‘The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live’ 1×04 review: “What We”

The last time we saw Rick and Michonne, they were throwing themselves out of a helicopter into the water below during a bad storm. Episode 4, “What We,” which was directed by Michonne herself Danai Gurira, picks up immediately where last week’s shocking turn of events concluded. 

“What We” begins with Rick and Michonne landing in the water below, swimming to whatever land they can find on this dark and stormy night. They quickly scramble into a high-rise apartment building and into a shockingly intact room with electricity. They make sure they’re safe and then the reality of what they just did settles in. Rick looks at Michonne with a mix of anger and confusion, to which Michonne sternly replies “We needed a time out.” 

The tension in the room is palpable from this point on. Rick tries to get Michonne to realize why he keeps choosing to stay in the CRM and make her go back home. As long as he remains in the ranks of the CRM he has the power to keep them from going after his loved ones back in Alexandria. Michonne tries to get Rick to realize what the CRM has done to him both physically and mentally. She stresses that she traveled all this way to find him and bring him home to their children, revealing that she’s been pregnant since the bridge incident. Even finding out about the son he didn’t know he had, Rick still can’t give up on his plan to remain in the CRM.

This understandably angers Michonne and the two continue to argue until they both look out the window. What they see is the helicopter on fire. They realize that Michonne’s actions invertedly saved them from a certain death. Michonne says Jadis would assume they both died in the crash upon investigating and this is their perfect opportunity to run away. Rick just can’t get on board with this idea and insists that staying in the CRM is the only way to protect Michonne and his family. Michonne finally has had enough talking to this shell of the man she loves and decides to leave him and figure out a way to escape the building. 

After waiting way too long to chase after her, Rick catches up to Michonne just as a glass wall breaks and overwhelms Michonne with walkers. While the two fight their way to safely, another CRM helicopter arrives outside to destroy the crashed helicopter. After barricading themselves in a gym and having another argument that goes nowhere, the two find themselves in a stairwell as a chandelier falls and traps Michonne.

The two work together to both free Michonne and kill the steady stream of walkers encroaching on their location. They finally manage to free Michonne’s legs, and she thanks Rick, to which he replies, “you never have to thank me, ever.” Back to the room where “What We” began in, it seems like there’s going to be another fight, but there isn’t. They kiss and retreat to the bedroom having not been with each other in almost a decade at this point. 

Afterwards, the two talk more in depth than they were earlier. Rick asks about his son RJ and about the scar he noticed on Michonne’s back. She reviews the events of the original series that Rick was absent for and tells him all about RJ’s admiration of his father. When the question of Rick staying in the CRM comes up again, Rick doesn’t seem to believe his answer this time. Michonne asks Rick what the CRM did to him, to which he reveals that they took away Carl (Rick’s dead son). He explains that they broke his spirit so much over time that Rick became unable to see Carl in his memories anymore. And then he gradually lost his ability to see Michonne, too. This was Rick dying inside, and now that Michonne is in the picture again he just can’t risk losing her for real and dying again. 

She hands Rick the phone with the sketch of Carl on it that she found earlier on and says that Carl wouldn’t want his father to shut down like this. This moment of clarity was exactly what they both needed and gave them the motivation to run away together. Rick ditches his CRM gear and the two fight their way out of the now slowly crumbling building. They’re fighting together as a team like the old days, and you can just feel that the Rick and Michonne powerhouse has returned. They find a working truck and drive off, not knowing what they’ll encounter next. 

I can’t explain how beautiful and important and episode like “What We” was. It’s almost a stage play focusing on the pent-up emotions that we all knew were going to come up once we saw how much of a robot Rick had become. The acting from Andrew Lincoln and Danai Gurira was undoubtably the best of either actor in all their appearances on the original series. The writing and directing was stellar and made this episode not only the best of this series so far, but one of the best in the entire The Walking Dead universe. 

The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live airs every Sunday on AMC

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Images courtesy of AMC