The Walking Dead star Danai Gurira has teased the "epic love story" between her character, Michonne, and Andrew Lincoln's Rick Grimes in their upcoming spinoff show, with six episodes set to air in early 2024. The spinoff will finally show the pair's long-awaited reunion after Rick Grimes left the original show in season 9, and Michonne left to search for Rick in season 10. The Walking Dead ended after 11 seasons in 2022, spanning 177 episodes across 12 years, but its story is far from over. Three spinoff shows have already been confirmed which will follow some of the main characters of the original show. The first-ever spinoff, Fear the Walking Dead, was recently announced to be ending after eight seasons.

Gurira recently appeared on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert to discuss her role in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, including the possibility of an Okoye-led spinoff.

The topic of her upcoming The Walking Dead spinoff also arose, and though she remained tight-lipped on specific details, she noted the romantic focus of the reunion between Rick and Michonne, and the resolution of many unresolved plot points from the original show. Read on for her full response:

We’re in pre-production right now. We are well underway, it’s been a really interesting journey. What to expect? Now I go back to being gentle in the sense that it is going to be what we’ve called an ‘epic love story.’ These two characters were separated as we know, or don’t, but they were separated. So we’re bringing them back together but we don’t know how. We’ve lost Rick Grimes, we don’t know where he’s been, what’s happened to him. [Michonne] never doubted that he might still be alive, so we’ll see. A lot of pieces of the puzzle are gonna be figured out.

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Everything We Know About The Rick & Michonne Spinoff Show

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Plot specifics have been kept airtight, but the final episode of The Walking Dead confirms that Rick is in Philadelphia, seemingly on the run from the mysterious Civic Republic Military, the same organization that picked him up by helicopter, along with Jadis, in his departure from the show in season 9, episode 5, "What Comes After." Another of the show's spinoffs, The Walking Dead: World Beyond, explores the CRM in more detail, revealing it to be a massive military power with a huge amount of influence and technology. There's a strong possibility that this could be the major antagonistic force of the upcoming Rick and Michonne spinoff.

Michonne also appears in The Walking Dead's finale, donning some makeshift armor at an unknown location, but still on her search for Rick. She has seemingly lost the two companions she acquired in her own departure episode, season 10, episode 13, "What We Become," where they were suspected to also have encountered the CRM. It's currently unknown whether the three upcoming spinoffs will be linked in any way, but the CRM seems to be The Walking Dead's ultimate adversary, and Michonne may well be tasked with rescuing Rick from captivity. The ultimate goal will surely be for the couple to return to Judith and RJ, reuniting the family once and for all.

One of the things that distinguishes the spinoffs from their predecessor is that there is no comic material from which the shows could be adapted. This means that unlike The Walking Dead, the spinoffs can't be predicted according to existing comic storylines. A recent press release unveiled the synopsis for Rick and Michonne's journey, presenting it as a journey of not just finding each other, but also themselves. They are to face "an unstoppable power," which could very well be the aforementioned CRM, and repeats Gurira's sentiment that this will be an "epic love story." There is also a hint that conflict could arise between Rick and Michonne. As with the other spinoffs, the couple will be afforded far more screen-time and depth than the ensemble parent series, promising an epic journey of love and discovery.

Next: Everything We Know About Rick & Michonne After The Walking Dead's Finale

Source: The Late Show With Stephen Colbert/YouTube