The Ones Who Live Isn't A Triumph For The Walking Dead — It's Torment

It's almost endearing to see the flesh-craving zombies in The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live become another obstacle amidst the post-apocalyptic scenery. For Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln), smushing a walker's face into digital Jell-O is just a part of his day-to-day drudgery, as essential as that first cup of coffee. That's not to say these shambling flesh-munchers don't still serve a dramatic purpose this late into the franchise; each downed walker puts Rick one step closer to Michonne (Danai Gurira), his katana-wielding wife. Still, it's good exercise.

And Rick's getting a workout in The Ones Who Live (TOWL), AMC's sixth spin-off of The Walking Dead, starring the series's most consequential power couple. (In real life, they’re executive producers Lincoln and Gurira, who both share co-creator credits with TWD steward Scott M. Gimple.) Gurira's return to slicing/dicing duties will feel like coming home for long-time fans, though they might note a rockier return for Lincoln, considering the six years since The Walking Dead said goodbye to its biggest star. TWD has become a different beast in that time, yet Lincoln remains the same old Rick: short-sighted, given to bouts of frothing despair, and patently nuts. Yay?

Recall that in Season 9 (specifically November 2018, an eternity ago), this walker-chopping maniac blew up a bridge — and, seemingly, himself — to save his community from a tremendous walker horde. Of course, viewers knew Rick wasn't dead after his explosive bow — he was simply spirited away by the sinister Jadis (Pollyanna McIntosh) — but to the citizens of Alexandria, Rick was walker chow. The flagship series moved on without its lead and embraced an ensemble cast, with Gurira taking on a larger role. The consensus is The Walking Dead, which had become a plodding, joyless mess by Season 9, benefitted from this change.

But the specter of Rick Grimes persisted. Michonne felt that her husband was still out there, pensively sharpening his chopping hatchet, muttering darkly about family and duty. (So romantic.) Michonne's quest to find Rick represents a belief that love can endure in a violent, walker-ravaged wasteland, a gooey theme that's become prominent in the latter half of the franchise. Fittingly, it's Gurira's passion for these characters that powers The Ones Who Live (not just as an actor but as a series writer). The Walking Dead might have shuffled off to an early grave years ago were it not for her; that's never been clearer.

While this six-hour series looks to reunite Gurira with Lincoln for the first time in years, it is forbidden to mention whether or not this actually takes place in the first four episodes of The Ones Who Live made available for review. In fact, little plot detail can be conveyed ahead of the series premiere, so any dissemination of TOWL's story will be tough. A brief synopsis should be easy: Michonne continues her search for Rick, who is still very much alive, miserable, and in the clutches of the CRM.

That's the Civic Republic Military, the jackbooted outfit that's popped up in a TWD spin-off or two since the main series ended (most prominently in World Beyond) and is represented by the likes of Julia Ormond and McIntosh. Here, it's McIntosh who returns in an adversarial capacity as Jadis, but how or when she appears is also embargoed.

Three new characters are introduced to give this corner of the TWD universe shape (most of them saddled with the requisite dystopian sob stories, which eat up much of these episodes): Terry O'Quinn is Beale, the Major General of the CRM, though his larger role in this story has yet to be revealed; Lesley-Ann Brandt plays Pearl Thorne, a CRM soldier who shares vaguely romantic and thickly accented banter with Rick — it's difficult to parse their relationship due to Lincoln and Thorne's mutual dourness — and there's Nat (Matthew Jeffers), a quirky fellow with a knack for building and burning things (he constantly toys with a Zippo lighter), and is one of the series's few sources of levity.

The Ones Who Live expands the TWD shared universe, but only so much can be accomplished in six hours. These crammed episodes plow through what in the past would be full seasons' worth of character beats to get Rick and Michonne where they need to go. (The way it’s truncated might have something to do with AMC originally producing TOWL as a feature film.) If 23 episodes a season was too much space for The Walking Dead to sustain its quality, six is not enough for The Ones Who Live — though it is fascinating to see TWD function at both ends of this spectrum. Regardless of its length, The Walking Dead will always go in circles; that's obvious. Fewer episodes only make those circles feel tighter, the franchise more directionless.

The problem with The Walking Dead for some time now is that most of the characters in AMC's once unfathomably successful franchise have infrequently been as fun/interesting to watch as an undead creature getting its head caved in or its bowels sliced open. As the series has trundled on, with appealing (and not-so-appealing) characters showing up just to have the kibosh put on them seasons or even episodes later, one glaring thing has come into focus: For The Walking Dead to live (for another 14 years at least), its major characters require plot invulnerability. No amount of biters, gunfire, or exploding bridges can fell them, regardless of how many seasons they've roamed the wilds of walker dystopia.

It's a fundamental misreading of the franchise's success on AMC's part. Most folks don't watch The Walking Dead to see Daryl Dixon hunt down possums (okay, some of them do); they come for the dramatic conflicts that arise from a driven need to survive in the zombie apocalypse. People watch The Walking Dead to witness the bad decisions a person can and often will make under unbelievable stress; we relate with onscreen sociopaths, even when we know we shouldn't. It's a tawdry thrill that used to make good television. But watching the same sociopaths make the same bad decisions for years, a sustained focus on stars over story, is precisely why The Ones Who Live continues reaping diminishing returns. Rick Grimes is back, but his return doesn’t signal triumph — just torment.

The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live premieres February 25 on AMC+ at 3:01 AM ET and at 9:00 PM ET on AMC. Join the discussion about the show in our forums.

Jarrod Jones is a freelance writer currently settled in Chicago. He reads lots (and lots) of comics and, as a result, is kind of a dunderhead.