‘Dead City’ Is Better Than Recent ‘The Walking Dead’ Seasons, At Least

Dead City, the Walking Dead spin-off starring Lauren Cohan’s Maggie and Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s Negan is arriving this Sunday, and the zombie “universe” AMC has created here starts taking very strange turns in this new era. The main show is over, but not six months after the grand finale, we already have our first spin-off with two of the main characters, in less time than it took to get an actual new season of the show in the past.

Dead City will join Daryl Dixon and Rick and Michonne as two other planned spin-offs, and those will be the only TWD shows once Fear the Walking Dead (mercifully) ends its run after this current season.

I have been somewhat confused as to which of these series are supposed to be one-and-done miniseries and which are not. After watching all six episodes of Dead City, without getting into spoilers, I can safely say that AMC absolutely has a second season planned here. And this isn’t Netflix, so if AMC wants another season, AMC will make another season, no need to fret about renewal and cliffhanger endings.

In the end, I quite liked Dead City, at least more so than the last couple season of The Walking Dead. It definitely feels better with a slimmed-down cast this time around, and obviously Morgan’s Negan has been one of the highlights of the series for years. I am less high on Lauren Cohan’s Maggie, not due to her performance per se, but because The Walking Dead has locked her into years of this saga with Negan, tying her entire identity to the conflict and Glenn’s death, more or less refusing to let her do anything else. As further evidenced by the fact that surprise, they shackled her to Negan for this series.

I’ll just say this now, you do not have to worry about AMC doing anything gross with Negan and Maggie relieving their years-long tension by hooking up, as I know some people were worried about that. That’s not what’s being set up here. Maggie is recruiting Negan to help get Herschel back, all of this taking place after a years-long timeskip from The Walking Dead finale. Maggie has formed a new Hilltop somewhere else. Herschel is a moody teenager. Negan is a wanted criminal escorting around a mute girl for reasons we don’t know. There is nothing even close to a romantic spark between them. That’s not what this is.

It takes a little while but you’ll soon learn why Maggie is going to Negan specifically, and I will say this show did something that The Walking Dead did not do for several years, it surprised me. Later in the series, the story went a way I genuinely did not see coming, and no, I’m not talking about one of The Walking Dead’s signature out-of-nowhere deaths. It’s more complicated than that, but I liked what they did here.

Another highlight is new villain The Croat played by guy-you-will recognize, Zeljko Ivanek. He makes Negan face his past in a way few others could, though I’ll leave the rest to the series to explain.

As much as I think the Negan/Maggie dance is getting old at this point, I did think this was genuinely well done, and definitely worth watching for Walking Dead fans that are missing the old show and only stuck with Fear now. And yeah, it’s going to be more than six episodes, that’s for sure.

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