Gene Page/AMC
There’s no small bit of irony to the goriest premiere moment in The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live. (Warning: In case it wasn’t obvious, some spoilers lie ahead.) At the start of AMC’s Walking Dead spin-off series, our long-disappeared hero, Rick Grimes, is clearly not doing well. We first spot him watching a news segment while holding a piece of glass to his neck. He’s been trying to break free and reunite with his family for years, but each attempt has failed miserably. During Sunday’s episode, we flashed back to see Rick’s latest failed attempt, in which he chopped off his own hand with an ax to break free from a handcuff leash.
For anyone who watched the original series, which once teased that Rick could lose his hand just like he did in the comics, the moment feels like an ominous coda. Rick might’ve been protected from such losses in The Walking Dead, but The Ones Who Live is out to devastate him in ways its progenitor never did.
That said, the advertising has not been a lie: At its core, The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live is a love story about Rick and Michonne. You can see it from the opening credits, which start out on an image of Rick holding Michonne’s face in silhouette as the world burns. From there, the sequence intersperses images of them looking for one another among more apocalyptic visuals. There’s a Civic Republic flag, a phalanx of helicopters, a map with “X’s” on certain cities, a journal entry, Rick’s boots, a sniper, a sinking bottle, and a copy of the Civic Republic Tribune’s first page that features headlines including “Majority of CRC Candidates Call for Oversight of CRM” and “Thresholders Protest Free Movement Debate at CRU.”