Spoilers below for anyone who hasn’t yet watched the latest episode of The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live on AMC or with an AMC+ subscription.
After so many years of waiting for Andrew Lincoln’s Rick Grimes and Danai Gurira’s Michonne to share the screen together again, the post-apocalyptic spinoff is already halfway through its six-episode debut season, and I’m pretty sure things aren’t supposed to be going this quickly. Thankfully, the third episode “Bye” was the best installment yet. Jadis delivered more gap-filling exposition following Ep 2’s big final scene, and a source was revealed for Rick’s phone messages, all ahead of that whopper of a cliffhanger ending, which saw Michonne making the bonkers decision to yoink Rick out of a helicopter flying through a torrential storm. Say what?
It’s the kind of character move that comes across as completely illogical in the moment, because who jumps out of a helicopter at any time, much less during hellacious weather as captive of a huge militarized group? Well, clearly Michonne does, and star Danai Gurira explained to EW exactly what was going on in the character’s brain at the time, and in the space leading up to that ending, that drove her over the edge, both metaphorically and literally.
Gurira explained that both Michonne and Rick hit their limits in this ep, with the latter trying to send her back to their family and friends in order to keep them all out of the CRM’s crosshairs. Of course, she refuses, and puts herself right back in harm’s way on the off chance that another opportunity will arise for them to escape the group’s clutches together. And as the longtime Walking Dead franchise actress put it, they both have a “crazy switch” that activates under extreme duress, and Michonne’s went off during the hectic helicopter ride, largely due to Rick’s empty attempts to drive her away by claiming things were hopeless. In her words:
He had the gall to say to her, ‘Everything between us is broken.’His tactic is the one to question everything, but that is just not something you say to Michonne, and she knows it's not true. So she's going to do whatever she has to do to get to the facts and to get her man to where it's making sense.
At that point, even with the situation looking as bleak and dire as could be, Michonne still had it in her head to knock some damned sense into the bearded dingus that she worked so hard to track down. Doesn't he have any idea what she had to go through, just so he could try and trick her into leaving without him? Not cool, Rick. Not cool indeed. I gotta think next time he'll think twice about his word choice, especially if they're not on solid ground.
So not only is she now trying to get them both safe, she also has to re-convince him that their love is still worth fighting for, even if they'd survived so long without it. (And for what it's worth, Andrew Lincoln completely agrees with Michonne's actions.) That said, there's certainly a difference between "talking some sense into a discouraged loved one" and "jumping from a flying vehicle without a parachute."
But even in that moment, Michonne still had one canny eye on the future, despite it looking like the rashest of escape attempts. As she put it:
She does calculate the odds. She sees that there's water below them. There was nothing else to do. That definitely was [Scott] Gimple's idea. I thought that was a very, very, very smart ending.
Very good on Michonne for being aware of what the helicopter was traveling over, since the weather made it seem impossible to tell where they were in the darkness. I mean, even if you know you've over water, the vehicle's speed and the height could still have made that leap as deadly as one without made any forethought.
With The Walking Dead franchise's creative chief Scott Gimple behind that decision, one can only assume that both characters will survive the experience without any debilitating injuries. I mean, beyond Rick's already debilitating hand injury that would likely make surviving this fall even more complicated.
Find out exactly how Michonne and Rick survive their drop when The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live airs new episodes Sunday nights on AMC at 9:00 p.m. ET, with even more upcoming Walking Dead projects on the way.
