Below is a spoiler-free preview of the first four episodes of The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live, which premieres Sunday, February 25 on AMC and AMC+.
The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live marks the strong and welcome return of former franchise anchors Andrew Lincoln and Danai Gurira. The spin-off is emotional, interesting, and very wise when it comes to explaining where their characters ended up after leaving The Walking Dead.
This is crucial, isn't it? Not only explaining their long absence and what Rick Grimes (Lincoln) and Michonne (Gurira) were doing, but also, in a way, justifying their exit from the original series within a story that tricks us into believing everyone involved knew what they were doing all along. The Ones Who Live achieves this on a grand scale, but not without falling into some tired storytelling traps.
Gurira's Michonne is a new revelation in this little saga. In an almost meta way, her fierce (and heartfelt) love for Rick counteracts what could otherwise be frustrating and unnatural. Every time she encounters one – whether it's the characters avoiding the simple conversation that would solve their problem or someone taking a path that's too noble (instead of a believably human path) – Michonne is there to smash these clichés into the dust.
Lincoln is at his best too, playing essentially the broken-down Rick. His suffering is the key to all of this: When Lincoln left The Walking Dead in 2018, viewers had to consider why Rick never returned after flying away in the Civil Republic's military helicopter. Something horribly must have happened: Rick is a fighter tooth and nail, and it seems there is no force on Earth that can stop him from returning to his loved ones. Answering these questions is the daunting task of The Ones Who Live — and the show succeeds at it. It takes us through the suffering, defeat, shame, and then rewiring that occurs in traumatized people. And through four of its six episodes, it all brings a poignant Walking Dead “full circle.”
This miniseries also gives us our first interesting (actually) immersion into customer relationship management (CRM). We've met the army of the Three Circles “As and B” before – in both Fear the Walking Dead and… The Walking Dead: The World Beyond (Which was only relevant to this corner of the post-outbreak world) – but without Rick there to immediately answer the most pressing questions, the whole thing seemed like just procrastination. No, we didn't really want to know 'more about the group that took Rick'. Just give us Rick and tell us his story!
During the ninth season of The Walking Dead, fans wondered if the CRM was the Commonwealth (the antagonists of the final arc of the comics, and thus the show as well), but he wasn't. Which made their presence even weirder: why introduce a villain group that's so much more powerful than the actual endgame? There have been many missteps in the recent years of The Walking Dead, and this was just one of them.
Fortunately, between Dead City, Daryl Dixon, and now The Ones Who Live, there's vastly superior Walking Dead television right around the corner. Too little, too late? It's hard to say, but these offerings are good food compared to the prison food in the Commonwealth Arc. And The Ones Who Live has an advantage over its predecessors: Lincoln and Gurira are the best performers in the series. Furthermore, their characters have one enduring love story. Their destinies are linked to the “hope” that these dystopian series rely on to rise above excessive gloom. It doesn't matter when You've checked out The Walking Dead (because you have, numbers don't lie) – The Ones Who Live deserves a brief return to the fold.
The credits for The Ones Who Live suggest a more hands-on, in-house approach, and a desire to get this right: Scott Gimple — the former Walking Dead president who now oversees the entire franchise for AMC — has returned to the world of the show. Chair, with a main story penned with Gurira. (In fact, they shared a “premiere story” with Lincoln.) Having developed their action style with the middle episodes of Hawkeye, British directing duo Bert and Bertie were able to open up the world of The One Who Live in a powerful way, following the characters across long periods of time while still In preserving the integrity of the heart and emotions. They direct the first two episodes, which are largely a “this is what you missed” block – a difficult task, but the stories that unfold within are amazing. The Ones Who Live is a love story and you never forget it.
There's a frustratingly long list of information that this review can't reveal – some of which I get, in order to spoil things, while others are confusingly benign – but what you'll find in The Ones Who Live is two people waging a war to get back together. . After most physical dangers are faced directly, emotional obstacles remain. There's a “time out” that happens that you wish a lot of other shows would try to deal with characters who aren't on the same page for unconvincing reasons. Amidst the greatness of CRM and its plans for the world, there is a unique theme about humanity's next steps forward. What we What do you do after it all falls apart? It's about making small stories matter within a movement obsessed with the “big picture.”
Rounding out the cast are Craig Tate, Lesley-Anne Brandt, Terry O'Quinn, and of course the returning Pollyanna McIntosh, while Matthew August Jeffers provides a pivotal part of Michonne's journey. They're all important in different ways, which makes it even more troubling when you look back on most of The Walking Dead's final years and all the new characters that have relegated to indistinguishable “blah” after their first moments in the spotlight. The Ones Who Live focuses on telling a complete story, with little wasted action, and showing how much you have to scrape and scratch to find and foster true love and intimacy in a world dedicated to survival at all costs.
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