Warning: The following contains full spoilers for The Walking Dead episode “What We Become”…
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Season 10’s “What We Become” wound up being Walking Dead star Danai Gurira’s final appearance as Michonne on the series, as the character now heads off to become part of the Rick Grimes movie trilogy.
So how did it all play out? What happened after Michonne overpowered Kevin Carroll’s Virgil and fought through the hallucinogenic effects of the drug he dosed her with? This was The Walking Dead’s chance to set Michonne up for her next adventure, while also cluing us in a little bit as to Rick Grimes’ fate after the mystery helicopter stole him away during the first half of Season 9.
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Before we get into that, let’s quickly break down what we know about the group that took Rick in the first place.
What The “Three Rings” or “Three Circles” Symbol Means
Six years back, in The Walking Dead’s timeline, Anne (formerly Jadis) had a deal going with a clandestine, well-armed group that had access to a helicopter. In exchange for supplies, she and her trash goblins would provide the group, which used three interlocking rings (or circles) for its symbol, with live human specimens, which she was told to classify as “A”s or “B”s (we can still only guess at their meaning). After Rick didn’t die in the bridge explosion back in Season 9’s “What Comes After,” Anne saved him by handing him over to the group, which took them both away in a chopper. Unfortunately, no one in Rick’s life knew this happened and everyone assumed he died (though Daryl spent quite a while in the woods looking for a body). Then the show jumped forward six years.
The Three Rings group appeared on Fear the Walking Dead as well, which back in its fifth season was taking place at the same time as The Walking Dead’s Season 9 before six-year time jump. So operatives depicted in FTWD’s “The End of Everything” (which was the first time we saw soldiers from the group) were the same kind that were around when Rick got stolen. Fear’s Althea, played by Maggie Grace, had a run-in – and romantic interlude – with a Three Rings soldier named Isabelle. She learned that the group saw themselves as “the future” and that everything they were doing was to rebuild society – they were not living for themselves now; the big, lofty goal of saving humanity was all that mattered. Isabelle was part of Ground 17, a recon squad that acquired supplies and tech. The “Reclamation Group” were sent in when things went south, and they more than likely just wiped everything out with brute force.
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In the upcoming two-season limited series The Walking Dead: World Beyond, which will now air later this year instead of April, the main characters live inside one of the “circles.” That’s right, the Three Rings represent three massive communities and the young heroes in World Beyond, who’ve grown up behind walls and barely interacted with walkers, live in one of those communities. Their adventure now lines up, time-wise, with where The Walking Dead’s timeline is now, which is about a decade into the zombocalypse. So the Three Rings group is also a bit older than when they took Rick. And actress Julia Ormond is one of the Three Ring leaders.
How Michonne’s Exit Connects to Rick
After her struggles with Virgil, who locked her up and drugged her, we see Michonne rifling through the Navy Research Facility’s supplies. There she’s stunned to find Rick’s boots. How could this be? Where did they come from? After threatening Virgil, he tells her about a ship that had washed up during the “big storm.”
Side Quest: Which “big storm” is he talking about? It could be the giant blizzard from Season 9’s finale, “The Storm,” which would make the shipwreck recent. Or it could be from the hurricane that blasted through Fear the Walking Dead in the back half of Season 4. Of course, that storm was happening in Texas and not Virginia. But… it also happened six years ago. So it’s all about what makes more sense. Was Rick on this doomed ship recently or years ago?
Anyhow, Michonne discovers a ship’s log that tracks the vessel from Virginia to a port in New Jersey. Was the boat headed there when it got jacked up? Or had it already arrived there and then got lost afterward? Either way, Michonne’s best chance of tracking Rick would be to head to that port in New Jersey.
Then there’s the final piece of the puzzle – the phone with the doodles of Rick and…Carl? Judith? It has to be Carl, right? The height makes you think of Judith, but she and Carl basically had the same hair. And Rick wouldn’t/shouldn’t know what Judith looks like now.
But wait. What if it is Judith? What would that mean? Was someone taking pictures of them for Rick? Because the names written out next to them, in Japanese hiragana, seem to be Michonne and Judith, if we’re sounding them out phonetically. That would change A LOT. It would mean this was a recent boat trip and that Rick has been nearby for years. The biggest challenge the Rick movies will face is explaining why Rick never went back home. If he was taken overseas, then it makes sense why he’d be stuck. Hopefully, he hasn’t been kept prisoner this whole time. But if he was nearby, and had a choice, then they’ll have to come up with a huge reason why he didn’t go back.
Anyhow, there are a lot of questions. Whoever did this seemed to trace a cellphone image onto the phone itself. Perhaps in order to preserve it once the battery died. Does the three-rings group have working cellphones? Not in an online sense, of course, but in a “taking pictures” sense. There’s a lot we don’t know here and perhaps too much to speculate about.
In the end, Michonne winds up somewhere else. We don’t know where (might be Jersey) and we don’t know when (a month?), but we see her briefly crawl back into her early Michonne mindset as she de-jaws a couple chained walkers. But when she’s asked for help, from two strangers, she extends a hand. What do they want? Well, they want to catch up to a massive procession of people moving with horses and wagons.
The strangers, one of whom is injured, note that these fools won’t wait for them. Yup, stragglers get left behind. That sure sounds like the three-rings harshness, doesn’t it? Whoever they are, they also have each block surrounded by, presumably, soldiers, in a square, to protect the supplies and civilians in the middle. It’s a very big and organized convoy. One that Michonne hopes to join. We’ll have to see where it takes her next…
Where do you think Michonne is heading, and what do you make of the clues about Rick’s current location? Share your theories in the comments!
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Matt Fowler is a writer for IGN and a member of the Television Critics Association. Follow him on Twitter at @TheMattFowler and Facebook at Facebook.com/MattBFowler.
Source: IGN.com How The Walking Dead Just Set Up Rick Grimes' Standalone Movie