Fan Fest News

News for Fans, By Fans!

‘The Walking Dead’ Reveals Rick and Michonne’s Baby

Spoiler Warning: This post contains spoilers from episode 9×06 of The Walking Dead titled “Who Are You Now?”

When one door closes, another opens!

The Walking Dead fans were treated to a 6 year time jump this Sunday, after last weekend’s epic sendoff for Rick Grimes. The group was left believing that he blew himself up to save the greater good, but in reality he was whisked away by Jadis and mysterious helicopter group looking for As and Bs.

Now, we are thrust 6 years after that, and Michonne is raising a strong and good Judith. We do see several scenes with Judith, as she is the one who brings in a brand new group despite Michonne’s cautions. One of the scenes includes Michonne talking to herself, although it seems she is talking to Rick.

'The Walking Dead' Reveals Rick and Michonne's Baby
AMC

In another scene, we see Michonne scoop up a young boy. She acts as though he’s her son, and calls him RJ. We only see him for a few fleeting moments, but he seems so real. Initially fans may have thought Michonne was imagining the child as well, but Angela Kang has confirmed to EW that it’s actually their child.

Yes, that is. That is Rick junior, R.J., who’s scampering around. Yeah, his name is R.J.

She goes on to say that they wanted to wait until after we see a grown up Judith before we met R.J. She references the scene early on in the season as well, where they hint at continuing the family.

We thought that was a fun thing, because we had this big reveal of Judith, so we felt like: Let’s give Judith her moment in the sun. But we started setting up really at the beginning of the season that this was something that Michonne and Rick [were interested in]. In episode 3, they go, “Well, let’s maybe start planning for the future in other ways.” That was part of their hopefulness, that they believed that they could build a world where children could thrive. The kind of tragedy of it is that Rick was not around to see this happen. But for Michonne, it’s just another person that she is fighting for, and that she wants to keep safe, but it’s part of what plays into some of the philosophy and decisions behind how Alexandria is run, which is a big part of the story going forward for the season.

Were you surprised to see R.J. make his first appearance?