Warning: Spoilers ahead for The Walking Dead’s series finale.
There’s one major storyline that The Walking Dead’s Rick and Michonne spinoff needs to avoid. Originally billed as a trilogy of films detailing what happened to Rick Grimes after his departure from The Walking Dead during season 9, the project was later announced to have been reworked as a 6-part limited series. As well as starring Andrew Lincoln, returning as the iconic Rick Grimes, the series will also feature Danai Gurira returning as Michonne, and Pollyanna McIntosh as Jadis, aka Anne, who saved Rick’s life in season 9, episode 5, “What Comes After.” While the series is highly anticipated, it needs to be careful not to simply reuse old TWD storylines.
Rick and Michonne’s spinoff will develop the Civic Republic Military (CRM), which has previously had screen time during Fear the Walking Dead and The Walking Dead: World Beyond. Consisting of many organized units of soldiers, the CRM’s goal is to return the world to what it once was, though they have brutal ways of stopping anyone who gets in their way. While the Commonwealth featured in The Walking Dead aren’t as violent in their methods as the CRM, their goal is the same as the CRM. The Rick and Michonne spinoff needs to learn from mistakes made with The Walking Dead’s representation of the Commonwealth and ensure that it doesn’t retread the same ground.
Related: Walking Dead Suggests The Commonwealth Is Inferior To The CRM
Why The CRM And The Commonwealth Shouldn’t Be Too Similar
The CRM in Rick and Michonne’s series could be too similar to The Walking Dead’s Commonwealth, since both are massive communities that share similar visions. Series creator Scott Gimple will need to be careful when designing the spinoff CRM to avoid recycling storylines that audiences have already seen. One of the most prominent of these storylines is based around ideas of class structure, which have constantly been used in The Walking Dead with groups such as the Commonwealth, the Saviors, and many others. The CRM likely has elements of classism, but this shouldn’t be the focus of their storyline throughout Rick and Michonne’s show.
Another issue with the Commonwealth during The Walking Dead season 11 is that viewers simply weren’t shown very much of it, becoming very familiar with one square block in the center of the community, but never seeing the rest of the area. This was rectified a little during the final few episodes of The Walking Dead season 11, but for a community that is supposed to be 50,000 strong, shockingly little of it was actually shown. The CRM is another massive community of survivors, so if it’s to set itself apart from the Commonwealth, viewers should be shown multiple locations within the CRM’s walls, if anything purely to demonstrate their sheer scale and power.
The CRM Should Be Much More Powerful Than The Commonwealth
The idea that the CRM needs to show its true power is important, it should be seen to be much more powerful than the Commonwealth. It seems that all of The Walking Dead’s spinoffs could be featuring the CRM, and since the community has been built up slowly over a few years, there needs to be a big payoff with them being revealed to be stronger than any adversary the main group of survivors has gone up against until now. With Rick Grimes returning, he needs a formidable foe to battle with, especially since this might be the last time that he inhabits the world of The Walking Dead.
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