The Ones Who Live – A Delightful Return to Form

Right before the world wished to be superheroes, and that genre took over both film and TV, everybody and their mother wanted to be dead. Meaning, that everybody wanted zombie content. Of the most popular genres in the late 2000s/early 2010s, there was the zombie phase. Video games like Dying Light, Left 4 Dead, and movies such as World War Z, drove the industry forward until eventually The Last of Us really put the final nail in the coffin. 

Through all of this, there was one show that seemed to push through the cliches and was worth the hype, that being AMC’s adaptation of The Walking Dead. The first few seasons were one of those “you had to be there,” kind of experiences – genuinely fantastic television. The survival nature of the apocalypse, the incredible title card, and of course the characters drew millions in each episode. It left audiences glued to the television like a, well, like a… okay I’ll say it, like a zombie. 

Of these characters, lead Rick Grimes, played by Andrew Lincoln, carried the show. After waking up from a coma, a man searching for his family in a new world he doesn’t understand is beautifully portrayed by Lincoln. But as all good things do, when it should have died, the show kept going. Leaving the series at the beginning of season 9, Lincoln and AMC had plans to continue his story with a movie trilogy that years later, and ironically delayed by the real-life pandemic, became the limited series The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live. 

Enough exposition already, let’s dive into the review. Spoilers from here on out.

To get it out of the way, the wait was worth it. Seeing Lincoln back in this role feels like no time has passed. He owns this character and universe. The Walking Dead was always Rick’s story, and this only further confirmed that. The first episode presents a major time gap from when we last saw Rick, which works to the show’s advantage as they can pretty much do whatever they want in a way that doesn’t feel forced.

We find him trapped in a new community after all his family and friends presume he’s dead. Over about ten years he tried to escape this community controlled by an army known as the CRM. This gives us an entire episode to explain why Rick is different than his character in the main show, rather than pulling a Last Jedi, by saying “Oops your favorite character is a terrible person now.” The writing and technical aspects in the first episode are strong, and consistent throughout the show, amazingly. 

This is a very different version of Rick. We see him defeated, depressed, and borderline suicidal. It’s sad to see our favorite character this way, yet even through his change of character, we can see our Rick is still in there, trying to find a way. Rick and Michonne’s chemistry is a huge part of the show and works really well. We see a man whose view of the world is more narrow than ever, and Michonne represents a version of Rick at this point he can’t remember.

Michonne’s journey to find Rick is fun to watch, and the writers make the right call by not ending it on a cliffhanger right when Rick and Michonne meet. Early though, an unfortunate trend presents one of the few problems, which is that nearly every new character in the show dies. On one hand, the original show thrived on the idea that at any moment, anyone could die. On the other hand, when you have a limited six-episode season, it can at times take away tension when you’re just looking at your watch waiting until “new character number 43” dies.

Within the middle of the story it solidifies a massive highlight which is actually making Rick’s son, Carl, death meaningful. The worst mistake of the original show was killing Carl by having him get bit off-screen. Here, they redeem this decision by having the contentious brainwashing and manipulative tactics of the CRM corrupt Rick to the point where he can’t remember Carl anymore. One of the best moments comes from Rick explaining how “They took Carl.”

The weakest element of the show would be the individual villains. We are shown and given plenty of reason to find the CRM as a threat, yet there isn’t enough time given to the two new antagonists for us to understand them. They aren’t particularly bad villains on paper, we know their motivation, and we see them doing bad things yet throughout the story, the audience really only fears them in the finale, and then they’re eliminated.

From the beginning, Rick Grimes stood for people’s right to choose, learn from their mistakes, and live. The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live is given the same love and care as the first 5 seasons of the original show. The performances are top-notch, the story is engaging and emotional, the production is fantastic, and the quality is consistent with each episode. This is sort of a deep-cut reference from the original show but, Abraham was right, the new world needed Rick Grimes.