See Rick And Michonne Reunite In The Most-Anticipated Walking Dead Spinoff

Pre-production has begun on Andrew Lincoln and Danai Gurira's Walking Dead spin-off.

By Chris Snellgrove | Updated

andrew lincoln walking dead

With the announcement of a Rick and Michonne spinoff starring Andrew Lincoln and Danai Gurira, it seemed like The Walking Dead may, like its zombie hordes, never truly die. Fans didn’t know what to expect from Rick and Michonne after briefly glimpsing both of them in the finale of The Walking Dead. Now, pre-production has begun on the as-yet-unnamed show, and Gurira released some downright cute photos of her and her costar on Instagram.

The post consists of three slides, and the first shows Andrew Lincoln making a funny face beside The Walking Dead Chief of Content Officer Scott Gimple, all while Danai Gurira takes a selfie-style photo. In the caption, Gurira uses a clever hashtag for the spinoff, #Richonne, and confirms that “pre-production is in full swing.” For fans wanting to know what these characters have been up to since we last saw them in The Walking Dead, it’s good to know the cast and crew are hard at work developing new adventures for two of our absolute favorite zombie slayers.

The other two slides in her post contain variations on the theme of “stars taking funny selfies.” While Gimple wasn’t in the second two photos, Andrew Lincoln and Danai Gurira were happy to mug for the camera, acting far sillier than their counterparts in The Walking Dead. But while it’s fun to see these stars having a good time, what fans are really hungry for (so to speak) is learning the fate of their characters in the post-apocalyptic zombie landscape.

Andrew Lincoln’s Rick Grimes abruptly left The Walking Dead back in season nine when his character was loaded into a mysterious helicopter belonging to the Civil Republic Military. The series finale confirmed that Rick is still alive but is being held in a CRM facility from which he apparently keeps trying (and failing) to escape. He successfully hides a letter that he was writing to Michonne, and in the finale, we can see that she has received the letter and is now off on a quest to save Rick. 

All of this was clearly a place setting for Andrew Lincoln and Danai Gurira to return in a spinoff of The Walking Dead. Based on the finale, many fans speculated that the initial narrative would be split between the characters, showcasing Rick’s attempts to learn more about the CRM and Michonne’s attempts to find and free Rick. This would mean the two stars wouldn’t be onscreen together very much, but the photos on Instagram seem to tell a different story.

In all three of the slides, Andrew Lincoln and Danai Gurira are together and smiling, clearly happy to continue the story of their characters from The Walking Dead. If much of the spinoff was going to focus on their separate stories, they’d be likelier to be filming at separate times and locations. Considering their smiling selfies, we like to think this is an indication that the two will link back up sooner rather than later and potentially take the CRM down for good.