The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live – The Last Time

By: Kelly Kearney

After putting Alexandria at risk by killing Jadis, Rick and Michonne part ways so one can destroy Jadis’ paper trail, while the other heads back to Philadelphia for the Echelon Briefing. If you thought the CRM was different from every other villainous community they’ve encountered, you thought wrong, they just have more weapons–both on land and in the air, but greed and desperation are still what fuels them. Like those who fell before them, it’s time they got a taste of the power of Richonne! After learning of the CRM’s plans to “regain Supremacy” our favorite couple risks it all to stop Beale, Thorne, and the military from murdering innocent survivors so they can go home to their kids without fear of the chlorine gas bombs following behind them. It’s an hour of huge reveals and explosive moments that lead to something fans have been waiting for since Rick Grimes blew himself up on that bridge. It’s the final hour of The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live, and it will leave you satisfied but begging for more.

A Kiss Goodbye

We open with Rick (Andrew Lincoln) and Michonne (Danai Gurira) in a makeshift bed and their pillow talk is all about their plans to take down the CRM. Rick places the wedding ring Father Gabriel (Seth Gilliam) held onto for the couple as we segue into a series of flashbacks showing how the two got to where they are now. A night of consummating their official union gives way to a morning kiss goodbye as Rick heads back to Philadelphia for that Echelon Briefing while Michonne hunts down that trail of evidence linking them to Jadis and all three of them to Alexandria. It’s a farewell that can only bring them all–the Grimes kids included, safely back together again soon.

When Rick arrives back at the CRM, the first person he catches up with is Pearl Thorne (Lesley-Ann Brandt). She is shocked he survived the helicopter crash but Rick says it was all thanks to Dana, who died saving his life. There is a kernel of truth to his story because he admits Dana tossed him out of the helicopter right before it crashed into that skyrise building. If it wasn’t for Pearl saving her from getting the “A” treatment, he might be dead. He thanks her for bringing Dana into Okafor’s mission, even if it cost her her life, and the mention of Okafor (Craig Tate) reveals Pearl’s feelings for their leader have quickly changed since his death. She blames his death on his desire to shake things up at the CRM–breaking protocol and not following Beale’s orders was the man’s undoing. She is glad to see Rick didn’t follow that same path into his grave. He came back–to a place he spent years trying to escape, and that dedication is why he is alive. Rick pretends to agree and asks Thorne to “Show me another way.”  That lesson will have to wait because she gets word from General Beale that he wants to meet with the returnee. It sounds like he is ready to give Rick the Echelon Briefing.

Elsewhere, Michonne locates Jadis’ (Pollyanna McIntosh) art-filled office before anyone notices the woman is missing. The nameplate on her office door might say Jadis Stokes but the paintings adorning the walls–many of which bear a resemblance to Gabriel, say Anne was never far from her mind. After rifling through Jadis/Anne’s belongings, Michonne finds what she is looking for expertly hidden inside a wire cat sculpture. Knowing those papers in the wrong hands would lead to the destruction of Alexandria, their friends, and most importantly, their children, angers Michonne and she tears the evidence to shreds. In the middle of her picking up every piece of torn paper, she is interrupted by a soldier looking for Jadis. Michonne makes quick work of them, leaving the soldier dead on the office floor before she makes her escape in full CRM gear.

The Echelon Briefing

Like Thorne, General Beale (Terry O’Quinn) is impressed Rick returned when all he ever wanted to do was run home to his family. This decision has gone a long way towards earning Beale’s trust- something we learn Okafor never really did. With that trust comes the knowledge that Beale has only imparted on less than 2,000 people–The Echelon Briefing and the entire mission of the secretive CRM. Beale prefaces the discussion with a haunting, “The sword that kills is the sword that brings life,” and Rick knows he is in for one doozy of a reveal. General Beale talks about the hard choices leaders like him have to make to keep them all alive, and admits that The CRM is double-edging that life and death theory now that their scientists hypothesized the human race has about 14 years left on the planet. Humans are quickly being gobbled up by the “Delts” otherwise known as Walkers, and they aren’t just outnumbering the living but also destroying the planet’s natural resources and making the whole of Earth uninhabitable.  “The most likely outcome is we’re all gonna die,” he admits, and then asks Rick what was the worst thing he has ever done. Rick remembers the time she saved Carl by tearing an assailant’s throat out–a move he took from the walkers. He eventually lost Carl anyway, but in that moment he let his fear turn him into something he hoped he would never become. Beale counters that by telling Rick he saved Philadelphia and the CRM by sacrificing his hometown of Pittsburgh–as well as all of his loved ones who lived there. He lost a few to save the future and while he sounds regretful over it, the whole speech is also a big pat on the back for being a leader willing to make that tough choice. Rick understands this as he is reminded of his father who burned down their farm to save it and their family from poverty. This comparison cements Beale’s beliefs that Rick understands the sort of sacrifice it will take to save humankind, even if it’s just to extend their eventual extinction date. This puts him in line to be the General’s successor–something he never believed Okafor was capable of. That reveal feeds into the real reason why the CRM and its location are so secretive. Since humankind is doomed to die off in less than two decades, the obvious way to save themselves is to kill off any survivors outside of their walls. It’s why they bomb cities with chlorine gas, and why they are coming for their sister city, Portland. With fewer people on the planet, there will be more resources for the CRM to use, and that means any living being–including small communities like Alexandria, is on Beale’s chopping block. This is the harsh truth he expects Rick– to not only understand but one day soon, lead into the future. So much for the CRM’s unity of three, Beale only sees Philadelphia as worthy enough to survive.

Save the Children and Then Go Home

After a brief check-in with Michonne who snuck into a CRM briefing about child evacuations where she learns only a few of the smartest will be saved and the rest of Portland will die, we head back to Beale’s office for more details of the CRM’s plans to prolong their extinction date. Not only is Portland going to burn, but soldiers will also march into every other surviving community to eliminate the competition and restore CRM supremacy. He must see the shock on Rick’s face so he offers him an opportunity to bring his family and friends to safety. As he listens to Beale and Michonne listen in on the plans for those spared kids, they both have flashbacks from their pasts. Hers–of the many horrible moments she has witnessed with children and his– of the family and friends back home who will die if he doesn’t stop Beale. He must know this offer to protect them is a trap since Beale is giving, ‘Bring me your loved ones and I pinky swear to keep them safe,’ energy. These are empty promises Rick has heard before, so he pulls out a hidden knife from his boot and throws it into Beale’s shoulder!

As her husband fights to the death in a neighboring office building, Michonne bails on the evacuation briefing and is now determined to stay at the CRM long enough to save everyone–but especially those kidnapped kids. She heads to her meet-up with Rick but he is busy wrangling the sword that gives life away from Beale. Rick refuses to pledge his oath to the sword and instead drives it into Beale, who manages to stay alive long enough for one of Rick’s epic one-liners, “We’re not dead. You are!” That’s when Thorne radios in and Rick tells her Beale gave him the briefing and now he is leaving for a job the General asked him to do. When she asks to meet with Beale, Rick lies and tells her the General headed out to the woods to poke at some Delts behind the community’s gates. That was where Beale went to think, so Pearl knew the exact location and headed there to talk to him. This leaves little time for Rick to clean up the bloody mess he left in the General’s office and get out of town before people learn what happened. He gets dressed in CRM soldier gear and loads Beale’s body into a crate to sneak it out of the office. He gets on the elevator with a fellow soldier but the blood dripping out from the trunk gives him away. This is when old bloody-faced Rick emerges, as he pummels the other soldier until every inch of the elevator is dripping in blood. Perfect timing, because when the doors open Michonne is standing there unphased by the murder scene but itching to tell him about their new plans and what she learned in her briefing. They will go home after they destroy the CRM and the fact Beale admitted their scientists have been doing horrific experiments on living says he is all in on the rescue idea because there is no telling what he had planned for those kidnapped kids.

Inspired by her dearly departed friend Nat, the two come up with an explosive idea to end this once and for all. In the meantime, Pearl knows something is up when she doesn’t find Beale in the woods but does spot Rick’s weaponized prosthetic in the man’s empty office. The General made Rick remove it before he was given the Briefing, but in his quick getaway left it behind. He wouldn’t do a job for the General without it, so she starts to piece together years of conversations with Rick and his determination to make Dana a part of their team. It seemed to coincide with an end to his escape attempts, and now all the pieces of the puzzle fall into place. She realizes Dana is Rick’s wife and the two of them are setting a trap that could destroy everything the CRM built.

An Explosive End

From the window, Pearl Thorne spots the military lining up in formation for the Portland mission. Behind the scenes, she spots Richonne and knows they’re up to something but can’t quite make out what it is.

Nat was with them in spirit because Michonne and Rick were connecting a daisy chain of grenades rigged up to a few hundred chlorine bombs and tied the detonators to a very dead soldier and a Delty-General Beale. The two walkers are leashed to the grenades’ pins so when they are released and their leashes pull, it makes it all go BOOM! The amount of firepower in this explosion–which is perfectly positioned right next to the military formations and the helicopters they are about to board, should blow a state-sized hole in the ground where Philadelphia used to be. With the bomb set, Rick gives Michonne her Katana sword back and then releases the two walking detonators. That’s when Pearl shows up with her gun aimed at the fleeing couple and orders them to reverse whatever they did. Pearl never learned the two most important survival lessons when dealing with Rick and Michonne: One, these two are unstoppable, and two, they never take orders. With a smile and some hand- holding, they run for cover as Pearl sees Beale approach her and all the pins are pulled from the rigged grenades.

The explosion is massive and we see soldiers’ bodies flying through the air right before that green smoke chokes anyone who managed to avoid the blast zone. Michonne and Rick were prepared with masks but so was Pearl–who fights back walkers and dying soldiers to kill Rick and Michonne for cursing all of humanity to death. “You destroyed the whole world,” she screams as Rick gets knocked down and is instantly overwhelmed by a small horde of walkers. Assuming he is a goner, she turns her anger onto Michonne–who finally gets payback for that sneak attack two weeks ago. Pearl screams, “Love is dead!” meaning Rick who seems to be at the bottom of a pile of gnashing teeth. With all the anger of a grieving wife and the desperation to bring her husband home, Michoone drives her sword into Peal and says “Love doesn’t die!” Pearl’s last thought is how maybe they did “save hope” when Rick pulls the pin on a grenade, uses the dead as a bomb buffer and climbs out of the human wreckage unscathed.  Love didn’t die, in fact, it only grows once the couple is choppered away by the new and improved and very welcoming CRM. The community is no longer a secret as it has a new purpose: embrace survivors and welcome them rather than kill everyone outside of their walls. In that way, maybe Rick was the savior Okafor thought he could be. The Grimes family did save the world…for now, which leads them to the moment fans have been waiting for. Judith (Cailey Fleming) and R.J. (Antony Azor) run out of the woods to meet their parents’ incoming chopper. Judith gets the call over her radio and runs towards her weeping mother who she always knew would come home.  They’re crying, fans are crying, as Rick looks astonished by the young woman his “Lil Asskicker” turned into. After a long father/daughter hug, Rick spots the young boy lurking in the background and he is wearing Carl’s hand-me-down sheriff’s hat. R.J. cautiously approaches and asks, “You’re the Brave Man?” and holding back his tears Rick grabs Carl’s hat and admits he is that Brave Man. It’s the first time he has been able to say it and mean it since he gave up on his escape plans. “But maybe you can call me dad?” he asks R.J., and for the first time, Rick hugs his son, daughter, and wife, as helicopters full of supplies make their way to Alexandria. In the end, it wasn’t bravery that brought their father home, but hope, and that unstoppable force of love that Michonne said never dies.