‘The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live’ premiere review: Let’s give him a hand (finally)

Back in 2018, The Walking Dead was a few episodes into its ninth season when the show had one of the most gut-wrenching moments of the series to date. Rick Grimes, played by the incredibly talented Andrew Lincoln, sacrifices himself by blowing up a bridge he’s on to save his friends and family from a massive hoard of walkers. His friends Daryl Dixon and Michonne looked on in horror as their fearless leader vanished into a fiery explosion. But we the audience were given a look at the aftermath that no other character got to witness. Rick managed to survive the blast and was picked up by a mysterious organization in a helicopter. He flies off into the distance with his entire group believing that he is dead, thus setting up The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live.

After years of clues and vague teases, we finally get to find out what happened to Rick in the years following his last-minute rescue. The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live is another spin-off of The Walking Dead and picks up where the final scene of the series left off. Rick and Michonne are on a collision course with each other and the only thing in their way is the unforgiving post-apocalyptic landscape. With the wait for this show being pushed to six years due to the global pandemic and the original plan for this story being a theatrical film, the journey to get to this point has been long and stressful. I’m happy to report that the wait was well worth it.

The premiere episode focuses primarily on Rick Grimes. We see him sitting in a room and he seems to be writing a letter to Michonne while he begins to question if his life is worth living now. We learn that Rick was picked up by the CRM, a militarized group that runs one of three functioning societies in the U.S.

Rick is being pushed to turn into a soldier and become a member of this powerful army, but instead he takes every available opportunity to attempt to escape. In one of his final escape attempts, fans of the comic books were finally given a key character development moment for Rick. Escaping while physically tethered to another soldier, Rick decides to make the ultimate sacrifice and chops off his hand to be able to free himself from the binding. He is once again captured and treated for his gruesome injury and put right back where he began.

Rick is then perused by a military leader for the CRM named Okafor, who saw the raw power and leadership potential in Rick. Rick would continue to blow him off every time he would vouch for Rick or save his life, and yet Okafor still wanted something from him. After a conversation with an old friend, Rick realizes his best way of escaping his situation and finding his wife is to take Okafor up on his offer to help him.

This means that Rick becomes a member of the CRM military and rises quickly to a leadership position. Once in his position, Okafor takes Rick and another newly trained soldier and friend of Rick’s to a private location where he explains his real reason for recruiting Rick. Okafor sees the instability and trouble in the CRM. He believes that if Rick is trained correctly, he can slowly implement change in the military that will spread and make the CRM a much stronger and more positive version of what it has become.

After another failed escape attempt, Rick fully gives into his new way of life and becomes the military man that Okafor dreamed he’d be. But we learn that this decision to give in has caused Rick to question his mortality and if he will ever be able to find Michonne. While out on a helicopter with Okafor and a few other CRM soldiers, the group is attacked, and Okafor is killed before Rick is forced to crash land. As Rick leads the remaining troops to safety and begins to fight back, they are all swiftly taken out. Just as it seems to be over for Rick, his attacker reveals herself to be Michonne.

When Rick and Michonne were searching for each other in the series finale of The Walking Dead, we all knew that their story had to be something big and epic. After watching this premiere episode, I can happily report that this series is starting off with a bang and is headed in a direction that fans will be on board with. The scale and scope of the story can only be described as massive and deep. Rick and Michonne are some of the most beloved and tortured characters in this universe and to see them finally get their own story and have it be something that goes this hard is something that fans will be celebrating for years after this series concludes. 

Everything has been beefed up when it comes to the production value of this show. The sets and action sequences are sprawling and complex, the cinematography is gorgeous and feels like a big budget gritty post-apocalyptic film, and the dialogue is emotional and meaningful. The show even goes as far as to have a beautiful dream sequence that weaves in and out of the episode showing an alternate world where Rick and Michonne met in a park one day and would continue to meet up on a park bench and get to known each other.

Seeing the level of detail and care that went into this episode makes me very excited and hopeful for what’s to come. While the original series may have gone out with a whimper, these new spinoff shows are proving more and more that they are the story continuations that the fans are dying for.

The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live airs new episodes Sunday nights at 8 p.m. Central on AMC.

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Images courtesy of AMC