“There was always something about the connection of these two characters,” Danai Gurira says of The Walking Dead’s Michonne and Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) and the reunion of the lovers over near-insurmountable odds and legions of Walkers in spinoff series The Ones Who Live. “The plan was always that we would complete this love story in a new form.”
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It is fitting in many ways that Michonne and Rick’s love story comes full circle on a day of renewal like Easter Sunday. While there is no official word whether there will be more The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live or Michonne and Rick, certainly the saving of swaths of humanity and the reunion with their children Judith (Cailey Fleming) and R.J. (Antony Azor) at the end of tonight’s Season 1 finale is as fulfilling as any fan of the zombie apocalypse franchise could ask for.
The six-episode series created by Scott Gimple, Gurira and Lincoln debuted February 25 after what seemed like years of delays. The sixth spinoff in the TWDverse saw Grimes a cog in the machine of the Civic Republic Military in what used to be Philadelphia, and Michonne trekking up the East Coast of what used to be the United States of America to finally find him. Initially set as a series of Rick Grimes movies, tonight’s finale episode, titled “The Last Time,” literally held not just the fate of Rick and Michonne in its hand but also the whole human race.
With the now one-handed Grimes and Michonne racing against time to stop Beale (Terry O’Quinn), the Major General of the Civic Republic Military, from his grand plan to wipe out Portland and all other remaining independent city-states, the episode penned by Gimple and Channing Powell successfully pulled off the near impossible task of tying together the profusion of narrative threads that have weaved through the lives of the characters since TWD’s 2010 premiere.
Regardless of whether humanity has just 14 years left — Beale tells Grimes that is scientists’ estimate as the Walker disease spreads — “The Last Time” leaves us knowing Rick and Michonne have brought their family together in the purest expression of what it is to be human.-Deadline.com
