How Last Night’s The Walking Dead Set Up The Rick Grimes Movies

Danai Gurira’s final episode of The Walking Dead aired last night and, as we all suspected, it promised that Michonne will return for Andrew Lincoln’s upcoming movie trilogy. The thirteenth installment of season 10, titled “What We Become,” didn’t end with the heroine’s death but instead saw her discover that her former lover and the father of her kids is still alive, and she’s now making it her personal quest to find him.

The whole episode was a trippy experience for Michonne, what with her being drugged and having a hallucination of an alternate timeline of the show, but her mind was well and truly blown when she discovered some very familiar boots in Virgil’s supply room on Bloodworth Island – boots that were once owned by Rick Grimes. Michonne demands to know how Virgil got these, which leads him to take her to a boat which washed-up in a recent storm.

The boat contains a logbook listing various locations that the absent occupant has visited, including Hopewell, Virginia, Tampa Bay, Florida and Bridgers Shipyard in New Jersey. Behind the book, Michonne finds an old cellphone upon which someone has drawn a few clues, presumably for her to find. There’s a drawing of herself and Judith (as she is now, interestingly), some Japanese lettering and, most telling of all, the signature “rick.”

Obviously, Michonne thinks Virgil has got Rick somewhere, but he convinces her that he has no idea what she’s talking about. He does say, though, that maybe their meeting wasn’t an accident. He offers to fix the boat’s engine in the hopes of tracking Rick down. Once they’ve got it working, Michonne contacts Judith and explains what’s going on. The girl encourages her mom to track down “the Brave Man” and says that she’ll be OK.

The question now is: how long will it take Michonne to reunite with Rick Grimes? It’s been nearly seven years since he was whisked away from his loved ones by Anne back in season 9, after all. For now, all we can do is speculate, but the answers will be revealed when the first Walking Dead movie hits theaters, which will probably be sometime in late 2020/2021.