No, That Wasn’t Danai Gurira’s Last Episode of ‘The Walking Dead’

Ever since it was announced that Danai Gurira would be leaving The Walking Dead, fans have searched every scene and exchange for clues as to how Michonne would make her exit. The iconic, undeniable badass star wouldn’t go out quietly, certainly — but given Michonne has been off-screen for weeks, questions have swirled. And there certainly seemed to be an out for her on this week’s midseason finale, “The World Before.” But don’t worry, Michonne will still be chopping zombies with her katana when the show returns in 2020.

Spoilers for The Walking Dead Season 10, Episode 8 “The World Before” past this point.

Naturally, a lot goes down in the episode, including the cliffhanger that Alpha’s (Samantha Morton) horde of hundreds, if not thousands of walkers is located underground — presumably how she’s been sneaking them out to attack Alexandria with wave after wave of the undead. But the strangest storyline involves a new character named Virgil (Kevin Carroll) who ties directly into Michonne’s non-exit.

After saving Luke’s (Dan Fogler) life in a library, the group encounters the mysterious Virgil again at Oceanside. He reveals that he’s just trying to get back to his family — and not only that, lives on a naval base that has a large cache of weapons. Leaving the incredibly capable Judith Grimes (Cailey Fleming) behind at Oceanside, Michonne gets on a boat with Virgil to gather up the weapons, in exchange for safely getting him home. Cue up The Lonely Island singing “I’m On A Boat,” etc.

Side-note, it’s a funny parallel to what happened in the comics, as Michonne was originally out scouting on a boat after a nasty break-up with Ezekiel (Khary Payton), a role that was taken on screen by Carol (Melissa McBride). So despite all that, we still ended up with Pirate Michonne by midseason, which feels pretty good.

In any case, Michonne is hoping they can use Virgil’s weapons to take out Alpha’s horde, but it’s a huge amount of trust to place in a man she met five minutes earlier (almost literally). Particularly as — though Michonne doesn’t know this yet — there are moles placed by Alpha inside of Alexandria, and, one assumes, Hilltop and Oceanside. The only knowledge she’s going off of is Virgil’s word. Does he really have a family? Does he really live on a naval base? Are there really weapons? Getting on a boat alone with a guy like that is a dangerous position even for someone as capable as Michonne, so it would have been reasonable to think The Walking Dead would have left her fate open-ended.

Don’t worry, though, she will be back, and we’ll find out whether Virgil was on the up and up, or a traitor. There’s also really nothing to pull from the comics on this one… He may be a riff on Pete, the character who captained the ship Pirate Michonne was on in the books. But there isn’t a Virgil in the source material.

If anything, Virgil is more likely based on the character from Dante’s Divine Comedy, which is himself based on the Roman poet. Virgil is Dante’s guide through Hell and Purgatory, so chances are that while this isn’t Michonne’s exit point, he is going to take her to some very bad places, and perhaps even lead her back to Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln).

We’ll just have to find out when the show returns, next year.

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