SPOILER ALERT: This article contains spoilers forThe Walking Deadseries finale.
And for a minute there, as the screen faded to black, it appeared it would.
And then a match was lit.
Andrew Lincoln on ‘The Walking Dead’.Curtis Bonds Baker/AMC
The same journal, it turns out.
flashed across the screen.
“And about the living.
Curtis Bonds Baker/AMC
I think about them all every day.
What I learned from them.
How they made me who I am.
Curtis Bonds Baker/AMC
So much more than all of this made me who I am.”
Remain in place with your hands up," and then adding, “C’mon Rick.
It’s like she told you.
Curtis Bonds Baker/AMC
There’s no escape for the living.”
Hold it to your heart.
Rick looked up and… smiled?
Steven Yeun as Glenn Rhee on ‘The Walking Dead’.Gene Page/AMC
We’re the ones who live."
How did this final montage come to be?
Where and when was it filmed?
Curtis Bonds Baker/AMC
Which former cast members returned to lend their voices?
And where exactly is Rick, anyway?
We have answers below!
(And check outGreg Nicotero’s exclusive storyboardsto the scene and answers to theother finale burning questionsas well.)
When and where was the final Rick and Michonne sequence filmed?
“Or ‘We want to shoot in New Jersey.’
And I said, ‘Guys, I really want to use the crew fromThe Walking Dead.
I want to shoot it at our home base.
The internet and other producers ultimately agreed.
Greg, [showrunnerAngela Kang], Andy, Danai, and I we knew pretty much every shot.
This wasn’t tons of footage to go through.
We didn’t have that kind of time.
That was thanks to some prepping that Lincoln and Nicotero did across the country prior to filming.
“Andy came and stayed with me for a week in L.A.,” the director says.
“And we really peeled all the layers back on it.
We just jumped right back into it like [we] hadn’t stopped.
It was pretty great.”
When did producers land on this as their series finale ending?
I know that there are all these universe implications where I don’t have total control.
But I’m putting it out there that this is the ideal version.”
Getting that ideal version took a lot of work.
“Because there were all these moving pieces in the universe, too.
And I thought, ‘Oh, that’s a really great idea.
I would’ve watched that show.’
That was a year-and-a-half ago.
And then the conversation started.”
They didn’t want it to be the very final piece of the show.
So we would be integrating it somehow.
There were certain things that were creatively off the table for them."
“Because it wouldn’t make sense to just have Rick show up and save the day.
And that would take away from some of the other characters.
We went back and forth on it a lot.”
“To finish the story ofThe Walking Dead, we needed Rick and Michonne,” Gimple says.
“And to show Rick and Michonne, we had to show them in circumstances that they’re in.
That they are part of a family that is unbreakable.
And that’s what we started with.”
“And that’s kind of how that all came to pass.”
What is the significance of the “We’re the ones who live” line?
“We’re the ones who live.”
“We’re still alive, Rick,” Michonne said then.
“So much has happened.
So much that we shouldn’t have lived through.
In spite of it, or maybe because of it, we did.
We’re still here.
The two of us.
We’re still standing and we’re going to keep standing.
So what do we do with that?
How do we make that mean something.
We’re the ones who get things done.
We’re the ones who live.”
“We’re here!
it’s possible for you to smile.
We made it… we can make it.
We’re the ones who live.”
“It was always this phrase that was pretty wild,” Gimple tells EW.
And that is what is forged in this hell that we’ve lived through together.
And the triumphant thing is that we forever lived through each other and beyond.
That, to me, seems the message of the whole thing."
Who are the voices repeating back the “We’re the ones who live” line?
I was a little worried about that too.
Josh McDermitt’s hair is blond right now."
Seeing images from the 11-season journey with the newly recorded audio did the trick.
And I suppose there’s something to seeing the past."
What is Michonne wearing?
It includes a badass hood and cage mask combo.
Where did Michonne come across this battle-ready armor?
“There is a story behind it that will be told,” Gimple promises.
“But Rick is in very different circumstances, and it isn’t just geographic.
Where exactly is Rick?
The montage ends with Rick standing across the water from a decrepit looking city.
But what city is it?
We know the helicopter is CRM.
I mean, hell, we can see it on this jacket.
So people could extrapolate beyond that, that the city may be associated with the CRM.”
But there is anotherWorld Beyondpossibility as well.
But before you lay all your money down on aWorld Beyondconnection, wait!
Gimple has more clues!
I think people could connect those dots."
So let’s connect them.
That skyline has been previously identified by online sleuths as… Philadelphia (see video below).
It looks like we may indeed see how much brotherly love Rick Grimes is feeling in the zombie apocalypse.
Finally, why is Rick smiling?
“Rick still has some fight left in him,” Gimple says.
“Rick is not yet broken, Rick is defiant.
And Michonne is defiant.
It’s the strength that’s going to get her through.
So that smile is indicative of the strength that is drawn through 11 seasons ofThe Walking Dead.”
And now, more spin-off seasons to come.
