Warning: Spoilers for The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live episode 4
Summary
- Rick and Michonne’s spinoff explores new locations, including a fallen community named Greenwood after a helicopter crash.
- The community of Greenwood was once a thriving place founded by like-minded innovators, but has since fallen into ruin.
- Greenwood’s location somewhere west of Philadelphia hints at an interesting connection to other areas explored in the series.
The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live episode 4 relocates Rick and Michonne to a new area in The Walking Dead universe. Though it would have been easy to assume Rick and Michonne’s Walking Dead spinoff would confine its narrative to the secret headquarters of the Civic Republic Military, the series hasn’t hesitated to take the story outside of Philadelphia. Tracking Michonne’s journey to finding Rick, as well as Throne’s mission near Cascadia Forward Operating Base in The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live episode 3, has allowed the spinoff to explore other areas.
The spinoff showed off a new place in its fourth chapter. As a result of a helicopter crash caused by Michonne’s actions, the pair were stranded in an unfamiliar city. Isolating them from other characters in the series, their predicament gave them an entire episode to interact and figure out where they stand with each other. As for the setting of their story in The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live episode 4, the show offered some interesting hints about the city and what’s been going on there since the start of the zombie apocalypse.
The events of the episode go to show that Rick and Michonne didn’t just wind up in a city left over from the world before the outbreak; this place functioned as a community even after the zombie apocalypse happened all those years ago in The Walking Dead timeline. A letter found by Michonne identified it as a place called Greenwood. The author of the note, a man named Lakshmi Patel, claimed in the letter that he founded Greenwood alongside “like-minded innovators in various fields.” Intending to “live off the grid,” they lived by the motto, “Progress and Redemption Through Innovation.”
As the absence of life in present-day Greenwood proves, their great plans for their city’s future ended in disaster. Patel reflecting on their optimistic motto as a “sick joke” demonstrates the downward spiral Greenwood experienced. Whatever happened, it was gradual, as Patel lamented watching his mission “die.” It’s possible that their resources dwindled until they couldn’t sustain themselves. As for when Greenwood fell apart, it can be assumed that it happened somewhat recently. The robot vacuum cleaner was still operating, indicating that they haven’t been gone for too long.
Where The Ones Who Live Episode 4’s Settlement Is Located In The US
The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live episode 4 doesn’t nail down the exact location of Greenwood on The Walking Dead’s map, but their previous whereabouts confirm that it’s somewhere to the west of Philadelphia. Episode 3 saw them head to Cascadia Forward Operating Base, which was somewhere in the mountains on the United States’ West Coast. They were flying back from there when Michonne pushed Rick out of the helicopter, meaning that they could be anywhere between Cascadia and Philadelphia.
