This article contains spoilers for the series finale of The Walking Dead.
After getting a brief taste of Rick (Andrew Lincoln) and Michonne’s (Danai Gurira) impending reunion in the series finale of The Walking Dead last year, AMC has finally announced the title of their upcoming spinoff series. During AMC’s Walking Dead Universe Fan Watch Party at SDCC, it was revealed that Rick and Michonne’s series would be called The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live.
This title is the perfect callback to The Walking Dead with the phrase “the ones who live” being a recurring theme throughout the series and an important part of Rick and Michonne’s relationship. Rick first utters these words in season 5, telling Deanna Monroe (Tovah Feldshuh) and the more passive residents of Alexandria “We know what needs to be done and we do it. We’re the ones who live.” Michonne then repeats the phrase back to Rick in season 7 after a couple of close calls, and it becomes a sort of reminder to them that no matter what they go through, that their love for each other will endure.
Chief content officer for The Walking Dead and The Ones Who Live showrunner Scott M. Gimple talked about this phrase with Entertainment Weekly before the series finale and why he wanted to use it in the post-credit scene. “It was always this phrase that was pretty wild. As much as there were so many people dying and being able to say, ‘We’re the ones who live.’ But I never took it as just applying to the living people, because that seemed a little much to be like, ‘Hey, we’re the ones that live, too bad about all those people we love.’ No, to me, it felt like there’s a continuum of a relationship and love that cannot be extinguished. And that is what is forged in this hell that we’ve lived through together. And the triumphant thing is that we forever lived through each other and beyond. That, to me, seems [to be] the message of the whole thing.”
