(Antony Azor), her child with the supposedly late Rick Grimes and Judith has been building a secret friendship with Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), still imprisoned, now clocking in at roughly eight years inside his jail cell. Within Alexandria, several other changes are afoot: Gabriel and Rosita (Christian Serratos) are now a pair, even as a newly courageous Eugene (Josh McDermitt) still harbors feelings for his old traveling companion Michonne is not only parenting a 10-year-old Judith Grimes (Cailey Fleming), but also an approximately 5-year-old son in R.J. Michonne’s role is the only one specified, as she’s in charge of security, a job she takes very seriously as seen in the way she confronts Magna (Nadia Hilker), leader of the new group of survivors first introduced at the end of Rick’s swan song, “What Comes After.” (In reality, Lincoln will continue the role in a trilogy of original films for AMC.) In his wake, Alexandria still stands, ruled by a council of elected officials including Father Gabriel (Seth Gilliam), Aaron (Ross Marquand), Siddiq (Avi Nash) and Michonne (Danai Gurira). The episode acts almost as a pilot for a new Walking Dead show featuring new and old characters alike - emphasis on “old,” or at least older, based on the six years of in-universe time that have elapsed since Rick Grimes’ presumed death. They’re a long way to recovery, but at least they’re moving forward and putting away childish things.'Walking Dead' Expansion Plans Revealed: Andrew Lincoln to Lead 3 AMC Movies What follows is a knock at the door, a blindingly beautiful smile, and a family reunited. So Rick and Carl reconcile with the tragedy of Judith’s absence (I don’t believe for a second that she’s dead) still looming over them. That scene makes up for at least 75 ounces of roof pudding. Young Chandler Riggs, to his credit, really sells this moment. It’s during that moment, when Carl thinks Rick has turned and he’ll have to kill his own father, that the kid’s childish cries of “I Win” and petulant insistence that he’ll be fine on his own dissolve. Those early wheezes really help sell the misunderstanding towards the end of the episode. Rick spends the first half of the episode wheezing and lurching from his prison massacre wounds. Ultimately, Carl’s increasingly bad decisions and terrible, Harry Potter book five attitude were his juvenile attempt to cope with the very real possibility that his father might die. Carl isn’t far behind and didn’t win himself any points by leaving that house. The now deceased Andrea and Lori proved to be two of the most hated characters in television history. One of The Walking Dead’s weakest tendencies is to focus the plot on characters who make bad decision after bad decision. The other half of the narrative, The Rick and Carl Show, proved much more frustrating. She and her katana make easy work of the entire herd of zombies, including Thing One and Thing Two, and she heads back to try to find Carl and Rick and rejoin her new family in the land of the living. Death may wear the face of loved one (R.I.P., Hershel) or a face just like your own, but the truth is the same - it’s coming for you and you can’t escape it, you can only outrun it for a time. The true horror of a zombie attack is that the living are made to confront a walking, groaning reminder of death. There’s a reason these monsters don’t evaporate into a cloud of dust, Buffy The Vampire Slayer-style, when they’re slain. This is what the show, and the zombie genre as a whole, does best. Despite the pain of these memories, Michonne seems determined to bury herself, comfortably numb, in a new shambling existence, when she happens upon a member of the zombie herd who bears a passing resemblance to herself. It’s later revealed that Mike may have killed himself and the baby in order to escape the daily struggle of the apocalypse and wound up at the end of a leash as Michonne’s original pet zombie.
Michonne’s dream-like flashback, where katanas slide into knife blocks and loved ones turn into zombies, reveals what we already guessed - Michonne had a child and a partner name Mike and she lost them both.