‘The Walking Dead’: Showrunner Teases Rick and Michonne Spinoff

Andrew Lincoln and Danai Gurira in The Walking Dead
Jackson Lee Davis/AMC

The Walking Dead might be coming to an end later this year, but Rick (Andrew Lincoln) and Michonne Grimes (Danai Gurira) are set to continue their story in a brand new spinoff of the hit AMC post-apocalyptic zombie drama.

As first reported by Comicbook.com, stars Lincoln and Gurira revealed the exciting news at San Diego Comic-Con. The as-yet-untitled series will bring fans “the conclusion of this story of Rick and Michonne,” said Gurira. The spinoff is slated to premiere on AMC+ in 2023 with a six-episode first season; the series will replace the previously announced Rick Grimes movie trilogy.

Now, series creator and showrunner Scott Gimple has teased what fans can expect in the upcoming spinoff. Speaking at The Walking Dead Universe Preview 2020 special live on Sunday’s Talking Dead, Gimple said, “I’ve been working on it very, very deeply with Danai and with Andy, and we continue to work on it pretty much every day together with some Walking Dead vets and some great new voices.”

He continued, “It’s an epic love story, but it’s an epic and insane love story. These are two people that have been separated for a very long time. They’ve lived whole other existences, and they have to find themselves again, let alone each other. It’s hopefully going to be mind-blowing.”

The series is expected to pick up six years after a severely injured Rick disappeared aboard a Civic Republic Military helicopter in a 2018 episode of The Walking Dead. Following Rick’s disappearance, Michonne set about to find her partner and return him home to their children. According to the show’s official synopsis, the story will see “Rick and Michonne thrown into another world, built on a war against the dead… And ultimately, a war against the living.”

“We see this incredible power couple, but we also see that Red Machete Rick,” Gimple added, referring to Rick’s bloody showdown with the Terminus cannibals in the show’s fifth season. “It kind of goes coast to coast that way,” he said, “between the intimate and the epic and the insane.”

Untitled Rick/Michonne Spinoff Series, 2023, AMC+