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The penultimate episode of The Ones Who Live begins with some well-deserved days of sunshine, kisses, and most importantly, freedom for our heroes Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) and Michonne (Danai Girira)—who The Walking Dead fans have dubbed “Richmond.” Obviously this will be short lived, but while it lasts, it serves to remind Rick of who he is and what he had been fighting for (and why he went so far as to cut off his own hand).

Before the opening credits, the familiar face of Father Gabriel (Seth Gilliam) greets us in a timeline that could be years before or set in the same one as Rick and Michonne’s. He kills a walker with a machete but upon hearing a helicopter above him, he looks to the sky and begins to pray.

Michonne and Rick travel further away from the Civic Republic on a road trip intended to be their last. Finding boxes of noodles to eat as they cuddle together and even entering a tourist gift shop near the Three Pines Trail, they laugh at their good fortune—though how they can ever be under the impression that it would be that easy to escape could be seen as naive if it weren’t for the fact that together, they really can do anything.

Inside the gift shop, Rick finds a gold necklace with the name “Michelle” that he takes in his hands and snaps, leaving the “M” intact to pocket as a gift for Michonne. He finds something else to give her—an item that he had promised her back in Season 6 of The Walking Dead entitled “The New World.” During this episode, Rick and Daryl were going out on a scavenging mission and Rick promised to get Michonne toothpaste. A failed attempt to bring a truck full of supplies meant that a pack of mints would have to do, which he had handed to Michonne before the first kiss they ever shared. Finally, a decade later (more or less), he makes good on this promise and the audience is intentionally reminded of those early days between the two.

Rick and Michonne head in the direction of a cabin they had taken the keys for after seeing it mentioned at the gift shop. As they walk through the trail, they find an ominous warning sign, of which Michonne, particularly focuses on one line: “[Protect] the people from the people.” They instantly jump into action when they hear people a few yards away trying to fend off a cluster of walkers who’s skulls have been hardened due to a naturally occurring calcifying event in the area. They hand the three of them, one woman and two men, some noodles, but in the spirit of “bite the hand that feeds you,” the two men pull guns on a somewhat amused Rick and Michonne. The woman they are with tries to get them to stop, but Rick and Michonne are unfazed, instead warning them to lower their guns and dial back to a minute before they made their threats. The two ignore this request and are swiftly de-gunned by our heroes and knocked to the ground. Michonne takes back the noodles and keeps one of their guns. She empties the other of bullets, leaving them just one, which she throws over one side and the gun itself in the opposite direction. With a touch of humour, they ask the group to promise not to attack anyone else and remind them not to be stupid enough to follow them.

Michonne and Rick make it to the cabin, where they find a bottle of scotch and playfully discuss how good it felt to help the trio on the road and leave without having to kill them. Though, Rick is surprised that Michonne took back the noodles. It doesn’t take long for them to take advantage of the small bed inside the cabin. Outside in the dark, someone in black has been following them and makes their way silently through the fence while they are distracted.

The episode shifts to three years earlier with Jadis (Pollyanna McIntosh), who we are now calling Anne (Jadis is the name she used back in her trash community days and at the CRM) visiting Father Gabriel out in the woods. He greets her with the kind heart of a long lost friend and visibly stirs the last part of who she used to be. Gabriel takes some of the responsibility for her leaving, noting that others distrusted her but that Rick always had faith. Anne can’t tell him where she’s been, nor can she return with him, but we learn that no one within the community at Alexandria ever linked her disappearance with that of Rick as she convincingly acts shocked when Gabriel breaks the news of Rick’s death. As he talks of Rick’s heroism on the bridge, Anne moves her eyes in awkward guilt but keeps her secrets to herself. She asks how he lives with the things he did in the past, referencing our introduction to a cowardly Season 5 Gabriel in The Walking Dead who left his flock outside to be torn apart by walkers. He tells her he prays and that she is always welcome to talk to confide in him.

Rick and Michonne wake up abruptly and ready for action when Anne (Jadis) calls out to them with a gun held high. She tells them both to tie each other to the bed but even as they do, it doesn’t stop them from talking to each other about the situation as though she wasn’t there. She tells them how she had figured out that they were still alive and managed to track them by the car missing from the street and carelessly strewn ramen packets. Explaining why she hadn’t killed them yet, Anne tells them about a confidant she wished she’d cleared the air with before killing (this is a reference to The World Beyond Season 2). They argue that she cares only for herself, not the city or the army, but she insists she believes in the CRM’s mission and that letting them go home would risk her life and everything she has fought to be a part of. Killing the two of them would clean up the loose end that links her to Alexandria but would also ensure that the couple’s family and community survives.

Eventually a fight breaks out between the three but even a gun isn’t a match for Rick and Michonne who separate to opposite sides of the room as quick as a cat sliding across ice. Michonne manages to get hold of the hatchet and cuts a slice into Anne before she flees the cabin. Picking up the red gun, Michonne attempts to shoot Anne, but Rick stops her, favouring capture over a long overdue kill shot.

Back in time again, this time two years before, Gabriel asks after the fact that Anne calls Michonne Rick’s wife, not knowing that it’s how Rick refers to Michonne at the CRM. She brushes it aside, pretending to assume they were always married. Gabriel goes on to tell Anne that they weren’t, but Rick had asked Gabriel to marry them on the bridge before it blew up. He shows her a ring that he had found back then and intended to give to the couple when performing the ceremony. Anne writhes with discomfort and chooses to change the subject, saying that meeting with him makes a year of difficult decisions easier. She uses words like “greater good,” but Gabriel tells her that if she is here with him doubting her actions, then it must not be who she is. She says that who she has become has kept her alive and hopes that it will also help everyone else in the future and Gabriel then mentions the conflict that caused Alexandria’s walls to fall leaving the community starving (Alpha and the Whisperers). He asks for her help with food and supplies but she shuts him down. She hasn’t told him who her group is or what they do, but she has alluded to the fact that she absolutely cannot tell them about Alexandria. The two cross words and Anne moves to leave abruptly, but Gabriel stops her to apologise and gives her Rick’s ring. He hopes it will give her some peace as she questions who she has become (if only Gabriel knew what she had done to the intended recipient of the ring).

In a race against time, Rick and Michonne chase Anne in their car, with both vehicles attempting to run each other off the road. Rick reminds Michonne that killing her will mean that the file on them and Alexandria will fall into the hands of the CRM. A few sharp turns and one bump too many, sends Anne hurtling down a hill, but by the time Rick and Michonne make it to the wreck, she has already escaped. They chase after her, tracking her blood across trees and segueing over whether or not she can be “brought around.” Luckily for Anne she comes across a group that is easy to manipulate into helping her – the woman and two men Rick and Michonne had met the day before.

Rick and Michonne follow the trail of blood into a storage building with hanging sheets that serve to form separate tents. It looks to have been used at one time or another by a community of survivors but has since become long overrun. They follow sounds through the sheets and eventually come up behind who they thought was Anne in her long black coat, but it turns out to be the woman they met in the woods, leading them into an ambush. They hadn’t realised it was Michonne and Rick that they would be up against, but they couldn’t resist Anne’s promises of safety with the Civic Republic. It doesn’t take long before the three of them are mincemeat for the hungry walkers and we are back to a showdown between Rick, Michonne and Anne.

Alongside this scene, we are taken back again to Gabriel and Anne exactly a year ago, the last time they met up. They apologise for having argued the year before over, Anne would have understood if he hadn’t come after she refused to help Alexandria but Gabriel tells her he shouldn’t presume to understand her community or commitment to them. Each year she visits him she has done worse things but repeats that she believes in why they are done. He sits beside her, saying that he looks forward to their visits each year, having her to himself and that her even being there proves that she is still who she was. She kisses Gabriel, giving him a moment of hope that she will return with him to Alexandria, but asking only serves to provoke a fight over whether or not her group are good people. He represents everything left over from who she used to be and realising this, she calls him a loose end, knocks him to the floor and pulls her gun on him.

Back in the present day as they hide amongst the sheets, Anne tells Rick that he was to receive the Etchelon Briefing after his mission that would have given him the ability to ensure Alexandria’s survival, but that it’s too late now. She gives Michonne and Rick a clear ultimatum – die now and let everyone back home live, or kill her, which will allow the military to find the file she hid and go after Alexandria. Eventually they come to an agreement, Rick will go back with her to the CRM and Michonne can go back to their children at Alexandria. As Michonne goes to get a med kit for Anne and Rick comes out to meet Anne, she pulls her gun out on him causing her to remember her last visit to Gabriel. As he lays on the ground under her gun, Gabriel tells her she is lying to herself and never really left Alexandria. He asks her to shoot him if that’s who she really is but he doesn’t believe it.

Back to the current timeline, after several minutes and just as many double-crosses later, Rick and Michonne have the upper hand and are trying to get through to the “old Anne” (it’s hard to think of a single redeeming thing about her when all she does is self-sabotage and betray people). Michonne never does get the chance to get vengeance for the years Anne stole from them both with her own hands, but life finds a way to even the score as a walker takes a bite out Anne’s neck. In Anne’s last few moments she remembers the loss of her friends over the years and explains that she just wanted to finally be a part of something that lasts. She collected the file together, knowing that eventually keeping Alexandria alive could be her downfall and wanted to finally pick a side.

Suffering from the hatchet wound and bite to her neck, she remembers how things were left with Gabriel. She turns her gun and shoots an approaching walker, telling Gabriel to leave. He stands to his feet and tells her that she finally has an answer to the questions she has been asking about herself.

Realising that Gabriel had shown her which side she had truly picked, she tells Rick and Michonne that the file is in her room at the Cascadia base. She tells them to go home after they destroy it and asks them not to go after the CRM, but Michonne makes no promise to honour Anne’s wishes and instead opts to tell her that it’s exactly what they intend to do. Michonne believes the good people within the Civic Republic’s city would not stand for the CRMs if they knew about their covert, destructive missions and that they must be stopped. Anne hands them the ring Gabriel gave her and tells them he had intended to use it for their wedding. Anne’s story comes to an end with a mercy killing via a bullet from her own gun.

Rick and Michonne walk through the trail and make plans for what comes next – get the file, hear the Etchalong briefing and take down the CRM. Before embarking on their mission, Rick has one more thing to do and takes out the ring from Gabriel. He stops Michonne in a clearing among the trees and hands her the ring. He promises himself to her until he takes his last breath and Michonne takes his hand, lowers herself down to him and reciprocates by telling him she is his.

Somewhere not so far away, Gabriel waits day and night for Anne who never arrives. We are raised into the air above him to see a CRM helicopter making its way across the treetops of a forest.

Have the CRM already found the file and on their way to Alexandria, or are they in search of Jadis who was perhaps meant to check in?

Things to note;

Other than Season 8 of The Walking Dead where a distraught Anne sits amongst the garbage surrounded by the reanimated corpses of her own friends, this is the first time she has provoked empathy from the viewers. Bad decisions and betrayal always follow in her wake but this episode shows at least a moment of humanity and a flicker of remorse before she leaves this world.

It’s unclear whether Rick and Michonne will head straight back to the CRM or whether he will go back while she heads to Alexandria, but the ominous helicopter in the closing scene does fill me with concern as it looks to have flown over where Gabriel had been sat the day before.

Photo Credit: AMC