her people clear the dead and ward off strangers from the research facility in exchange for supplies and neutrality.

Columns 

In “Konsekans,” CRM Lieutenant Colonel Elizabeth Kublek (Julia Ormond) claims that both Omaha and its satellite community — the Campus Colony in nearby Lincoln, Nebraska — were destroyed by what the CRM calls “columns.” These are merged mega-clusters, also known as herds or hordes of the dead, that are so big “they just break through everything, run through everything — whole cities.” 

But it was the CRM that wiped out Campus Colony, home to nearly 10,000 souls, and Omaha, a refuge for the weary: 100,000 survivors. Omaha was part of the Alliance of the Three, represented by the three rings representing Omaha, Portland, and the Civic Republic (approximately located in the Southwestern United States). 

If a column runs through The Perimeter in Season 2 of World Beyond, could it explain the mass migration seen in Season 10 of The Walking Dead? The migrants would have to head south if their destination is Philadelphia, Pennsylvania — an area that Gimple declared off-limits to Seasons 10 and 11 of The Walking Dead.

The Artist Colony

More ties to the movies will be revealed when Jadis returns on Season 2 of World Beyond. The second and final season of the spin-off will answer what happened during those six years skipped over after Rick’s disappearance on The Walking Dead. 

There could be a potential link between Jadis and The Perimeter: the “Rick” phone. Longtime Walking Dead viewers will remember Jadis was an artist who created paintings and sculptures. She ended up at a junkyard — the future home of the Scavengers — where she would go to paint before the world fell. 

Did Jadis draw the image of Michonne and Judith on the phone? The Perimeter was an artist colony — could one of its residents be the artist behind the picture and the message written in Japanese?  

As the leader of the trash heap on The Walking Dead, Jadis traded people — “As” and “Bs” — to the CRM in exchange for food and supplies. Six years later, she’s a decorated officer in the Civic Republic Military on Season 2 of World Beyond. 

Michonne and Rick’s Return

Gimple previously hinted at a Michonne and Rick reunion on the big screen, telling ComicBook that viewers “should pay attention to the way that Michonne left the show” for clues about where she might next appear. “There’s something going on there…But that was a pretty big group she was with.”

Michonne might first return in a spin-off bridging the time between The Walking Dead and the movies. 

It’s “definitely fair to assume” Michonne will crossover into the movies, Gimple told The Hollywood Reporter last year. “There might even be her own story along the way. Some of it has to do with the way we’re playing around with the story right now. There’s this whole new story strand opened up with her departure.”

He added: “With the films, we definitely have plans. But even beyond the current plans, I have some ambitions. I love her and Rick together, but I love seeing her as the pure lead on her own, too. It just so happens that there’s a lot of story terrain to cover…it’s ambitions. Right now, the plans have to do with the feature film.”

New episodes of TWD: World Beyond Season 2 premiere Sundays on AMC and AMC+. Follow the author @CameronBonomolo on Twitter for all things TWD and stay tuned to ComicBook for coverage all season long.