With The Ones Who Live heading towards its conclusion, The Walking Dead spinoff has exposed a serious zombie problem in Rick and Michonne’s story.
The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live has a serious zombie problem that the spinoff has seemingly ignored. While Rick and Michonne’s return to the franchise has been full of quality and excitement, it has excelled at the expense of the franchise’s most notorious trait, zombies. The Walking Dead is one of the most popular zombie franchises in modern media, with its depiction of the undead proving to be intense and compelling. While The Ones Who Live introduced fire zombies, they acted as little more than a nice visual as opposed to having a meaningful role in the show.
Walkers have featured in Rick and Michonne’s spinoff, but they have played a far less significant role compared to most other Walking Dead projects. Daryl Dixon expanded on The Walking Dead’s zombie variants, but Rick and Michonne’s spinoff hasn’t done the same, and its fire zombies seem to simply be walkers that caught fire, rather than a new variant. Although The Ones Who Live has still thrived without featuring much zombie action, it does raise a problem with the franchise. The apocalypse was once the heartbeat of the show, but this is no longer the case.
The Ones Who Live Has Proven Walkers Are Barely A Threat Anymore
When The Walking Dead first started, walkers were a huge problem for the survivors, but The Ones Who Live has proven they are barely a threat anymore. With the show over a decade into the apocalypse, it makes sense that the characters would adapt and deal with walkers more effectively, but The Ones Who Live has perhaps overlooked zombies a little too much. Episode 4 features Rick and Michonne killing walkers like it’s a competition, turning a once menacing threat into a game. Even when Michonne gets trapped, Rick is able to hold the approaching zombies off with relative ease.
Zombies appear just as harmless in the show when Rick plans Michonne’s escape attempt. Rick manages to tie up a large group of walkers off-screen, suggesting it was a pretty simple task for the protagonist. Nat’s zombie weapon in The Ones Who Live is perhaps the biggest proof of just how little threat the undead hold, as the missile launcher is capable of blowing up and scattering a large group of walkers. Huge hordes used to be one of the biggest threats in the franchise, but in Rick and Michonne’s spinoff, they are little more than a minor inconvenience.
Shouldn’t There Be More Zombie Variants In The Ones Who Live?
Zombie variants are easily one of the most complicated parts of The Walking Dead, but surely The Ones Who Live should feature more of them. The Walking Dead’s zombie variants have created plot holes in the past and trying to fully understand them is nearly impossible given their history. However, with the franchise’s recent trend, it seems like there should be way more variants in Rick and Michonne’s spinoff. The final season of the main show began reintroducing variants after they accidentally featured in season 1, and Daryl Dixon continued to showcase them prominently, suggesting they were here to stay.
The recent focus on variants made it seem inevitable they would be a part of The Ones Who Live, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. There hasn’t been an in-depth reason for these new types of walkers appearing in America, but their involvement in The Walking Dead season 11 suggested they were becoming important to the franchise’s future and that they’d play a part in The Ones Who Live. This makes the general lack of zombies in the spinoff even more confusing and creates doubt about where The Walking Dead is going with its unique zombie concept.
Rick & Michonne’s Spinoff Is Part Of A Bigger Walking Dead Problem
Although The Ones Who Live has exposed its serious zombie problem, it is part of a larger issue with the franchise. Walkers have become obsolete for a while in The Walking Dead, failing to be overly crucial to its plot. The general idea that zombies exist helps spark some of the storylines, but rarely are they more than an inconvenience or part of an interesting action sequence. Their recent insignificance is likely why season 11 brought in variants, and while Dead City and Daryl Dixon have attempted to expand on this, The Ones Who Live proves there are still issues.
The latest spinoff is arguably the best of the bunch, and its lack of zombies hasn’t harmed it. This may indicate that not relying on walkers is actually good for the franchise, but given they are The Walking Dead’s unique selling point, it is worrying how much better it is without them. There hasn’t been a single significant death caused by a zombie in The Ones Who Live, yet there has still been great drama throughout. It is great that The Walking Dead is thriving again, but a zombie franchise steering away from zombies could create an uncertain future.