Future Cool Aunt

For playing the iconic roles of Rick Grimes and Michonne Grimes to perfection all these years. For giving my beautiful and beloved fav characters a profound amount of depth, chemistry, humanity, presence, and heart. ♥️

For coming back to us after years away to give Richonne a fitting and beautiful conclusion. For putting your all into crafting these six eps of TOWL both on screen and behind the scenes. For letting Rick and Michonne’s love be the undeniable thrust of every single scene (+ kisses in every ep, amen 😋). For infusing passion into every part of your performance from your intro in TWD, to the moment Richonne laid eyes on each other at the prison fence, to embracing their babies at the end of TOWL. 🥹

For genuinely understanding and valuing Richonne’s soulmatism and all the details that makes their love a love supreme. For EPISODE 4. For a wedding ring. For landing their love story with a gorgeous Grimes family reunion. 👏🏽

For giving Rick and Michonne the happy ending they so deserve together after everything they’ve been through. For inspiringly depicting the power of resilience, of grown healthy romance between equals who make the other feel safe, seen, and alive, and most importantly depicting the way love prevails. 👑

For being the ultimate captains that love and care for Richonne like we do. For fully capturing our hearts. For slaying in all ways - lines, looks, walkers, and more. For prompting me to make a blog and write thousands of words studying and celebrating Richonne’s captivating journey and engaging with so many great Richonne fans whose insights are so lovely and thoughtful. 🫶🏽

For taking Richonne’s love story to new heights and allowing it to reach its fullest potential. For giving us this abundant gift we’ll always treasure. Thank you to Danai & Andy for everything. Thank you for you. 💐

Andrew Lincoln, Danai Gurira, Scott Gimple, and everyone who helped craft this love story really did it. 🥲 They delivered. Andy & Danai gave us everything and more on this incredible journey. They are legendary talents and deserve so many flowers and appreciation. ‘Thank you’ is the biggest thing on my heart after witnessing this love story from the beginning to now, with their heartwarming happy ending.

Richonne started strong and finished strong. I’m forever grateful. I’ll miss them so much. I’ll love them always. 😌🤍

I could have never imagined how privileged I would be to have Richonne as my favorite ship. I could have never imagined getting everything I have ever wanted for this ship, especially in a series that was purely dedicated to said ship. Like do you know how lucky we are to have this happen for us when most people who ship characters in other shows don't even get their happy ending? AND to have the actors who portray said ship love the characters' relationship as much as the fans do? It's almost unimaginable. But we got it, and I couldn't be more thankful. I got my happy ending, and that's literally all I care about.

I have not taken a single L ever since 2015 when I first thought to myself while watching the show for the first time, "Hey these two characters work really well together. They have something special. I really hope they become a couple some day." I thought I was privileged enough to have my ship go canon, but what's extraordinary about all this is that it also went above and beyond everything I could have ever hoped for.

Michonne has cowrie shells in her locs again — a symbol of fertility and protection. Usually to ensure the wearer can conceive and has a safe delivery. Remember the last time she wore them?

Knowing what we know now, makes this little scene all the more special. The way his finger latched onto hers, like he didn't want to break that brief contact. How he went out there intent on finding her that toothpaste. How he was going to give her the entire crate. How he let her borrow all of his until it was gone.

Knowing what we know now makes this scene all the more endearing. How he waited on the couch for her to come to him and talk. How he asked to hear about her day. How he looked confused and kind of annoyed when she said she found a guy, too.

Knowing what we know now makes this moment all the more exhilarating. The utter joy on Rick's face. The way he needed to breathe Michonne in, but pull back to look at her.

Rick was in love with Michonne the whole time and didn't know what to do about it? He was in love with her the whole time. It makes me think about all of the other times. We could see there was attraction there, but love?

Because this looks like love to me:

So does this

and this

I love how all of those moments led us to this

and this

and this

not only did we get the rj reveal and them talking about their SON, but we also got them talking about michonne's branding and how she had to kill her friend, how she almost died getting to him, michonne carressing rick's amputation, rick crying while their making love, michonne's processing guilt over leaving her kids, bickering while killing walkers then killing walkers as a team while kissing intermittently, michonne being like "i dont give a fuck if this building comes down around us, sit yo ass down!", rick crying about how the crm took carl away from him, rick saying he wouldnt survive without her, they started in the apartment fighting and returned to it to make up, then riding off into the sunset with rick taking off his uniform!!!!

in all the episodes, truly, but especially this one

in the mothership, michonne was incredibly strictly the “badass” character. she was always on go, ready to do the next thing, very rarely did she have vulnerability and softness to her character

this is so so SO common for black women in tv, especially darkskin black women. in this episode, we truly get to breakdown all the shit she went through, especially during her pregnancy, and see her be sad and hurt and all these “soft” emotions about it.

in the main show, it was instantly shown as “oh this thing made michonne into a hardass and she was super strict and mean,” but we never got to her feel any other way about it, or literally any trauma of hers in the show.

in this episode she gets to be open about those events, as well as verbally express the hurt she’s experiencing from rick by him pushing her away like it’s nothing. that is, hands down, my favorite part of this episode.