Every Death in The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live Finale

Warning: This article contains spoilers for The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live finale. The phrase “we’re the ones who live” inspired not only the secret saying shared by Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) and Michonne (Danai Gurira) on The Walking Dead but also the title of their spinoff, The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live. Rick and Michonne are, in fact, the ones who live — a phrase that applies almost exclusively to the couple who survived the six-episode series that introduced (and then killed off) new characters like CRM Lieutenant Colonel Donald Okafor (Craig Tate) and pyro-tinkerer Nat (Matthew August Jeffers).

But the bloodshed didn’t end there. Aiden (Breeda Wool) and Bailey (Andrew Bachelor) — the two lovebird survivors Michonne first encountered on season 10 of The Walking Dead — also met their tragic end on The Ones Who Live, and the penultimate episode ended with Jadis/Anne (Pollyanna McIntosh) biting it after surviving both The Walking Dead and The Walking Dead: World Beyond. Father Gabriel (Seth Gilliam) appeared in flashbacks and made it out of the series unscathed, but the same cannot be said for the latest and final victims in Sunday’s “The Last Time” series finale of The Ones Who Live.

The first casualty was Civic Republic Military Major General Beale (Terry O’Quinn). While Michonne retrieved the dossier that Jadis left behind with intel on Alexandria, Rick reported to Beale to receive the Echelon Briefing: the CRM’s top-secret master plan to take over the Civic Republic, destroy communities across the continent for their resources, and become the supreme force on the planet to ensure humanity’s survival. 

Beale promoted Sergeant Major Grimes to the Frontliner corps, the elite soldier squad that convened at Cascadia Forward Operating Base with the rest of Force Command for the CRM Summit. Beale told Rick that “the sword that kills is the sword that gives life,” but rather than swear on the sword, Rick killed Beale by impaling him with the weapon that symbolized a soldier’s undying commitment to the CRM.

Meanwhile, Michonne infiltrated a briefing and learned that, within 18 hours, the CRM would carry out Operation N1W. Undercover operatives embedded in Portland would evacuate select child assets, and then the army would destroy the community with chlorine gas and liquidate its population of 87,000. Rick and Michonne made it their mission to stop the CRM, rigging grenades to canisters of chlorine gas and using a zombified Beale to trigger an explosion that killed 2,533 Frontliners.

The plan almost went off without a hitch — until Rick’s suspicious superior officer, Command Sergeant Major Pearl Thorne (Lesley-Ann Brandt), figured out too late that he plotted against the CRM. In the aftermath of the bombing, a vengeful Thorne tried to kill Rick and Michonne as the three survivors were swarmed by walkers… only for Michonne to cut Thorne down with Beale’s sword.

A dying Thorne confessed that “Okafor was right” before giving her gas mask to Rick and sealing her fate: Thorne either succumbed to blood loss or the toxic chemical gas as Rick and Michonne escaped the Civic Republic Military once and for all. They’re the (only) ones who live.

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