In a disappointing turn of events, the most anticipated of the Walking Dead sequel shows has proven to be the worst of the bunch; offering a story that, beyond providing a smattering of cool moments here and there, somehow manages to be devoid of both meaningful plot development and enough room to deliver its existing story in a carefully paced fashion. Instead, The Ones Who Lives prescribes its audience with the same tired filler that The Walking Dead has relied on for years between spells of emotionally shallow character writing, before the final insult to injury comes in the form of the saddening disservice it does to the once-iconic heroes at its fore.

If you recall my review for the first of the Walking Dead sequel shows, Dead City, you might remember that for a long time I had given up with television’s biggest zombie franchise following the departure of leading man Andrew Lincoln from the main show in his role as the legendary Sheriff-turned-survivor Rick Grimes, even if it was made pretty clear that the intention was there for the character to return. Well, after a good few years, and the metamorphosis of the Rick-central project from a movie trilogy to a standalone feature, before finally settling on the limited series format, the eventually assured release of The Ones Who Live was ultimately what prompted me to jump back into The Walking Dead; rewatching the entire show and a host of mediocre-to-downright-terrible spinoffs to uncover as much knowledge as I could to help me better understand the landmark series and its deeper lore connections. Of course, Rick was set to share the spotlight with another lead from the main series; Danai Gurira’s Michonne – his long-lost lover who had set out to look for him after departing the show in Season Ten. I for one never really cared all that much for her character beyond the first two seasons she appeared in, nor did I feel very compelled by her romance with Rick, so it felt a little strange to me that she appears in the forefront of a lot of the marketing material when I imagine that Rick’s return is likely the sole reason that many are tuning into this show, but I digress. I had been relatively excited to see how this show might turn out, but with Dead City ultimately a disappointment, and even the first season of Daryl Dixon not faring much better (you can read my review here), it seems that The Ones Who Live has all the more riding on it as the last best hope for The Walking Dead‘s future.

Spoilers ahead!

Thankfully, the show’s first episode doesn’t hold back on the goods as we rejoin Rick six years after the bridge explosion and his subsequent rescue by Jadis (Pollyanna McIntosh) and her contact in the mysterious Civic Republic Military that marked his exit from the main show back in Season Nine. As he recalls through narration over a number of flashback sequences, Rick has attempted to escape from the Civic Republic four times, including a sadly short-lived plan that involved him cutting off his own hand (a nod to the Walking Dead comic series), but as he comes up on his sixth year under the CRM’s heel, Rick’s willpower has been whittled away until he finally accepts his fate and joins the Military – albeit with a plan to change it for the better from the inside. However, just as he resigns to this course of action, his mentor is brutally murdered when their helicopter comes under fire from rockets, and after crash landing, Rick is almost killed by none other than Michonne in a cliffhanger ending. Episode Two retells the events leading up to this encounter from Michonne’s perspective, as she is joined on her quest to bring Rick home by a band of friendly survivors who she inspired to leave an oppressive community, but it also shows off the CRM’s darker side as all but one of her companions are killed in a chlorine gas attack; an incredibly harrowing scene with an equally tragic aftermath, but truly one of the best sequences to come out of the franchise as a whole. As it turns out, her encounter with Rick was retaliation for the friends she lost, but I couldn’t help feeling how incredibly lucky it was that the pair were reunited this way, not to mention the fact that she could’ve very easily killed Rick without ever knowing it was him, and combined with the fact that their reunion comes so early in the story, it feels like the writers rushed to put the characters on-screen together without stopping to find a more compelling way to do so.

Nevertheless, with the pair reconvened so early in, it remained to be seen what the show would deliver for the remaining majority of its season, and unfortunately it isn’t all that great. As it becomes clear that between the changed Rick and the overbearing authority of the CRM Michonne will have a hard time bringing her family back together, The Ones Who Live delivers bout after bout of tiresome dialogue that regurgitates the same things we already know about the characters and their feelings over and over again between textbook Walking Dead action setpieces that signal to your brain that it’s time to switch off for a few minutes. Rick makes plans to save Michonne, Michonne makes plans to save Rick, and ultimately none of it matters anyway when Jadis – returning from the main series and the atrocious World Beyond spinoff – blackmails Rick into staying with the CRM to protect herself and her interests, but that too becomes irrelevant when the pair find an out after escaping from a helicopter crash that leaves them presumed dead by their captors. Only, the writers walk back on that too when Jadis, suspecting that the pair are still alive, tracks them down and is eventually killed; all of which leads into the finale as Rick and Michonne are forced to return to the CRM so they can destroy her hidden evidence of their true identities and the location of their communities. Episode Six is nothing short of a barrage of rushed plot development as the series scrambles to wrap up, with the pair not only managing to destroy the documents and assassinate the CRM’s leader, but seemingly dismantle and reform the entire organisation overnight too, before the series as a whole comes to a close with a lacklustre scene depicting Rick and Michonne’s homecoming that was so brief I could hardly even gauge whether it had any emotional weight to it at all.

Plot inadequacies aside, I’d still maintain that the return of Andrew Lincoln’s Rick Grimes takes precedent as the show’s most crucial element, but in spite of all the show has riding on this, don’t expect it to deliver a particularly thrilling revival for the character after all these years. While there’s nothing inherently wrong with the idea that someone could be beaten into submission by their captors, to see the Rick Grimes who endured objectively much harsher torment under the tyranny of Negan lose the fighting spirit that carried him through his time on the main show seems like a blatant error in his characterisation. At times, Rick’s newfound temperament even borders on emasculation as he spends scene after scene in a state of emotional wreck and begins to defer his agency to Michonne in its entirety, and whether it’s down to the mere incompetence of the writers, or more likely the product of an underhanded attempt to “reconstruct” his character to bolster his box-ticking co-lead; there’s no doubt that this is a far cry from the Rick Grimes fans have known and loved for years. This only feels exacerbated when he’s played against The Ones Who Live‘s take on Michonne; a newly flawless, unquestionably moralistic and entirely uninteresting portrayal of the character who’s used as little more than a club to beat Rick with as she constantly berates him for not returning home, despite his perfectly solid reasoning not to seeing how the CRM threatens the lives of everybody he cares about. In fact, Episode Four (coincidentally written by Michonne’s actress Danai Gurira) proved to be the lowest point of the show for me; spending the entirety of its runtime subjecting Rick to Michonne’s idiotic nagging before he breaks down and capitulates to her will, which takes the already lacklustre relationship between these two characters and drives it completely into the ground.

I wouldn’t hope for much better from the show’s supporting cast – Michonne’s short statured travelling companion Nat (Matthew August Jeffers) makes a solid impression in spite of being killed off so soon, and the same can be said of Rick’s mentor Okafor (Craig Tate), but somehow more prevalent characters like Thorne (Lesley-Anne Brandt) felt less impactful when the show doesn’t put the work in to make you care about them. Lost‘s Terry O’Quinn makes a few appearances here and there as the series’ big bad, the CRM’s Major General Beale, but his engaging screen presence isn’t enough to save him from the absolutely insane characterisation given to him by the writers – Beale seems like a harsh, but relatively level-headed leader for most of the season, but by the time the finale rolls around, his ultimate plan is revealed to be mercilessly gas-bombing every survivor community except his own, because somehow reducing the world’s post-apocalyptic population even further is the only way to secure humanity’s survival. This utterly retarded stroke of writing not only leaves Beale as a laughing stock of a villain, but delegitimises the CRM as a whole after all the time spent building them up as a threat. Thankfully you aren’t afforded the chance to get too attached to him, as he tends to take a back seat to Jadis as Rick and Michonne’s foremost foe, but unfortunately she too falls victim to drastic character assassination across the course of the series. Although the writers do provide her with a deeper characterisation than many of the other supporting characters, it nevertheless fails to bridge the gap between where she left us in the main series and where we pick up with her now, which was frankly requisite given how far she veers off into full-blown villainy during the season, so after a half-cooked death scene it seems that the writers have unceremoniously closed the book on her character for good.

With no indication of a second season on the horizon, it seems like the same might be true for Rick and Michonne too, especially considering the effort made to cram in the CRM’s defeat and Rick’s return home into the last few minutes of the finale; giving the series an eye-wateringly rushed and downright terrible ending, but a definitive ending nevertheless. If this is the case, then it’d be a poor place indeed to leave the leading characters after all the work put into their exits from the main show, but I imagine that given the ceaseless march of new Walking Dead spin-offs coming our way, Rick and Michonne will probably pop up somewhere down the road simply by virtue of being a big draw for viewership numbers. Still, there’s no excuse for the way the show has treated the franchise’s most iconic protagonist, and after coming up short on a third spin-off in a row, The Ones Who Live has hardly instilled confidence in me for future endeavours in the Walking Dead franchise. I’m willing to give the upcoming second seasons of Daryl Dixon and Dead City a go – as much as I can imagine they won’t prove to change my mind – but beyond that I severely doubt that The Walking Dead will ever rekindle my interest, and certainly not reclaim the adoration of a general audience. Still, as the saying goes, you make your bed and you lie in it, and when The Ones Who Live took the franchise’s best shot at redemption and wasted it on an overstuffed and unengaging storyline that fails to mask the degradation of the series’ most popular characters, I can’t say I feel very forgiving in my opinion of it. I might not be ready to ditch The Walking Dead again just yet, but if this is the best that the brand can muster up for its flagship protagonist, then there’s no question that the series is long past its prime.

3/10