Winter TCA 2024: ‘The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live’ Cast Talk Big Returns, Epic Love, And DNA Of The Original Show

In 2018, former Walking Dead star Andrew Lincoln said he was leaving the series — known among cast and crew as “the Mothership” — to spend more time with his kids, noting the long Georgia shoots meant he was missing their childhoods. Now, in the mid-2020s, Lincoln quipped his now-grown kids “don’t speak to me” while making an appearance at the winter 2024 Television Critics Association press tour to promote the upcoming The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live.

The program makes good on a promise Lincoln and overall Walking Dead executive producer Scott Gimple made when Lincoln’s character, Rick Grimes, departed for an unknown fate: that he would return. At the time, the plan was to make a feature film, but as Gimple explained, “There were plans, the world changed, we changed those plans and ended up with something we really like.” Now, instead of a feature, the story takes the form of a television series which sets to reunite Rick with Michonne (Danai Gurira), who remained in the community they helped found for another season or so of the Mothership. But now, the time has come for their souls to be reunited … well, maybe.

In true Walking Dead fashion, Gimple, Gurira, and Lincoln — who are all credited as executive producers and creators of The Ones Who Live — were tight-lipped about the actual content of the tale, other than to say the characters are trying to find one another and that it revolves around their epic love story.

“[Michonne] definitely is going through quite a journey. A lot of things happen that she does not expect,” Gurira said. It will not be an easy trip, she teased, but it may allow the character a chance to open a bit as she left The Walking Dead a changed and closed-off character. In addition to starring in the series and executive producer duties, she also wrote one of the episodes.

“I think there is a ride people are going to take [so I’m careful of spoilers],” she added.

To Lincoln, the story also brings Rick back to basics. “It’s the DNA of the original series: a man searching for his family,” he explained. Although, this time, that desire occurs after he has spent some time with the CRM instead of awakening from a coma, but that magnetic force once again serves him well. Gimple added that Rick’s dedication to the people he loves is the key reason why he survived everything that happened on the Mothership and may yet see him survive this new story.

Well, if he survives. The team was even cagey about that.

Joining the two Walking Dead veterans in the series are Terry O’Quinn as Beale, Lesley-Ann Brandt as Pearl, Matthew August Jeffers as Nat, and Craig Tate as Lt. Col. Donald Okafor. And, as became clear during the presentation, the junior team are already well-versed in that special art of Walking Dead actors: evading questions. O’Quinn, for example, was asked if he felt any pressure in joining the ranks of the various series bad guys across the half-dozen shows. “I seem to fall into that category on occasion,” he responded. Although, he did offer a straight “no” in regards to feeling any pressure about appearing in a Walking Dead series. “That’s all good fun. The only pressure was keeping up with [Danai and Andy].”

Brandt also avoided questions about her characters, but mentioned she binged the Mothership to get up to speed on where Rick and Michonne had been prior to The Ones Who Lived. “The parts I liked were the human stories and the vulnerable moments,” she said. “I was rooting for the both of them when they got together.”

Jeffers character, Nat, turned out to be the one the producers and actors were willing to talk a little bit more about. He is the first person in The Walking Dead to appear with dwarfism. He is also handy with explosives — “I didn’t major in pyrotechnics,” Jeffers joked — and represents a further expansion of what life looks like in a post-Walker world and, indeed, a more ordered civilization in the face of that apocalypse. “[Nat’s] outsized persona and ability is a testament to the risk creators take with shows that are beloved like The Walking Dead,” the actor said. “I feel fortunate to have the opportunity to help with that.”

Meanwhile, Tate fielded a question about The Walking Dead‘s legendarily vocal fanbase. “It’s the roller coaster of life and its part of the medium,” he said. “Even in novels, you grow an attachment and things don’t [always] work out for the character [you bond with]. Are we ready for [the response]? Of course.”

Gimple also mentioned he is ready for some sort of grand crossover event between The Ones Who Live, the surviving Fear The Walking Dead characters, and even people from The Walking Dead: World Beyond, The Walking Dead: Dead City, and The Walking Dead: Darryl Dixon. Just don’t expect it anytime soon. “I do have dreams of merging this all together and I’ve laid bread crumbs, but you don’t know exactly where and how. I am building those pathways, but there could be all sorts of pivots,” he said. He pointed to The Ones Who Lives‘ origins as a feature as an example of the way the bigger ideas can and will change as he continues to shepherd the overall world.

“That improvisation has made The Walking Dead a lot of fun to work with,” he added.

In the meantime, The Ones Who Lives may very well represent the resolution of what Gurira calls the “epic” love story of Michonne and Rick. “The idea of the epic love story is what distinguishes it,” she explained. “We didn’t get to explore it a ton in the Mothership. What does love do when it’s the thing propelling the story? It’s an apocalyptic epic love narrative.”

The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live debuts on February 25th.