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Critic Reviews
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The latest spin-off’s success will depend entirely on how truly invested the fandom is in Rick and Michonne’s relationship. Nothing new is being offered, in fact the new iteration seems to have gone to some trouble to keep the kind of overarching storylines and not quite credible threats to the couple’s existence and happiness that weighed down earlier attempts.
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"The Ones Who Live" is just good enough to keep its universe fresh ... for now.
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The story takes a while to wind up, and by the time it does, we’re already more than halfway through the show. It’s hard to imagine how this series will wrap up in a way that feels as epic as its action-packed opening. That said, by Episode Four, we’re really cooking again, as stars and executive producers Andrew Lincoln and Danai Gurira rediscover the fire that made their characters—and the “Richonne” ship—so compelling.
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The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live is basically a love story wrapped in the usual TWD post-apocalyptic shell. But what we hope is that the love story breaks through that shell and shows us something we haven’t seen from the franchise before.
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Originally announced as movies that would feature Andrew Lincoln and Danai Gurira, “The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live” became a series instead, and as conceived and constructed, the least impressive of the zombie drama’s recent spinoffs. While Lincoln’s involvement as the original star looks like a coup, that’s poor compensation for questionable decisions regarding how to showcase him.
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For fans who are still deeply invested in Rick and Michonne’s story, the series is likely to deliver the closure they’ve been craving, but this describes a fraction of an audience that is already itself a fraction of the fan base this show had at its peak. After the successful storytelling and well-established worlds of “Dead City” and “Daryl Dixon”, it feels even less necessary.
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Whenever The Ones Who Live seems to be finally getting to the heart of this new chapter of an expansive story, the world comes rushing back in. There could be something poetic about this if handled more deftly, but the show chooses to make explosive sacrifices to spectacle without any indication of what will play out.
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TOWL doesn’t add anything inventive to the TWD lineup and it’s weak at reinventing the wheel.
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“The Ones Who Live” suffers from its position in the bloated universe these characters find themselves in, and despite the beautiful work from its two main actors, it never quite reaches its full potential. The stakes don’t truly feel high enough.