Entertainment- Warning: There are spoilers ahead for "TWD" season 11 premiere.
- The end of the premiere show's Yumiko find a note from her brother at the Commonwealth.
- Showrunner Angela Kang tells us how they decided to give this comic arc to Yumiko from Michonne.
"The Walking Dead" is adapting a big story line from the last leg of Robert Kirkman's comic, but with a twist.
On Sunday's premiere, as some of our survivors are trying to ditch the mysterious Commonwealth group, Yumiko (Eleanor Matsuura) discovers she may have a reason to stay.
At the end of the episode, Yumiko, Princess (Paola Lázaro), Ezekiel (Khary Payton), and Eugene (Josh McDermitt) come across a wall of photos dedicated to missing persons in the zombie apocalypse.
As the group are about to ditch the Commonwealth for good and head home, Princess spots a photo of Yumiko on the wall. When Yumiko walks over to inspect it, she discovers a photo of herself with a message from a person named Tomi, her brother.
The message reads: "Have you seen my sister Miko contact Tomi."
Yumiko tells the group she can't leave.
Comic fans will recognize this moment is a variation of Michonne's story line from the comics at this point
When she's first brought to the Commonwealth with Eugene and a slightly different group of people, Michonne spots a photo of herself on a similar board.
The words, "If you have information please contact Elodie at the bakery" are visible on a poster.
She's later reunited with her grown-up daughter in one of the comic's most emotional moments and goes on to become a judge at the Commonwealth because of her pre-apocalypse life as a lawyer.
Showrunner Angela Kang previously told Insider they were "planning to do some version" of the Michonne/Elodie story line.
Now, it appears to be with Yumiko and her sibling.
How the show decided to give Yumiko this story line: The seed was planted back on season 10
"In terms of replacing Michonne with Yumiko, we knew for a while that Danai [Gurira] was going to - might - exit, but, we didn't know exactly when that might be," Kang told Insider earlier this month via phone while discussing the premiere.
"So we started just laying in like jobs for various people," Kang added. "We didn't know who was going to take on that role."
We learned Yumiko was a criminal defense lawyer on season 10 after it was announced Gurira would depart the show.
"We had already, separately from anything, established that Yumiko was a lawyer and so that was just useful to kind of play off that class difference," Kang said in why Yumiko was chosen to take on this comic story.
"It felt like she was a character that it would make sense that she could kind of be in that upper echelon of that system," Kang continued.
Kang said that was much of what went into the thought process adding, "most of our characters, before the apocalypse, they're very blue collar folks, for the most part."
They wouldn't have fit the bill to be someone in "an elevated position." Since Yumiko was already written as a lawyer, it was easier to substitute her in for Michonne's story arc at this point in the comic series.
Kang says they may have considered Connie for this role at one point
"We talked about various people," Kang said of who they considered to take over Michonne's story arc at this point on the show.
"I think we may have even talked about it being Connie [Lauren Ridloff] once upon a time but then there were, you know, she got pulled into doing some stuff for the Marvel Universe, herself," Kang said. "There's so many things that go into remapping characters if somebody has left or died and there's a comic book story that continues."
Ridloff's upcoming role in Marvel's "Eternals" movie impacted how much we saw Connie on season 10. As a result, Ridloff's character was trapped in a cave-in during the season 10 mid-season premiere and wasn't seen alive until the show's finale aired months later.
Due to her filming schedule, Kang previously told Insider that they filmed her finale scene far in advance.
They also considered having Ridloff back on the season 10 bonus episodes, but, again, scheduling prevented that from happening. At the time, Kang told us they were planning a big episode for Connie on season 11.
The reveal didn't deliver the same emotional punch that it did in the comics
The Yumiko reveal, though cool, isn't as emotionally satisfying as the comics.
In the comics, Michonne is very clear on the fact for years that her daughter, Elodie, died. So, years later, when she learns that Elodie is actually alive and looking for her mother, it's a jaw-dropping reveal.
Comic readers waited years for the build up to that unexpected moment for one of its main characters.
With Yumiko, the reveal about a missing sibling doesn't hold the same weight. That's largely because the show has never spent a lot of time developing Yumiko's character or even letting us know about any potential family she may have had out there.
For show-only viewers, it almost seems a bit random that Yumiko was selected. Almost any character could have been given this arc if it wasn't established that Yumiko was a former lawyer.
At this point, as Kang pointed out to us recently, many of the characters who are still alive in the comics at this point no longer are on the show for various reasons (whether they were killed off the show or left the series).
We previously noted that Connie would have been a great alternative for this story line. Since she was lost for an entire season, she could have wound up at the Commonwealth and could have been reunited with her sister, Kelly (Angel Theory), and others there.
Though it wouldn't have been as emotional of a reveal as the Michonne/Elodie story line, it would have created an opportunity for a satisfying reunion between two beloved sisters on the show who are trying to get back to one another.
But, at this point, it sounds like Kang and the writers are making due with the characters they have left in the sandbox and are making the most of working around some of the rather complicated schedules of some of its stars.
You can follow along with our "TWD" coverage here and read our review of the first two episodes here.