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The fourth episode of The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live finally gives our romantic leads some alone time together. Fans of the franchise have been eagerly awaiting some kind of resolution that gives us back “Red Machete Rick,” and will lead the two of them back to their home at Alexandria.

At the end of the last episode, Michonne (Danai Girira) threw herself and Rick (Andrew Lincoln) out of a flying helicopter in the middle of a storm. In an act that you’d be forgiven for thinking was a way to punish him for breaking off their marriage after the years she spent trying to find him, we’ll go along with the notion that it was to save him from himself. It’s from here that Episode 4 picks up, with Rick and Michonne making it into a nearby building soaked to the bone having pulled themselves from the ocean underneath the helicopter.

The episode acts as kind of couples’ therapy as the two work through their emotions in the form of passive aggressive jibes, name calling and casual unveilings of unknown children. (That’s right, Michonne yells at him and finally lets slip about RJ). It’s because of this, I found myself reminded of Season 3’s Rick and Michonne, who, having just met, spent that season at each other’s throats.

The entire episode is centered between two of them alone, following them through an empty laboratory in almost real time. It’s functional in the sense that there is running water, a Roomba vacuum and a voice that drives them both nuts announcing the internal room temperature, but is otherwise abandoned. The lack of secondary characters helps to keep the dialogue exactly on the topic we and Michonne have all been waiting for—a real explanation for why Rick won’t leave the Civic Republic Military (CRM).

In my recap last week, I questioned whether Michonne would still have the CRM tracker given to her by Thorne (Lesley-Ann Brandt) and we now find out that not only she does, but it acts as a symbolic, pivotal plot point raising the question: Will Rick push it or not?

Michonne finally learns that Jadis is the one who took him to the CRM and that she has threatened to destroy Alexandria if Rick and Michonne try to escape together. Although Michonne is against going back, she hands the tracker to Rick and leaves the decision in his hands. A moment later however, Rick looks over her shoulder having noticed their helicopter had crashed into the building opposite them during the storm. Not only had Michonne saved them both from death but it also meant that the CRM will assume they had died in the wreck. You’d think surely this would reason enough for them to go home, but even after this, Rick seems to think returning to the CRM is the only course of action.

Michonne snipes at Rick for not even asking about the son he now knows he has and hoping it will trigger something within him, tells him that their children call Rick “The Brave Man.” She makes one more attempt to make him see sense, sarcastically running through his reasons to stay but ultimately decides to leave for Alexandria alone. A tension-filled minute follows after she leaves the room during which Michonne waits at the end of the hallway hoping for him to follow, while Rick agonizes over opening the door to run after her.

After she begins to walk again, making her way toward the exit, he finally resolves to chase after her and we are left in the empty room with a centralised view of the window. A second helicopter arrives and fires missiles at whats left from the crash to cover up any knowledge of the CRM’s existence.

On the bottom floor, the explosion causes the doors made of glass to shatter making a clear path for the walking corpses of the facility’s previous occupants to flood in straight towards Michonne (always what you need during a zombie apocalypse). When Rick makes it to her, they spend the next few minutes bickering over who has the best plan and mocking each other.

With the building crumbling around them, they try to find somewhere safe, all the while being followed by the pointedly thin and very hungry walkers. They find the body of a female scientist Inside one of the rooms who must have been the facility’s final survivor. Michonne uses the words on the scientist’s suicide note to prove a point that trying to fix the world the way that you want it never goes to plan. Rick can try all he wants to change the CRM from the inside but is that even possible, or even worth saving to begin with? He tells her that he isn’t “The Brave Man,” and they need to be afraid of the CRM which is why she needs to leave while he will continue to change it, but she replies that she doesn’t even recognise him anymore.

The walkers pile up at the door behind them them forcing Rick and Michonne to temporarily put their argument aside so they fight their way through. They make their way up the stairwell leading back to the apartment as the building continues to crack a large overhead lighting fixture falls, trapping Michonne underneath. Not one to be spared from irony, Rick tells her that he will never leave her alone to save himself. After a nail-biting moment of walkers sliding down a stick, inching closer to Michonne (while trapped at a bad angle, she accidentally impales instead of killing them), the two manage to finally get legs free and make their way to safety.

During an emotional reconciliation, the two commandeer a bed and finally manage to be intimate for the first time in nearly eight years. Proving a little too much for him, Rick tries not to hyperventilate as he is utterly overcome with emotion.

Afterwards, they discuss the level of similarities between Rick and RJ, most importantly, how handsome he must be if he looks like his father. Questioning the scar on her back she tells him that Alexandria had taken in an old college friend of Michonne’s who encouraged her to keep looking for Rick. When Michonne’s guard was down, the “friend” went on to kidnap children from Alexandria, including Judith, and after capturing Daryl and herself, branded them both across their backs. Though they killed her and got the kids back, Michonne stopped going out. She needed to keep Judith and the baby safe, but never stopped believing Rick could come back. She still believes it.

Michonne tells him about the whole year she spent with Nat (Mathew Jeffers) trying to recover from the poison that the CRM had dropped while she was trying to find him and that she was concerned as Judith had stopped answering messages on the walkie.

Not understanding why he still won’t agree to go she presses the same question she has been asking throughout the episode, what exactly did they take from him? Breaking down, he finally answers – Carl. He had spent years dreaming of his late son, but when he stopped, he was gone for good. When his dreams of Michonne had also stopped, he could keep living if he believed that she and Judith were at least alive. If Michonne dies, he really loses her the way he lost Carl and he won’t be able to just keep surviving anymore.

Michonne reaches into her pocket and takes out a gift she’d had made for Rick – a drawing of Carl just as he had looked before he died. Rick, who had been struggling to remember the details, had been unable to have Carl drawn.
She tells Rick that instead of trying to protect himself from the potential loss of his family, he needs to be with them for whatever time they all have left on this earth and asks what Carl would have told him to do. Rick, finally hearing Michonne, agrees to return home with her.

Packing up supplies, they fight their way through walkers and the crumbling building (it never stopped falling apart) and out into the sunshine. Finding an electric car hooked up, they unplug it and bundle themselves inside.
The final moments bring us back to their relationship in Season 7 of The Walking Dead where a playful Rick and Michonne couldn’t keep their hands off of each other during their trip to find weapons for the fight against Negan. Realising the car is stick-shift – which Rick can’t drive, they swap places and Rick steals a kiss as she passes over him.

Giving them a reprieve from their never ending bad luck, Rick finds tanks of ethanol in the back seat. They realize that the car is a hybrid and that they have enough fuel to at least make it back home.

Wishing Rick and Michonne could drive off into the sunset for a lovely life together at Alexandria is never going to be an option. The zombie guts are always ready to hit the proverbial fan and the question isn’t whether or not the CRM will ever come for them – it’s whether the two of them will make it home before Jadis leads the CRM to Alexandria?

Things to note: This episode is set to be a fan favorite as it was personally written by Michonne actress herself, Danai Girira. Being a longtime viewer myself, I would definitely rate it as one of my all time favorite. Danai perfectly manages to add in some of The Walking Dead’s plot detail and back story that I had long hoped the two main characters would discuss.

The flashes of memory Rick regains while looking at the drawing of Carl had me in floods of tears. Such a beautiful touch and fitting tribute to a fan-favourite character that like Rick and Michonne, many never got over the loss of.

Photo Credit: AMC