The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live is an apocalyptic drama, Spinoff, and sequel of parent show The Walking Dead, revolving around Rick Grimes and Michonne Hawthorne’s whereabouts after their departures from the original series. The show is the seventh installment in The Walking Dead Television Universe, and has ran on AMC since 2024.
Unmarked spoilers are present throughout the subpages as well as some of the synopses below, with the exception of tropes about future episodes. Read at your own risk.
Tropes are not to be added to pages until the episode has aired on AMC.
Humanity fell to the dead in 2010. But shortly beforehand, King County Sheriff’s Deputy Rick Grimes was sent into a coma after being shot during a confrontation with criminals. Rick remained in said coma for two months, during which time the world fell. When he awoke, he followed advice from Morgan Jones directing him to Atlanta, where he eventually found his wife Lori and son Carl under the care of a group of survivors led by his best friend Shane Walsh. The group soon turned to Rick for leadership, and scuffles for leadership led to Rick killing Shane in self-defense and soon Lori died giving birth to her new daughter Judith.
Rick and Carl mourned their loss until a woman named Michonne Hawthorne arrived to join their group. Having lost her son Andre at the start of the Fall, Michonne slowly but surely earned her place in the group and grew close to Rick, Carl and Judith. After wars with hostile survivors, the group traveled to the Alexandria Safe-Zone in Virginia where they quickly took leadership of the community. There, Rick and Michonne realized they wanted a future to thrive despite the threat of the undead - and more importantly, a future with each other. They formed a relationship, having fallen in love, with Carl and Judith accepting Michonne as their mother.
War returned in the form of the despotic Saviors and their leader Negan. Rick and Michonne led Alexandria as they formed a Coalition of communities to rebel against Negan’s tyranny. During the war, Carl was bitten and requested a peaceful end to the conflict before expiring. Rick and Michonne honored their dead son’s wishes and spared Negan, leading the Coalition and the defeated Saviors into a peaceful new era, one where they even had the opportunity to get married.
But peace once again would not last. Eighteen months after Negan’s downfall, Rick and Michonne realized the resentment left over from the Saviors’ reign of terror ran too deep for many of their friends. Rick led the communities in repairing a bridge, but the fallout of Negan’s life sentence resulted in a horde threatening everyone. Rick seemingly sacrificed his life to save the Coalition, devastating Michonne. However, Rick was saved from death by Anne, a contact of the Civic Republic Military, and whisked away in a helicopter. Six years passed, and Michonne was forced to raise not only Judith, but a son she conceived with Rick before his apparent death, who she named after him.
Michonne’s despair after Rick’s death led to Alexandria entering a state of isolationism that had to be undone when Alpha and the Whisperers threatened the Coalition. During the Whisperer War, Michonne traveled north to search for weapons to fight Alpha. Instead, she found evidence that Rick survived his seeming death. Radioing Judith and learning that Alpha had been assassinated in her absence, Michonne decided to leave home to find Rick and bring him home.
Back home, Judith would eventually reveal to her adoptive Uncle Daryl Dixon and Aunt Carol Peletier the true reason for Michonne’s absence. But Judith took solace in the mantra that her parents shared with her - "we’re the ones who live". And all the while, Rick and Michonne have now, more than ever, reason to believe that, sure that one day they will find their way home together…
