The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live Release Date, Plot, Cast, Teaser Trailer, And More Details

It sure has felt like a millennium since Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) blew up the bridge in "The Walking Dead" Season 9. While presumed dead by most of the camp — save Michonne (Danai Gurira) — viewers get a dose of dramatic irony with the knowledge that Rick was spirited away to relative safety. In real life, star Andrew Lincoln had been exhausted by not regularly seeing his family for almost a decade, and being written off the show was the best thing for him. But now fans who are eager to get closure on the Colt Python-wielding leader will get their wish.

Since "The Walking Dead" concluded in 2022, AMC has not let the zombie trend die. Taking legacy characters that we are all familiar with, the network has spun off many separate series. Rick will appear in the latest, entitled "The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live." Inspired by Michonne's often-repeated mantra she cultivates in the flagship series, "The Ones Who Live" will surely be a return to form for the franchise.

Andrew Lincoln and Danai Gurira officially announced "The Ones Who Live" at the 2022 San Diego Comic-Con. Fortunately for "Walking Dead" fans, the series was one of the few programs allowed to continue filming during the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes, due to AMC's negotiations with the unions. As a result, "The Ones Who Live" will be airing on AMC and AMC+ in the very near future — February 25, 2024 to be exact. With February playing host to Valentine's Day, it only makes sense that "Walking Dead" fans will be getting a resolution to one of the show's greatest love stories that same month. When it finally arrives, you can expect to see a six-episode series, full of passionate romance and undead action.

The return of Rick Grimes is something that many "Walking Dead" fans have been eagerly waiting for. In the Season 9 episode "What Comes After," Rick sacrifices himself by detonating a bridge and taking out a horde of walkers. After that explosion, his friends believe him to be dead, but we soon see Rick being whisked away on a helicopter. Then, in the "Walking Dead" series finale, we're given a brief glimpse of the heroic sheriff, and we see that he's stranded or — even worse — being held captive.

As for Michonne, she's never given up hope that her husband is alive somewhere, and at the end of Danai Gurira's tenure on the series, Michonne goes off to find the father of her children. According to "The Ones Who Live's" plot synopsis, this is where we'll pick up, with the summary explaining the new series "presents an epic love story of two characters changed by a changed world. Kept apart by distance. By an unstoppable power. By the ghosts of who they were. Rick and Michonne are thrown into another world, built on a war against the dead ... and ultimately, a war against the living."

The description then asks if Rick and Michonne can find each other, and it also suggest that their reunion might be kind of complicated. "Are they enemies?" the synopsis asks. "Lovers? Victims? Victors? Without each other, are they even alive — or will they find that they, too, are the Walking Dead?"

As previously stated, "The Ones Who Live" will be the triumphant return of Rick Grimes. After two seasons of "The Walking Dead" going Rick-less, Andrew Lincoln is returning to the role he pioneered in 2010. Danai Gurira will be Lincoln's co-lead after first portraying Michonne in Season 3 of "The Walking Dead." Pollyanna McIntosh is another familiar face who will appear in the series. The actor plays Jadis in the original series, a leader of the garbage dump community who is one of the last people Rick sees before his departure from the show.

While the two lovers will be searching for each other, the series will be populated with some new faces as well. Terry O'Quinn ("Lost"), Lesley-Ann Brandt ("Lucifer"), and Matt Jeffries will portray Beale, Thorne, and Nat, respectively. Norman Reedus has reprised his role of Daryl Dixon in a spin-off of his own, leading many fans to clamor for the two spiritual brothers to be reunited, but that is only speculation at this point. Whether "The Ones Who Live" and "Daryl Dixon" will have a cross-over event remains to be seen.

While many of the "Walking Dead" spin-offs have been farmed out to various creatives, "The Ones Who Live" will be a return for the franchise's chief content officer. Scott Gimple took over "The Walking Dead" in Season 2 and led the series until Angela Kang took the reins in Season 9. Now, he'll return as showrunner for the six-episode season.

Danai Gurira herself will be serving as the show's co-creator, as well as producer, along with Andrew Lincoln (among others). As for who's directing we know that the dynamic duo of Bert and Bertie will be helming the first episode. These two have created some truly great episodes of TV, having worked on series such as "Hawkeye," "Our Flag Means Death," and "Gangs of London."

At the 2022 New York Comic-Con, we were treated to a "Ones Who Live" teaser, where we see a bloodstained Rick and hear him imploring Michonne in a stirring voiceover. He indicates that he tried to escape and return to her, but his attempts were futile. Michonne — in contrast — smiles at the camera as though she's ready to gear up and get her husband back.

In a second teaser, released in November 2023, Andrew Lincoln and Danai Gurira do a pretty good job of getting us psyched for the series. In between shots of man vs. walker action, we hear Lincoln hyping his return. "People have gone, 'Where have you gone?'" the "Walking Dead" star says in the trailer. "Our ambition is to have some answers." Gurira spoke of the deep bond between the two leads, telling excited fans, "These two people are so powerful together, it's inane. This is some crazy love."

AMC's "The Ones Who Live" is not a strict adaptation of any source material, but as a part of the grander "The Walking Dead" universe, it does have roots in one of the most popular horror comics in recent memory. Created by Robert Kirkman and Tony Moore in 2003 for Image Comics, "The Walking Dead" was a graphic novel that challenged the culture of zombie stories. Instead of showing a core group of people's fight against the living dead to find refuge, Kirkman's story shows what happens following the zombie apocalypse. As depicted in the live-action television series that bears its name, sometimes the biggest threats are humanity itself.

For the most part, AMC's "The Walking Dead" follows the main chain of events and protagonist Rick Grimes after he wakes up from a coma during the worst possible time. Iconic moments like Rick losing his hand don't appear in the show, but it does pay homage to the book's classic villains, such as The Governor and Negan. "The Ones Who Live" will be taking familiar characters and putting them in a story that was not in the run of comics. Both Rick and Michonne are legacy characters from the story and will be driving the action in the spin-off.

Disney has the MCU, while AMC has "The Walking Dead." Both franchises have been going on for about the same amount of time and have a lot of content to catch up on. But where Marvel Studios depicts optimistic stories about heroic acts and superpowered individuals, "The Walking Dead" universe throws its viewers in the middle of a dystopian nightmare. After the premiere of the flagship series, the universe became extremely lucrative for the network, which yielded many spin-offs. The first that came was "Fear the Walking Dead," a series that shows the beginning of the outbreak in California. In Season 4, the two shows become officially entwined when Morgan (Lennie James) crosses from "The Walking Dead" into the spin-off.

Other shows came about, as well, including "The Walking Dead: World Beyond" and "Tales of the Walking Dead," where familiar characters make appearances. But it was after "The Walking Dead" officially ended that the characters started splitting off into different sagas. Maggie (Lauren Cohan) and Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) inexplicably team up and journey to Manhattan in "The Walking Dead: Dead City." Meanwhile, Daryl (Norman Reedus) finds his way to France in "The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon" and is primed for Carol (Melissa McBride) to appear in Season 2. "The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live" will be another entry into one of AMC's most popular ventures.

"The Walking Dead" universe may have an overwhelming amount of content, but the good news is that for the purposes of the Rick and Michonne spin-off, there isn't a lot of prep work required to understand the show. At least, in the grand scheme of things. Michonne jetting off to find Rick happens in Season 10, one season before "The Walking Dead" ended for good. 

Though fans may want to refresh their memory on the Rick and Michonne story woven through a decade of television, they don't have to concern themselves with subsequent spin-offs. "The Ones Who Live" will be about Michonne's journey to find Rick and takes place after her departure. She is not a figure in the longest-running spin-off, "Fear the Walking Dead," and does not join up with Maggie or Daryl in their adventures. Michonne is a woman on a mission and there is no sense in catching up with tangential stories that have little to do with her search. Instead, viewers should only focus on the original series where the couple first meets.

Since 2010, AMC has been the home to one of the most emotionally brutal shows on cable. The network that brought you "Mad Men" and "Breaking Bad," "The Walking Dead" fit right into the network's gritty and realistic brand. Those who still have a cable subscription can watch episodes as they air and stream on the website. But, for everyone else, the prolific series can be streamed on Netflix. All 11 seasons of "The Walking Dead" are available for fans to revisit, from the heartbreaking deaths to the shocking twists.

"Fear the Walking Dead" has a temporary home on Max, while other spin-offs are a little more rare to stumble upon. "Tales of the Walking Dead," "Dead City" and "Daryl Dixon" are only available to stream if fans have a subscription to AMC+. The only other spin-off available to watch online is "The Walking Dead: World Beyond," which can be found on Amazon Prime.