The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live Ending Explained - What Happens To The CRM?
Fans of the biggest power couple in "The Walking Dead," Rick (Andrew Lincoln) and Michonne (Danai Gurira) aka Richonne, have been waiting years for the franchise to put the band back together. And now that "The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live," the latest in a succession of "The Walking Dead" spin-off series, has aired, we finally got to see their long-teased reunion play out — not to mention find out what Rick has been up to all these years. "The Ones Who Live" also gives viewers even more answers about the Civic Republic Military (CRM) and Jadis' (Pollyanna McIntosh) involvement with this shifty organization.
Fans have praised the series as one of the best spin-offs in "The Walking Dead" universe. Particularly praised is the narrative's powerful emotional impact in a franchise with a tendency to spit out new variations on the same meandering Big Bad subplot with no reprieve in sight. The plot also bears significant implications for the survivors of Alexandria, if not for the wider world. With plenty of CRM bombshells and some of the biggest developments in the franchise, here's everything you need to know about the ending of "The Ones Who Live."
What you need to remember about the plot of The Ones Who Live
As the first "Walking Dead" POV character, Rick's experiences have served as a narrative thread tethering the audience to the world before and after the fall. Much of his story has dealt with the messy ethics of leadership in a deeply morally relative world — something made even more challenging with his two children in tow. Rick leads his group of survivors in search of a new home, picking up new folks along the way. Their early efforts to establish a safe community end tragically as they face off with zombie hordes and villains du jour. At the same time, Rick is plagued by the loss of his wife and best friend, not to mention the ever-increasing tally of fellow survivors Rick's group loses along the way.
The group eventually settles into the community of Alexandria, where Rick and Michonne evolve into Richonne. After teaming up with Hilltop, the Kingdom, and Oceanside to defeat Negan and his Saviors, they forge a wider trade network. But when a massive zombie horde threatens their communities, Rick blows up the new bridge connecting their towns. Despite Rick surviving the explosion, Jadis sells him out to the CRM, leaving his family convinced he is dead. After a multiyear time jump, we learn Michonne has been raising Judith (Cailey Fleming) along with his son Rick, Jr. aka R.J. (Antony Azor). Upon learning Rick is still alive, she takes off to find him.
What happened at the end of The Ones Who Live
Viewers finally learn what happened after he left Alexandria, finally getting answers on why someone who constantly risks his life for his family wouldn't return home. After getting picked up by the CRM, Rick becomes a captive consignee in a secretive city where he is forced to grind as a walker killer on the outskirts for six years before gaining citizenship.
After Rick's attempt to escape fails (and Rick cuts off his arm in the process), Lt. Col. Okafor (Craig Tate) recruits him into the military. Soon after, Okafor tells Rick and his fellow enlistee Pearl Thorne (Lesley-Ann Brandt) that under the leadership of Maj. Gen. Beale (Terry O'Quinn), the CRM has been up to some nasty business. Convinced by Jadis his family is in danger if he leaves, Rick resigns himself to his fate but commits to trying to change the CRM from within.
When Rick and Okafor's helicopter crashes, he reunites with Michonne, whose long journey to find him included a life-threatening experience at the hands of the CRM. Although he tries to send her back home without him, Michonne isn't having it. After a short time in the CRM, Michonne and Rick hash out their issues. Jadis is killed in the episode "Become." They return to the CRM, grab Jadis' dossier, kill Beale, blow up part of the military, and release the CRM's true motives to the Civic Republic in the finale, "The Last Time."
The title is a callback to Rick's Season 5 speech
The title of "The Ones Who Live" is a callback to a line first uttered when Rick's group is acclimating to Alexandria in "The Walking Dead" Season 5 episode "Try." While working as a constable, Rick finds himself increasingly frustrated with the community's original residents, convinced that their ignorance of the danger they're in poses a risk to his own people. It's in this headspace that he gets some ugly fisticuffs with the wife-abusing "Porch-D*** Pete" (Corey Brill) while trying to escort him from his home. After the fight spills into the street and the whole community comes out, Rick completely snaps, wildly waving his gun while shouting, "You still don't get it. None of you do! We know what needs to be done and we do it. We're the ones who live!"
Michonne echoing the words back to him makes it even more meaningful by tying it to the meaning they create together. In the Season 7 episode "Hearts Still Beating," she pleads, "We're the ones who get things done, you said that. We're the ones who live. That's why we have to fight ... for all of us." This contrasts Beale's reflections in "The Last Time" when he opines, "The end of the world, and the beginning of the world ... we're the dead ones, Rick."
Most of our questions about the CRM are answered
A secretive military force with a sizable infrastructure and a national fleet of helicopters has been hinted at since Season 8 of "The Walking Dead" when Rick first spies a helicopter flying in to do business with Jadis' trash can folks. Encounters with CRM soldiers or equipment are peppered throughout later episodes of "The Walking Dead" and "Fear the Walking Dead." In the second "Walking Dead" spin-off, "The World Beyond," the CRM is revealed to be the military arm of the Civic Republic of Philadelphia, one-third of the Alliance of Three alongside Omaha and Portland. It's there that viewers first get a look at just how brutal the CRM can be, but "The Ones Who Live" goes even further in painting a complete picture of the CRM's history, its connection to the CRP, and the organization's malevolent plans.
Through Rick's eyes, we see inside the functional, thriving city the CRM is protecting. In Rick's own words, the CRM is "a force of thousands, protecting a working, hidden city of hundreds of thousands." Running water, French fries, manicured parks, not to mention functional infrastructure — it really is the good life. New consignees spend six years working in the outskirts of the city to be considered for citizenship in the insular community, and it's easy to see why most survivors are happy to take that deal.
The CRM makes every other villain look like Santa Claus
The CRM will go to any length to protect their city and cull the weak, including supplying test subjects for horrific CRM-run science experiments. But that's just the tip of the iceberg of the CRM's brutal methods. The franchise constantly hinted at how evil the CRM is, but Michonne gets to experience its methods firsthand in "Gone" in a moment that explains exactly how an entire city is able to stay "hidden" from the world. As Michonne and a caravan of survivors she's traveling with make their way closer to Philadelphia, CRM helicopters douse them in chlorine gas. Severely injured, she and her friend Nat (Matthew Jeffers) spend a year recovering.
In "The Last Time," Beale tells Rick that CRM spies are embedded in communities everywhere to sabotage and influence them. After letting a zombie horde descend on Pittsburgh, the organization destroyed Omaha and the Campus Colony and plans to hit Portland next after stealing their kids. Through it all, the CRM keeps citizens blissfully ignorant, with Beale revealing they will report the loss of Portland as "another tragic, mysterious, shocking incident" and then declare martial law because "the stakes are too high for freedom." When it's done, they plan to march across the country and do the same to any communities they find.
We finally see inside Jadis' mind
One of the most difficult characters to get a read on in "The Walking Dead" universe, Junkyard Jadis has always had an eccentricity about her. With her calm voice and unusual dialect, Jadis has always had an enigmatic, almost feral way about her that's hard to reconcile with the sensitive, artistic spirit who painted the family portraits in Hilltop. After her refusal to help fight the Saviors, it was not entirely shocking to see her grab an injured Rick to sell out as a test subject in exchange for entrance to the CRM in "The Walking Dead." But Jadis' defense of the genocide against the nearly 100,000 souls living in Omaha and the Campus Colony in "The World Beyond" paints her as a dark and deeply nihilistic soul.
While it doesn't completely reconcile Genocidal Junkyard Jadis and Artsy Anne, "The Ones Who Live" comes close. The series ping-pongs between flashbacks and present-day glimpses into Jadis' world, emphasizing her storyline with Father Gabriel. By the end of Episode 2, Jadis has a military haircut, shrugging off the Aspirational Beige aesthetic she first embodied after joining the CRM. Before Jadis is killed off in Episode 5, "The Ones Who Live" gradually reveals how Jadis believes doing anything for this community is the only way to ensure a future where communities no longer fall.
Rick is offered a Faustian deal
In the post-apocalyptic world, a leader like Rick is either a threat or an asset depending on who you ask. And in the world of the CRM, Rick broke the system. He was originally brought into a system where more compliant "B's" are what the CRM wants. Having no need for strong leaders who are likely to defy the system and screw up a good thing, the CRM sends "A" personalities to be tortured test subjects. But after Rick's repeated attempts to escape catch the attention of Okafor, he is put on the path that will eventually lead him straight to the top.
It's something that Beale sees right away, causing him to suspect Okafor's plans to take him out. But when Rick comes back to take the oath and join the community, Beale makes him a curious offer. Telling Rick that he has sat across from many a soldier and given the same speech, Beale reveals, "The soldier in question has never been someone like you. ... It's the start of what's next, and that couldn't be more appropriate for today, a day completely about tomorrow." Adding that he believes Rick could be the one to assume leadership within the next decade, Beale offers him the chance to bring in anyone he wants if he joins. But since that would mean agreeing to cosign on a laundry list of human rights violations, Rick passes on the offer.
The Ones Who Live is about strength through love
Without Michonne, Rick became completely untethered. Referring to Michonne's decision to yank herself and Rick from a helicopter in "What We," star and producer Andrew Lincoln observed in an episode insider discussion, "Rick's behavior is so erratic and bizarre and uncharacteristic and hurtful that I think she has no alternative." Michonne makes Rick realize that he needs his family more than anything else and that they're strongest together.
For Beale, the only path forward is by eliminating the weak. For a reconnected Rick and Michonne, the only path forward is for the strongest in their community to come together to protect everyone else, including the weak. It's a story that's reflected through the parallel experiences of Michonne and Pearl Thorne. Without Michonne by his side, Thorne serves as a character foil for Michonne. Like Michonne, she's strong and challenges Rick.
As showrunner Scott M. Gimple reflected in the episode insider, the two are mirror images aside from the fact that Michonne never gave up hope, and like Beale, Thorne believes in protecting the Civic Republic at all costs. In one of the series' most emotional moments, Rick tells Michonne, "It's a broken world, but you and me, we can do anything." After getting apocalypse-married, the pair focuses on a new promise. When Rick tells her, "You don't leave people behind," Michonne responds, "This is the s*** we do."
It's also about the illusion of civility
Despite the emphasis on rebuilding, this franchise often emphasizes the distinction between civilization and civility. That theme is reflected prominently throughout the imagery of "The Ones Who Live." It seems everywhere Rick turns, there's a reminder that a pretty veneer reflecting the world gone struggles to hide the brutality of the world they live in — brutality that was always lurking underneath the surface before the fall.
Episode 3 begins with a flashback of Rick wandering the clean, bustling CRM city street when Instagram Aesthetic Jadis comes creeping along to cheerily greet him as if, in the main show, she hadn't been a trash person holding him captive with the threat of killing his family. Then there's the scene where Beale gingerly pours Rick a cup from a Japanese tea set while he casually discusses his genocidal plans.
And when Rick and Michonne leap from the helicopter to work through their situationship, the pair rather surreally ends up in a wildly advanced apartment building that feels like some sort of real-world EPCOT. Once a self-sustaining community of tech geeks with all the bells and whistles — a smart HVAC, a Roomba, a talking house — the pristine smart apartments have become the last living monument of yet another fallen community.
There are secrets hidden in Jadis' art
"The Ones Who Live" gives viewers a chance to get a closer look at some of Jadis' art as Michonne rifles through her things in search of a dossier in the finale. And judging by the treasure trove of sketches, paintings, and sculptures in her pad, former art teacher Jadis was mighty prolific for someone with a black heart and a bad haircut.
The artist formerly known as Anne once decorated the walls of Hilltop's main house with a series of colorful portraits dedicated to current and former community members, with Redditor u/ApprehensiveSky6813 noticing color patterns denoting each subject's relationship to Maggie, Hilltop's then-leader. Like the Hilltop paintings, Jadis' art in "The Ones Who Live" has at least one hidden story to tell.
When Michonne finds the dossier hidden in a wire cat sculpture, it's a reminder of another cat sculpture storyline from "The Walking Dead" connected to Michonne and Rick. The cat tale begins in the Season 3 "Walking Dead" episode "Clear" when Michonne picks up a rainbow papier-mâché cat. Although it's destroyed, Rick picks her up a replacement in "New Best Friends," swiping a cat sculpture from the Heaps. Finding the dossier hidden in the wire cat on "The Ones Who Live" is a message from beyond the grave that she never forgot his cat sculpture theft — or maybe she just loves cats.
It's meant to bring a cinematic end to Rick's longer Walking Dead story arc
According to the showrunner and cast in the episode insider for "The Last Time," the series was meant to tell a complete story for Rick. Andrew Lincoln said, "What Danai [Gurira] and myself and Scott [Gimple] and all the people involved in the writers' room wanted to do is to give a story that felt complete, that was heightened. That each episode felt like its own kind of film." If it feels like Rick and Michonne couldn't have written it better themselves, it's because they did. Along with Gimple, the pair had sat down in a New York hotel conference room and mapped the entire story out, start to finish, together.
For Lincoln, the ending of "The Ones Who Live" finishes a thread running from the moment Rick wakes up in his hospital bed in the series premiere. "It's one continuous story that began with a man waking up three weeks into the apocalypse half-dead, looking for his family."
One of the rare examples of a happy ending in "The Walking Dead" franchise, the six-season arc ends with all four members of the Grimes family coming together for the first time. After the family comes together, the camera pulls out into a "God's eye" angle to soaring music, underlining a deeply emotional moment. It's an ending that Lincoln had pulled for, something he called a "'Shawshank Redemption' finish."
What the end of The Ones Who Live could mean for the franchise
Although there's no word yet on whether "The Ones Who Live" will get a second season, Andrew Lincoln and Scott M. Gimple told Entertainment Weekly they're open to the possibility if the opportunity should arise. Gimple mused, "It's definitely going to go somewhere. ... But it might just be in my brain. It might just be my fan fiction."
Even if the story doesn't get picked up for a second season, the "Walking Dead" franchise is still going strong. And the Grimes family reunion has left the wider universe with some pretty significant implications to contend with — namely, the grim forecast looming behind that happy ending. Assuming he wasn't just lying to justify his despotic regime, Beale wasn't just being genocidal for the heck of it. According to the general, scientists are projecting 14 years left before humanity faces total extinction — and that's if they're lucky. With the civilian government back in charge of the Civic Republic, it's possible that the Alexandria crew could begin working with them to connect other communities and search for a solution in the future. But that's all speculative for now — there's no telling whether the franchise will return to these characters and storylines again.