Where The Ones Who Live Is Set in The Walking Dead Timeline, Explained

The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live is the latest and arguably most anticipated spin-off in the growing The Walking Dead franchise. It’s also already the highest-rated one to date. The post-apocalyptic series centers around Rick (Andrew Lincoln) and Michonne (Danai Gurira). Rick was rescued by Jadis (Pollyanna McIntosh) and taken to the Civic Republic Military (CRM), while Michonne is convinced he’s still alive and desperately searching for her husband to bring him home.

However, given the many spin-offs to the original series and the time jumps included in the various shows, one confusing aspect of The Ones Who Live is how it ties into the main series in terms of the timeline. When does this all take place?

A Look Back at the Events Leading Up to The Ones Who Live

Rick departs The Walking Dead in Season 9, presumed dead after a bridge explosion. This occurs about three-and-a-half years into the onset of the apocalypse (yes, only three years had gone by for the entire run of the show up to this point). The first event in the series – Rick awakening from a 4-5-week coma to discover that the world as he knew it had ended – occurs in 2010, the same year the show started in real life. This means when Rick exited, airlifted away by Jadis (Pollyanna McIntosh), unbeknownst to his friends and family, it was about 2013.

There’s a time jump by the end of the ninth season of about eight months, judging from the fact that Michonne is very visibly pregnant with RJ, Rick’s biological child. So, it’s potentially 2014 by this time.

The story skips ahead another year and a half when it follows Daryl’s (Norman Reedus) search for Rick, convinced his best friend is still alive. As fans will recall, this is when he meets Leah (Lynn Collins) and Dog. He develops a relationship with Leah for several years, part of a storyline where members of the group spend time apart from one another. Thus, this will likely occur between 2015 and 2017 (give or take).

Before the end of the ninth season, there’s a six-year total time jump, putting us at about 2018 or 2019. This is clear because Judith is now roughly eight or nine years old, and the character is now played by Cailey Fleming while RJ is a young child. In total, then, at this point, it’s about six years since Rick has been gone. Before the Season 9 finale, time jumps again another three or four months, but nothing significant.

By Season 10, there’s another short half-year time jump, possibly bringing us into 2020 or even 2021. From there, all the events through this season take place in the present time, so there’s a bit of a slowdown here. Michonne leaves at the end of Season 10 to try to find Rick. This means she begins her journey close to seven years after Rick disappeared, sometime between 2020 and 2021.

The final season of The Walking Dead continues on the same timeline, but the ending skips ahead a year as we see how things are shaping up at the new Commonwealth after the group has won their fight and taken over. That would make the end of the show about 2022, which is the actual year the show ended.

What Is the Timeline in The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live?

When The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live kicks off in epic fashion for its first episode called “Years,” it is five years after the bridge, so it’s about 2018. Rick has already been under the thumb of the CRM for many years and discloses that it’s not the type of place you can leave. He struggles with his place as a worker for the city and is haunted by dreams of Michonne, Judith, and Carl. (Remember, he doesn’t even know RJ exists).

He is seen trying to escape in what is apparently his fourth attempt. For fans who remember the end scene of The Walking Dead with Rick by the water wearing a CRM jacket, CRM Lieutenant Colonel Donald Okafor (Craig Tate) later recalls that as Rick’s “escape number three.” Rick is starting to feel defeated and losing his fight.

After a casual chat with his friend Esteban (Frankie Quinones), Rick decides that relenting to become a CRM soldier might afford him better opportunities to escape. The episode jumps through time as Rick undergoes training. After the montage where Rick learns everything from martial arts to piloting a helicopter, Okafor notes that Rick has been training for a year alongside new character Pearl (Lesley-Ann Brandt). That means we’re now into 2019, possibly 2020, in this show’s timeline. That coincides with the time Michonne headed out to look for Rick on The Walking Dead.

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Time continues to pass indefinitely, though it’s hinted that at least another year goes by. Right before trying to escape (again), Rick references “all the years of training” and “the talks with Okafor, playing the good soldier,” which means it’s likely 2021, possibly already 2022, at this point. This is right around when the group back home lives it up in The Commonwealth.

Following his big fight with Okafor, the commander reveals that he wants to reconvene in a year in Omaha to set up a new base there, and he wants Rick and Pearl to be project leads. In a later scene, fans learn from a TV news report that the city of Omaha has fallen, suggesting that a year has passed. We’re now at about 2022-2023. In the plane in the final scene, Okafor says to Rick, “It has been a good year,” confirming the timeline is about a year after the big fight.

By the end of the episode, a title card indicates “now,” suggesting the present day, several years after Michonne started looking for Rick, finally bringing the timelines together. This is confirmed in the final moments of the episode. Okafor is shot, and Rick’s plane is barrelling down. As he and others scramble to get out of the wreckage alive, he is almost killed by a masked person with a katana. She pulls his helmet off him, and a stunned Michonne looks on at her husband. The timelines have officially synced, and we’re in the present day, which would be about the same time The Walking Dead ended and 13.5 years since the apocalypse began.

The Ones Who Live Timeline Relative to Other Spin-offs

The latest spin-off, The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon, takes place immediately following the finale of The Walking Dead, so it’s about 2022 or 2023 in this series, given that Daryl goes through various events before arriving in France. The Walking Dead: Dead City, meanwhile, skips ahead a few more years. This is confirmed through Hershel, who is now a teenager (about 16) in that show and was about 10 or 11 at the end of The Walking Dead.

It can be presumed that The Walking Dead: World Beyond takes place concurrently with The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live’s present-day timeline and the latter part of the main series. Beginning long after the apocalypse has already started, the show, one of the least popular spin-offs, centers around teenagers who grew up in this new world. The aforementioned CRM news broadcast about the bombing in Nebraska confirms the timeline sync since that bombing was central to the beginning of the plot on Omaha-set The Walking Dead: World Beyond. Moreover, Jadis’ involvement in the CRM and role as a primary antagonist on that show would suggest that the timelines are also in sync.

Fear the Walking Dead, meanwhile, begins slightly before the events in The Walking Dead and is the first spin-off that shows characters experiencing the outbreak just as it’s beginning (save for episodes of non-linear spin-offs like Tales of the Walking Dead). But it’s only by a month or two. That show continues through to end around the same time as The Walking Dead. The show’s concurrent timeline is apparent throughout, particularly with the departure of Morgan (Lennie James) from The Walking Dead in Season 8. He leaves and travels west to escape the trauma he endured, crossing paths with the characters on Fear the Walking Dead, who are dealing with their own parallel challenges.

The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live will premiere on Sunday, Feb. 25, at 9 pm ET/6 pm PT on AMC, and streaming on AMC+ will also be available at 3 a.m. ET / 12 a.m. PT on Sundays.