The Big Picture

• The Walking Dead spin-off series focusing on Rick and Michonne sheds light on their mysterious disappearances and their journey to find each other, providing answers that fans have been desperate to know.
• The timeline of The Walking Dead has become confusing, with significant time jumps and passages of several years. Rick's disappearance and Michonne's search for him span almost a decade, adding to the intrigue of their story.
• The decision to create a spin-off series centered around Maggie and Negan seems unexpected and unnecessary, as their storylines have already been resolved in the main series. Fans are more interested in the continuation of Rick and Michonne's story.

The Walking Dead wrapped up its final season in late 2022, but not before setting the stage for several spin-off stories following a number of characters from the core cast. The series even closed out with essentially a trailer for the upcoming series that will follow Rick Grimes, played by Andrew Lincoln, the show's first and primary protagonist, and Michonne, played by Danai Gurira, who left the series in Season 10, Episode 13, "What We Become," to search for Rick and bring him home to their children and their found family. This spin-off is hotly anticipated as it can finally shed light on where Rick has been in the years that have passed since Season 9, Episode 5 when he was taken away in a mysterious helicopter. Another series also sees Daryl Dixon, played by fan favorite Norman Reedus, set off on an international adventure in Europe. But there is one spin-off that doesn't make much sense for The Walking Dead lore: The Walking Dead: Dead City.

Dead City is set in Manhattan, New York, and follows an incredibly unlikely pair, Maggie (Lauren Cohan) and Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan). Dead City sees Maggie team up with the man who murdered her husband and left her unborn child without a father to raise him, but that's not the only reason this team-up is unexpected. In The Walking Dead's series finale, the team was able to make a real home of the Commonwealth once they overthrew corrupt leaders like Pamela Milton, and as the dust settled, the heroes made homes for themselves and their families, including Negan with his wife with their newly born child. Maggie appeared to have settled into the newly reformed community and agreed with Negan that despite his part in helping to establish this new world order, their differences and history were too great, and they would keep their distance from one another. So what on earth is going on with these two leaving their families behind and traveling a couple of states north?

Rick and Michonne Make Sense, Maggie and Negan Don't!

No shade to any of these characters, each one of them is interesting and complex, and in many ways, the story of Maggie and Negan has a much richer well of wild history to dig into and create arcs around, but they have already had their ending. The Walking Dead created a complete narrative arc for the pair and even resolved some of the biggest elements that were left unsaid for the two characters, this can't be said for Rick and Michonne within the main series. Rick was the heart of the show for the best part of nine seasons, and the manner in which he disappeared was heart-wrenching, surprising, and left viewers with nothing but questions about who the CRM was. Despite the notable setup and inclusion of the CRM, almost nothing was revealed about them throughout the rest of the mainline series. There were brief mentions and allusions in other series set in the same universe such as Fear The Walking Dead and The Walking Dead: World Beyond, but nothing to conclusively inform audiences about what happened to Rick and where he has been during the remainder of the series.

Similarly, Michonne has been completely absent since her departure in the penultimate season. She left behind their adopted daughter, Judith, and her biological son, Rick Jr., and entrusted their close friend Daryl and the rest of the group to care for them in her absence. Michonne was clearly intent on finding Rick as both herself and Daryl believed he was alive having been unable to find his body, but a lot has happened since Michonne left the group. The spin-off can do a lot to uncover their journey to find one another, what happened to Rick and why the CRM wanted him, how they eventually find each other, and how they find their way home. All of these are compelling subjects for fans of the series, but that is just not the case when it comes to Negan and Maggie.

'The Walking Dead' Timeline Is Getting Confusing

The series has typically had an unusual timeline with some seasons making an account of as little as one week, such as Season 8 where Rick and the other survivors prepare for and enact their rebellion against Negan and the Saviors, while others covered almost a decade, such as Season 9, where the communities recover from the fallout in the first set of episodes, and then leap into the distant future where children like Judith and RJ are considerably older. The final season continued to add to the extensive timeline tacking on a time jump at the end of the series of another year. That means that from Rick's disappearance until the series finale, at least ten-and-a-half years of time have passed. Michonne leaves to search for Rick almost nine years after his initial disappearance, making it clear that despite all the time that has passed, she never gave up hope he survived — but it's a long time to go with no contact, and an even longer time considering the world had largely ended with the rise of the zombie outbreak.

Rick and Michonne met just shy of a year into the zombie outbreak, and it took them almost a year of time in-universe to finally get together. By the time Rick disappears, the couple had only known each other for two years and were dating for half of that time. Despite this, Michonne never let go of her faith in Rick's ability to survive and once the kids reach an age where she felt more comfortable leaving them in the care of their close friends, she made her way to go and find out what happened to Rick. That build-up over the series and the overall potential payoff is one that any fan of the series will be desperate to get answers to, so their spin-off can't come soon enough.

Despite this, Negan and Maggie's Dead City has already released, in Summer 2023, while star-crossed lovers Michonne and Rick won't see their story continued until 2024. It's clear which series is more deserving and what the fans want, but for now, all we can do is wait to see how the story of The Walking Dead finally reaches its conclusion and where the heroes end up.