Will Viewers Return to 'The Walking Dead' for the Rick and Michonne reunion?
'The Ones Who Live," the franchise's latest spin-off, premieres Feb 25 on AMC and AMC+.
Greetings from Pasadena, CA where I’m attending the Television Critics Association (TCA) winter press tour. I’ve been coming to the winter and summer press tours for 15 years and, if you’re not aware, it’s where networks bring their shows and talent for the attending journalists to write about and conduct interviews. It may seem like a departure from the more personal, observational stories I’ve been posting since I started Coffee, TV & Me but this week I was itching to work on one of the things I love about being an entertainment journalist - a show preview. I hope you enjoy it.
Reunion revival? It’s no secret that viewership for The Walking Dead franchise is not what it once was back in the heyday when the mothership series, which premiered on AMC on Halloween night in 2010, would at times draw upwards to 17M live viewers. But longtime executive producer and showrunner Scott Gimple is hopeful for some returning eyeballs with the latest spin-off in the franchise, The Ones Who Live, which premieres February 25. He’s also intent on staying true to the franchise even as he takes a fresh swing.
“We just focus on story and focus on what we think would be good story, but story does seed with character in our world and we love these characters,” Gimple said during Tuesday’s panel at the Television Critics Association winter press tour in Pasadena. “We’ve done a lot to build up these characters, and audiences seem to love those characters. So there is a huge part of it where we focus on that and then we run these little experiments. I’m looking at different parts of [The Walking Dead] world, still having the same story values, the things that brought us here but using those story values to launch very different expressions of the franchise. It’s a very different world now and we’re very lucky to have a very, very loyal audience, and we want to give them a variety of stuff.”
Part of that stuff undeniably is the reunion of fan favorite couple Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) and Michonne Hawthorne Grimes (Danai Gurira), which is something that should pique the interest of fans (this journalist included) who has fallen off from regular viewership of the show (and its spin-offs) but will tune back in to watch. However, like everything in this universe, nothing will be easy for the married pair when the do come together. “I think this show was harder [to craft] because this was about two people who are soul mates, but their souls have been a little beaten up by the world, and a lot of time had passed. And they had to find each other, but they also had to find themselves,” explains Gimple.
Though storyline specifics are under wraps, Gurira did say during the panel that Michonne’s journey is full of surprises. “There are a lot of things that happen that she does not expect. There are ways that she has to pivot and adjust that she does not expect,” she carefully explains, not wanting to reveal spoilers. “The journey to find her man is not an easy one. It comes in ways she can never have imagined.”
Lincoln knew he’d be back someday as Grimes, who was the first person audiences met when the series premiered in 2010 and was a touchstone until he left as a series regular in 2018. “I love this character, and this is a love story,” the actor said during the TCA panel. “This is essentially the DNA of the original episode [that] was a man in search of his family, and that DNA is very much in this story.”
And he gave props to Gurira (who is an executive producer and co-creator, as is Lincoln and Gimple) for making sure the Rick/Michonne relationship journey stayed very much at the heart of this new chapter. “Danai, I have to give her credit, was beating the drum for the love story…everything we could squeeze out of every scene, she said ‘it's time, this is it.’”
As is typical in TWD universe, details are scarce but Lincoln did tease, “in the first three or four minutes of the whole series, there is something truly horrific that happens, so in the same way that the pilot had the first three minutes was a shock that set the tone for the rest of the show.”
Beyond that tease, viewers will have to wait until the premiere episode on February 25 to find out more but Gurira does suggest that viewers hold on tight. “I think that there's a ride that people are going to get to take, and I really, really want them to take that ride,” she says. “Everyone just ups the ante of the journey that [the characters] take, and they up the ante of these characters in a way that's very unexpected, and no one's going to see them coming. So I just I love that about the journey I want the audience to take.” We’re buckling our seatbelts now!
The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live premieres February 25 on AMC and AMC+.