The Walking Dead season 11 finale ending and spoilers: Who died and who returned?

The Walking Dead aired its finale on Sunday, November 20, 2022, and boy was it an emotional adieu! In its final season, showrunner Angela Kang took viewers on a journey of highs and lows as the heroes battled The Reapers and The Forces of The Commonwealth.

The final episode, titled Rest in Peace, was the 24th one of the 11th season and 177th overall. As was predicted, several characters were killed off and some made surprise returns in the climax of The Walking Dead.

Note: This article contains spoilers for the show.

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The Walking Dead finale: Everyone who made a reappearance and all those who died

Rosita Espinosa

Rosita, played by Christian Serratos, was one of the major characters to have been killed off in Rest in Peace.

In her final scenes, we see her, Eugene Porter (Josh McDermitt), and Father Gabriel Stokes (Seth Gilliam), rescuing her daughter Coco and other children. Although a group of walkers surround their ambulance, the group somehow manages to escape. However, Rosita slips and falls to the undead, and manages to get away with some damage.

Christian Serratos as Rosita in The Walking Dead. (Photo via AMC)

She gets bitten by a walker on her left shoulder and since it can't be amputated, Rosita succumbs to the infection and fever.

Viewers felt that her death seemed incomplete, hastily written, and was a shock, but made them sentimental nonetheless.

While talking to a publication, The Walking Dead director Greg Nicotero shared that it was Serratos who had asked him to kill off Rosita. She had approached him “almost a year ago,” and expressed that she wanted “something big for Rosita.” Nicotero added:

“She had been playing around with the idea of proposing that, 'Does she die?' And she said, 'I want to go out, I want it to be heroic, I want to be saving the children. I want to do something that leaves my character with a legacy.'”

He added that the team “worked really, really hard to make sure that we honored that idea.”

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Luke and Jules

The beloved couple Luke (Dan Fogler) and Jules (Alex Sgambati) were also given a send off on the final episode of The Walking Dead. However, it happened quite quickly into Rest In Peace when Jules and Luke were attacked by a swarm of walkers on the street.

A scene from The Walking Dead. (Photo via AMC)

While Jules was eaten alive by them on the street, Luke was bitten on the leg, which ultimately took his life. His friends bid him a tearful goodbye, promising Luke that they would “keep the music alive.”

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Mega return: Rick Grimes and Michonne

Rick Grimes, the man who held the anchor for The Walking Dead, is coming back! Now hold your horses while we clarify that his return is due to his upcoming spin-off. Grimes will be seen with his partner Michonne (Marvel star Danai Gurira) in the forthcoming The Walking Dead branch.

Notably, Michonne-Grimes’s spin-off, a 2023 release with six episodes, has been described as "an epic love story of two characters changed by a changed world."

In an almost-MCU-esque end scene, the show's final episode showed Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) by the seaside. He looked haggard and wasn’t wearing any shoes. A Civic Republic Military jacket, light-colored T-shirt, and dirty jeans completed his look. It culminated with an approaching helicopter asking him to surrender and him raising his hands.

Danai Gurira's Michonne is set to appear in a spin-off next year. (Photo via Twitter/@littleweirdoss)

So, the final episode had to show Michonne as well. We see a samurai-like suit-clad Michonne riding a horse and aggressively tacking an army of the dead. Sadly, the two lovebirds don’t meet in the entire episode.

Interested viewers can watch the show on AMC or they can stream it on Philo, fuboTV or DirecTV stream.