AMC's latest The Walking Dead spin-off, The Ones Who Live, is set to premiere later this month, and last night, the network decided to mark Valentine's Day by sharing a new trailer.
Why release a new look at a gory zombie horror series on the most romantic day of the year? Well, according to star Andrew Lincoln (Rick Grimes), the 6-episode miniseries is going to lean more into its central love story than the usual struggles to survive in an undead world that's generally been the focus of the previous shows.
"We had been trying to find a way and were like ‘What is the story we want to tell?’” Lincoln explains to EW. “And then it was Dania and Scott that really talked me into it. They just said, ‘Look, why don't we just tell a love story? Why don't we see if we can reconnect these two lovers from these weirdly disparate time zones and tell a bigger story about what the grown-ups have been doing while we've been scrambling around in the main series, and shade in a bit of that.’”
“’Okay, let's do it. Let's tell a love story.’ And I suppose that's the story that we keyed into: Can their love survive the time and distance apart?”
Danai Gurira, who also returns as Michonne, agrees, noting that the love story will be the "thrust and drive" of the series.
“There are times where that's not the muscle of The Walking Dead,” adds Gurira. “The Walking Dead's muscle is very different from love stories. They manage to sneak their way into the main thrust, which was usually: We're dealing with an enemy. We're trying to stay alive. We're trying to thrive. We're trying to keep a community going. Those were the large themes of The Walking Dead. Love stories tend to be a teeny bit peripheral. So the idea of making a love story actually the thrust and the drive of a series was a new muscle.”
The first reviews have also landed, and the critical consensus on The Ones Who Live is mostly very positive. Though this score might well fluctuate as more verdicts are added (only eight have been counted so far), the series is currently sitting at 88% on Rotten Tomatoes.
Check out the new trailer below.
The series presents an epic love story of two characters changed by a changed world. Kept apart by distance. By an unstoppable power. By the ghosts of who they were. Rick and Michonne are thrown into another world, built on a war against the dead… And ultimately, a war against the living. Can they find each other and who they were in a place and situation unlike any they’ve ever known before? Are they enemies? Lovers? Without each other, are they even alive — or will they find that they, too, are the Walking Dead?
Scott M. Gimple, Chief Content Officer of The Walking Dead Universe, serves as showrunner and executive producer alongside Lincoln, Gurira, Denise Huth and Brian Bockrath.