In this week’s episode of The Walking Dead, we finally learned the fate of Michonne. Basically, she has left Alexandria in search of Rick Grimes, and Judith is the one that urged her to do so.
What exactly does that mean? According to the chief architect of The Walking Dead universe, Scott Gimple, the official line is, “Her story isn’t done.” Gimple, however, stopped short from officially confirming that Danai Gurira would appear in the Rick Grimes’ movies. That, however, is almost certainly the plan, but plans have obviously shifted in recent weeks. The World Beyond spin-off series has been delayed, and production has temporarily shut down on both The Walking Dead and Fear the Walking Dead, upsetting what at one point was going to be essentially 40 weeks of The Walking Dead content (consecutively). Ideally, production on all three series picks up in a few weeks or a couple of months, and everything just shifts by a few weeks. That’s the ideal situation, but even if that situation comes to fruition, AMC may be reconsidering opening the. Rick Grimes’ movies in theaters.
In any respect, what we know now is that Michonne has left The Walking Dead and she has entered “The Walking Dead universe.” The universe consists of three shows — The Walking Dead, Fear the Walking Dead, and The World Beyond. The three shows appear to be linked by an organization called CRM, which has a familiar logo that we have seen on a helicopter that picked up Rick Grimes and that also appeared on Fear the Walking Dead.
CRM is an alliance of three communities, which are probably The Commonwealth (a community we expect to see on The Walking Dead after The Whisperers arc), the Monument (the community on The World Beyond) and an unknown third community, which may be related to Ginny and The Settlers on Fear the Walking Dead. We don’t have a lot of details about the three communities yet, except that CRM appears to be heavily militarized. The Commonwealth and Monument also appear to be very different types of communities: The Commonwealth is 50,000 large and has a lot of modern amenities, plus concert venues and sports teams, while The Monument has been completely closed off from the rest of the world for the last decade.
What we know is that somehow, Rick Grimes (and Jadis) get mixed up with CRM, because they are the ones who picked him up in the helicopter. At some point, Rick Grimes had to give up his cowboy boots — discovered on this ship by Michonne in this week’s episode — and he “would not give up those boots easily.” Michonne found those boots, as well as this iPhone case on a naval ship.
The iPhone case contains a photo of Michonne and Judith, the name “Rick,” and Japanese characters that translate to, “believe a little longer,” according to Angela Kang. We have no idea whose iPhone that case is, but if it’s Rick’s, it’d be very strange for him to have a more recent picture of Judith, who — as far as we know — he hasn’t seen since she was a toddler.
In papers on the desk on the ship, Michonne also found references to a shipyard in New Jersey, which is presumably where she heads. When she arrives, she meets to people who are trying to join a heavily militarized group of people marching in formation through a valley. These people are presumably part of CRM and probably also have an idea where Rick Grimes is, if, in fact, he is not actually leading them. Recall that CRM wanted “A” people, like Rick Grimes, and not “B” people like Father Gabriel, which suggests that “A” people are those who can lead communities.
That’s essentially what we know so far. We may be given more clues in the final three episodes of this season of The Walking Dead, and we will certainly know more when The World Beyond eventually premieres.
