Netflix Revives The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live – But Can It Escape Its Infamous Ending?

The Walking Dead franchise continues even after the original series has ended. The three new spin-offs have all been well received. The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live, a single-season spin-off, was designed to tell the final stories of Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) and Michonne (Danai Gurira), and it has arguably been the best.

Now that it’s streaming on Netflix, however, fans are being reminded of the fact that the ending of The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live is a far cry from what happened to Rick in the comics. For some, they find this disappointing for a character they have watched go through so much in the apocalypse.

How Does ‘The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live’ End For Rick?

In The Walking Dead, Rick sets out to protect his group and blows up a bridge to prevent walkers from crossing it. In the process, his friends believe he has died. But he managed to survive, albeit barely. After being saved by Jadis (Pollyanna McIntosh), she takes him to the Civic Republic Military (CRM) and ensures he is nursed back to health. She feels she owes him this much. Once better, Rick spends his days working menial jobs, wanting to get home but not being permitted to leave. He is so desperate, in fact, that he intentionally cuts off his own hand in an attempt to escape that is swiftly thwarted. Rick losing his hand is one comic book moment fans had been waiting to see.

Years later, after suspecting that Rick might be alive after all, his romantic partner Michonne sets out on a journey to follow breadcrumbs and find him. She eventually does, and the pair try to set a plan in motion to escape back to their families and friends. But Rick is a changed man. He’s a shell of his former self. It takes some coaxing for Michonne to find the “old Rick.” The pair manage to defeat the soldiers of the military, including Major General Jonathan Beale (Terry O’Quinn), and change things at the CRM for the better. They orchestrate a massive overhaul, which includes residents being allowed to leave and return as they wish. The pair head out on a helicopter to go to The Commonwealth.

Rick has never seen The Commonwealth since he left the series and his friends long before they found that place. As they emerge from the helicopter in a wide open field, Judith (Cailey Fleming) and RJ (Antony Azor), who Rick only recently found out existed, come running towards them. He held out hope, RJ tells his father, that “The Brave Man” he heard so much about would come back, and he did.

How Does the Story End for Rick in the Comics?

In the comics, Rick actually doesn’t survive. He is killed by Pamela Milton’s son, Sebastian. However, he is also a bigger legend in the community than he is on the show, and he lives on through his son Carl.

The timeline jumps forward to when Carl is older, married to Sophia with a daughter they call Andrea, in honor of the character who was with his father romantically. He finds a walker on his front lawn one day, a rarity nowadays. It appears this walker came from Hershel’s carnival sideshow, which he has brought to town.

It’s partly Rick’s reputation that gets Carl out of trouble when he kills this walker, which is forbidden in this new world since they are rare commodities. Rick is so revered that even Lydia still wears his old hat, which is considered to be a worthwhile relic from the old times.

Rick even has books written about him, one of which Carl reads to Andrea for a bedtime story. The book discusses Rick’s life, his suffering, and his efforts to help build a better world in the wake of such an awful tragedy. It’s because of Rick that so many in the group survive, including characters who didn’t survive on the show, like Jesus and, of course, Sophia.

Is the Ending of the Show Really Disappointing?

Whether or not fans feel that the ending of The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live, the best of the TWD spin-offs, is disappointing really depends on perspective. On the one hand, the series allows Rick to live. His legend lived on in the way it did in the comics through his perceived death. The happy surprise is that The Brave Man Judith barely remembers and RJ never met is alive.

Some may feel this cheapened the storyline, but it also allowed for the story to come full circle. It all started with Rick, after all, so it made sense that it would end with him, too. The only real reason that Rick was written out of the show in season nine is because the actor who played him wanted to return to his home country of England and spend more time with his family. Had that not been the case, the trajectory of Rick’s life on the show might have more closely followed the comics.

But it’s OK that it didn’t. For one, fans got to see Rick not only alive but also well. They got to see the happy ending they craved for so long on the show. Finally, Rick was getting some semblance of peace after living for so many years on his own, away from those he loved. Fans were upset when Carl (Chandler Riggs) was killed off in season eight in one of the most shocking deaths on the show. But because of this, there was no way the ending of the series could match the comics. A crucial character was gone, and that meant Rick had to take his place. There was no other way to wrap up the story in a satisfying way.

Thus, while The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live may have diverted from the story in the comics and may have disappointed purists who wanted to see the same story play out, that became impossible the second Carl met his end. Rick, in his place, happy and alive with two more kids, was a positive. Even if it isn’t the positive fans wanted.

Stream The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live on Netflix.