Did the CRM designate Michonne as an “A” or a “B”?
[Spoiler alert: This article contains spoilers for The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live episode 2.] “Don’t show them who you are.” That’s what Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) told his wife Michonne (Danai Gurira) moments before the long-lost couple — who have been apart for eight years — were once again separated by the Civic Republic Military. Sunday’s “Gone” episode of The Ones Who Live ended with the reunited Rick and Michonne together but apart on the outskirts of the Civic Republic of Philadelphia, the hidden city where Rick moved through the army’s ranks under the tutelage and protection of his superior officer Okafor (Craig Tate).
At the crash site where Michonne’s companion Nat (Matthew August Jeffers) shot down a CRM helicopter, killing Okafor and nearly killing Rick in the process, Nat was gunned down by a CRM soldier. With another helicopter inbound, Rick covered up Michonne’s role in the attack and told her to hide who she really is from the Civic Republic’s army.
“Strong. A leader,” Rick said. “You hide it.” Rick then confiscated anything that could tell the CRM about Michonne or Alexandria — her journal, her radio, and Rick’s boots and phone — and instructed Michonne to put her hands up so the CRM could see Rick’s gun on her.
Taken to the CRM base on the outskirts of the C.R.P. for designation intake, Michonne lied and told a CRM council that her name is Dana, a survivor from a 40-person community in Georgia where she lived with her boyfriend and her sister. “Dana” was admitted into consignment, which offers consignees a path to citizenship inside the walls of their hidden city after six years.
Is Michonne an “A” or a “B” on The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live?
Michonne is an “A” pretending she’s a “B.” Officially, “Dana” is a “B.” Jadis (Pollyanna McIntosh) originally classified Rick as an “A,” but she traded him to the CRM as a “B” when she had an injured Rick helicoptered away from an exploding bridge on The Walking Dead season 9. Jadis saved Rick’s life, but at a cost: No one escapes the CRM. The army’s code is “security and secrecy above all,” and the CRM eliminates any threat that could expose their existence.
What is “A” and “B” on The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live?
In episode 1, Okafor revealed that the CRM designates people they find as “A’s” or “B’s.” Rick and fellow consignee-turned-soldier Pearl Thorne (Lesley-Ann Brandt) are “A’s,” and would never be allowed into consignment or the military.
“A’s will die for what they believe in. People follow A’s. The people we cross in the world, the few we bring in, they’re classified as B’s. Everyday people who are just trying to survive,” Okafor explained. “B’s get in. A’s are sent away and killed, except you two.”
Okafor lobbied CRM Major General Beale (Terry O’Quinn) on Rick and Thorne’s behalf because he needs strong leaders to change the CRM from the inside. If Michonne is to survive inside the CRM, she’ll need to hide she’s really an “A” or suffer the fate of an “A”: zombie test subject for the CRM’s reanimation research project.
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