‘The Walking Dead’ Finale Says It’s Not Setting Up Spin-Offs, Which Makes No Sense

Given that we now have three different post-Walking Dead main series spin-offs happening on AMC, it seems like the end of the original show doesn’t…really mean all that much. It also would indicate that to create situations like “Daryl goes to Europe” and “Negan and Maggie go to Manhattan,” the finale would have to do a lot of that heaving lifting.

Not so, says Scott Gimple:

“The finale is about completing The Walking Dead story, not setting up spinoffs. There’s room for those spinoffs, but full-on, The Walking Dead finale concludes the story of this 11 years. We didn’t want the spinoffs to get in the way of that satisfaction. They live together, I think, very nicely.”

See, I don’t really understand how this makes sense, not just because of the spin-offs, but because of the cast.

The ending of the comics was pretty conclusive (spoilers follow). The second to last issue, Rick Grimes is killed by Pamela Milton’s idiot son (a decision I still think was bad on Kirkman’s part) and the final is a years-later flash-forward with an adult Carl Grimes existing in a somewhat reformed Commonwealth.

But here, none of that can happen. If anyone is the Rick Grimes stand-in right now, it’s Daryl, and we know he’s not dying, he’s going to Europe. Carl is dead, and given the three spin-offs, I doubt we are going to see Judith Grimes sub in for him and the show do a comic-like flash-forward that many years. There are also some hints that Rick Grimes himself may show up for the finale, though it’s likely not going to be him strolling into the Commonwealth it would…probably be somewhere else, as a teaser for his own new spin-off.

All in all, I just don’t really understand how you can have a meaningful finale when you have taken five of the main leads of the show and given them three new spin-offs in all corners of the world. This will be a seemingly permanent goodbye for more minor characters who were not granted spin-offs, but even then, we have no idea who may end up showing up somewhere else, or in the Tales of the Walking Dead anthology series, for instance.

If AMC wants to make five Walking Dead shows going forward, that’s fine, but pretending like the existence of those shows does not lessen the impact of the main show’s finale doesn’t really add up to me.

So, how is Daryl gonna find a commercial jet to get to Europe, then?

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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.