Photo: AMC
In The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live, Rick and Michonne try to rescue each other. Rick is desperate to save Michonne from what the villainous Civic Republic Military could do to her, and Michonne is determined to save Rick from what the CRM has already done to him. After some tedious lies and deceptions, in Michonne’s words, they needed a time-out. That’s exactly what they get in one of the best stand-alone episodes in all of The Walking Dead.
“What We” opens on Michonne’s last-ditch effort from the previous episode, this time with a kickin’ soundtrack. She chucks herself and Rick out of a CRM helicopter into a thunderstorm to the sweet sounds of Tony Orlando’s “Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree.” A frantic cold open shows Rick and Michonne climbing out of a body of water onto a rocky shore and entering a bizarrely modern and deserted apartment building. This is where they’ll stay for the next hour of television.
We’re playing with structure this week, y’all! “What We” is essentially three rounds of a debate between Rick and Michonne held in three different rooms (the living room, the gym, and the bedroom) broken up by zombie skirmishes before they ultimately leave as a reunited unit. It’s like watching a two-person play, which makes sense, as the episode’s writer, Danai Gurira (Michonne herself), is an acclaimed and Tony-nominated playwright. Most plays don’t have helicopters (Miss Saigon being the exception). The conflict is this: Rick wants to return to the CRM to protect Michonne and his loved ones from what’s coming and maybe change the army’s philosophy from within its higher ranks. Michonne wants to bring Rick home to their family and restore the man he once was. These two stubborn survivors circle back over those points as they try to come to an agreement, but the repetition is not monotonous. This is how loved ones fight. It’s painfully realistic.
Round one begins after Rick and Michonne catch their breath in the swanky apartment. The Walking Dead characters have encountered spaces with electricity and other modern amenities before. But this open-plan apartment is incredibly strange in a postapocalyptic world with a talking air conditioner controlled by a motion detector, a Roomba on a timer, and a desktop computer running the Windows 3D Pipes screen saver. Unfortunately, there’s no food, so they can’t stay here forever. In between arguments, Rick and Michonne learn that it was a failed self-sustainable community of survivors who starved to death.
Michonne changes out of her CRM fatigues and into clean clothes left by the former tenant. She does this in full sight of Rick, too. Good! Look at your hot wife, Rick! Look at who you’re trying to push away. He sees a scar on her lower back that wasn’t there the last time they were together. She’s been through a lot in the previous eight years, too. Then, Michonne pockets the PRB, a device that could call the CRM back to them in an instant, and eases into the necessary confrontation.
There are two significant revelations in the living room fight. First, Michonne lets slip that she and Rick have a son. Even she’s surprised by how she reveals this. And Rick is so far gone mentally that he cannot have a normal reaction. It’s as if learning this raises the already impossible stakes in his head, and he shuts down even further. He asks for the PRB, which sets Michonne off. She doesn’t recognize him anymore! Rick is going on about “Dana” drawing too much attention from the CRM. It’s a lot. Rick tells Michonne about Jadis’s threat and their specific jam with her: They can’t kill Jadis or try escaping to Alexandria because the CRM will drop mustard gas on their community. Michonne suggests they destroy the dossier Jadis has on them and then kill her, but Rick is still hesitant. What’s the deal? “Do you think we can do anything?” Michonne asks. “Do you still love me?” He says he never stopped. Michonne hands the PRB over, I think as a test. It’s his decision to make now.
At that moment, the second significant revelation happens. Rick and Michonne look out the window and see that the helicopter they jumped out of crashed into an adjacent building during the storm. Not only does that mean Michonne saved their lives, but it presumably means they have the out to escape: The CRM will believe they died in the crash. But Rick won’t budge, and unfortunately, I get it. Jadis is crazy enough to believe they’d survive a helicopter crash. “I’m not going home,” Rick says. Michonne reminds him that he is the CRM’s prisoner and joining them doesn’t make sense. “You’re trying to keep us safe by maybe changing the CRM one day [because they] might come after our home and put it in danger,” she says. It does sound ridiculous when you lay it out like that!
Michonne packs up and walks out of the apartment. She doesn’t believe he’s being honest with her, but she’s over it. Or maybe she’s just trying to shock Rick’s system into waking up. Ultimately, whether or not she’s bluffing doesn’t matter because — after a pause long enough to get you screaming “GO!” at your television — Rick runs after her.
Outside the window, a spooky second CRM helicopter swoops into the frame. Did Rick call it there? It seems doubtful because it bombs the crashed helicopter Rick and Michonne were in and then departs. The CRM takes destroying evidence of its existence to an extreme. Maybe it shouldn’t fly around with an identifiable three-ring logo on its helicopters? Anyway, the blast damages the surrounding area including Rick and Michonne’s building. Rick catches up with Michonne in the lobby just as the windows break and walkers breach the shelter.
The two fight off walkers and take refuge in the building’s gym. They can take care of themselves fine against the zombies, but their teamwork is sloppy, and they bicker over Rick’s use of army-speak. In the gym, the fight resumes for round two. Both of them are convinced that the other doesn’t understand their point of view. Rick talks about Michonne’s sacrifice to leave their kids and find him like it’s a choice, which hurts. You can tell Michonne’s heart is breaking. The two of them leave the gym feeling defeated. Even the way they kill walkers at this point of the story is petty. They argue over who gets to stab whom, and Rick deliberately spills blood on Michonne. They are a mess.
Then, cue those big, booming Phantom of the Opera chords, because a chandelier falls on them in a stairwell. Michonne is trapped and urges Rick to save himself, but he stays with her to free her from the chandelier. “You never have to thank me ever,” he tells her, which is one of the most romantic things I’ve ever heard.
They then return to the upstairs apartment, and Round Three begins where they started. But it’s not a fight. It starts with a kiss and Rick and Michonne moving things to the bedroom. Nothing like a near-death experience to help clarify a couple’s priorities. Sorry to disappoint the puriteens, but this sex scene is quite necessary to the plot. It feels like it was written as a direct response to the discourse, but I never want to imagine that writers are as terminally online as I am. There’s non-verbal communication happening between them that I can only begin to decipher. For one thing, Rick starts to have a panic attack with Michonne on top of him. She holds his hand to her heart to calm him down. It’s intimate and proves to Michonne that Rick’s mental wellness is in bad shape — he’s not just being a sacrificial asshole. Then, once Rick’s breathing settles, they switch positions, which feels like another turning point.
Afterward, while lying in bed, Rick can finally ask about RJ. He also asks Michonne about the mark on her back (see season nine, episode 14 of The Walking Dead, “Scars,” for that story). And when he goes back on his ‘I can fix the CRM’ bullshit, Michonne now sees that he’s lying to himself as well. Look at how much having sex accomplished! Take that, discourse.
The building is crumbling, and Michonne has to get Rick to verbalize what the CRM did to him. It’s now or never. His sacrifice might be to save her, but it’s hurting her too. What did they take from Rick? Michonne asks, and, finally, Rick has an answer: Carl, his older son who died years ago. After being in captivity, Rick lost the ability to remember what Carl looked like, even in dreams. Then he would dream about Michonne, as we saw in the series premiere, until she faded as well. Losing the memory of them is the worst trauma Rick Grimes has ever experienced, it would seem. He tells her another thing we saw in the premiere: how he let himself die inside. He’s not sure he can do that again. All of the misplaced hope in the CRM and attempts to push Michonne away have been efforts to “get ahead,” in Rick’s words, of the potential pain he’d feel if he lost Michonne for real. “I won’t survive that,” he says. “I just won’t.”
Michonne then presents him with a gift. (All five love languages are represented in this episode, if you even care.) Unbeknownst to Rick and us, she had Benjiro draw an iPhone portrait of Carl. Michonne still remembers him and knows Carl wouldn’t want his dad to shut himself off like this. This and one final pep talk from Michonne are enough. They’re going home, she says, and he agrees.
Cut to a few minutes later, and Rick has exchanged his CRM uniform for a sensible sweatshirt. He’s clutching the copy of Beverly Cleary’s Ramona the Pest that Michonne wants him to bring Judith like the Girl Dad he is. And as the pair exit the crumbling building, they’re in sync like the team The Walking Dead fans know they can be. They are also still horny, bless their hearts. Michonne grabs Rick by the collar in an elevator after some particularly badass zombie fighting. Once they’re safe outside, they find a hybrid car with enough ethanol to get them across the continental United States. Thank you, failed sustainable community! “‘We can make the whole damn world ours if we want to,’” Rick says, quoting Dream Michonne back at her and glowing. Michonne did it. She loved him back to life.
Are you feeling good with two episodes of The Ones Who Live to go? I’m a little worried that Rick and Michonne reconciled too soon. It can sometimes be a harbinger of a tragic ending to come. But maybe that’s the walls I’ve built around my own heart talking. Let’s take this win and hope for the best. If you need me, I’ll be sending this episode in an email attachment to every single Hollywood executive who has gotten it into their head that sex and romance weaken Strong Female Characters and have no place in genre storytelling. Enough now.
• “What We” is not a bottle episode. Multiple sets in a single location, two characters with an internal conflict, and the special-effects budget make it a suitcase episode.
• Back in its heyday, The Walking Dead loved to occasionally pause the ensemble narrative and hand the reins over to two characters. Notable examples include the Beth and Daryl mess-around “Still” in season four and the Morgan Jones–centric “He’s Not Here” in season six. It was a handy tool for the series to have in its back pocket when they resumed filming after the COVID-19 shutdown, too. The back half of season ten is devoted to scaled-down character studies. I have always respected that this massively popular franchise isn’t afraid to get a little experimental.
• Michonne being a Ramona fan? Huge win for girlhood enthusiasts.
• Easily my favorite piece of tech in the episode is the bisexual lighting button Rick turns on when they leave the gym. Sorry, Roomba.
• Michonne’s use of the phrase “love on each other” might be the most Southern thing (affectionate) that anyone on The Walking Dead has ever said.
• I used to think “Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree” was about a World War II soldier coming home to his wife. But, in fact, it is about a prisoner. It’s ironic, as Rick is kind of both.
