Danai Gurira officially exited The Walking Dead in yesterday’s thirteenth episode of season 10, titled “What We Become.” And, as has become the norm for when a long-running cast member leaves the show, we were gifted a high-concept hour that brought back a bunch of familiar faces from the series’ past. In this case, the episode saw Michonne experience a drug-fuelled hallucination that imagined an alternate version of her life.
The opening minutes set up this concept without explanation, replaying the scene from the season 2 finale where Andrea was cornered by walkers in the woods. In this turn of events, Michonne let her die. This meant that she never joined up with the Alexandrians. Instead, she was later welcomed into the Saviors by Negan, where she rose up the ranks to become his “right-hand gal.”
An alternate take on the survivors’ raid on the satellite station then followed, meaning many long-gone characters featured via repurposed archive footage. Glenn was one of them, shown killing Laura in her sleep. In a major change to the timeline, Michonne murdered him, along with Heath.
The famous line-up scene from the season 6 finale/season 7 opener was then given a twist. In this version, Negan let Michonne do the deed and decide which of the survivors to kill off. Here, we see Maggie, Sasha, Abraham and Carl and, most notably, some CGI trickery is used to have Michonne look Rick in the face. As this fake reality starts to break down, the evil Michonne kills her own double with Lucille.
Finally, the All-Out War storyline plays out differently when the evil Michonne is wounded by Daryl, with Rick ultimately killing her by shooting her in the head.
Except for Siddiq’s dream sequence return, then, all of these comebacks were achieved by re-using old material, but this method still allowed for a thrilling examination of how The Walking Dead could’ve gone very differently if Michonne had switched sides.