‘The Walking Dead’ Is Undercutting Its Final Season With All Its Spin-Offs

I don’t really get what AMC is doing here. The Walking Dead has been on the air since 2010, and its pending season 11 finale in 2022 here should feel like a monumental event. Instead, it feels like it’s building toward an inevitable anti-climax because of how AMC has decided to reveal its plans for an expanded Walking Dead universe.

For whatever reason, AMC wants to make it explicitly clear that The Walking Dead is not ending with season 11, rather it’s instead expanding by fracturing into three different spin-off shows starring TWD’s lead characters, joining two other spin-offs that already exist, Fear the Walking Dead and Tales of the Walking Dead.

First Daryl and Carol’s spin-off was announced ages ago, and recent months have revealed both that it takes place in Europe, where they have fast zombies, and Carol is no longer coming with. Then we heard about Isle of the Dead, the Maggie and Negan spin-off in Manhattan, which eventually changed its name to Dead City. Finally, it was recently revealed that Rick Grimes’ movies that were promised when he left the show have morphed into another series starring him and his love interest Michonne.

The problem with announcing all these shows so early is that it really takes the wind out of the sales of the final season of The Walking Dead itself. At the very least, we know that Daryl, Negan and Maggie are all safe for sure, and if Michonne or Rick do make a cameo, that’s not a huge surprise because we know they also have a new show coming up.

This isn’t just an outside fan complaint, as it seems to have bothered showrunner Angela Kang and star Jeffrey Dean Morgan, who didn’t understand the early announcements either.

“I definitely — when we were writing the season and filming it, we did not know that it was going to be announced,” said Kang. “Maybe things would’ve been handled a little differently, but, you know, that’s above my pay grade.”

Morgan was a little more blunt:

“I guess we don’t need to die. Spoiler Alert, folks. Sorry! I’m still not sure why we announced that already. It was sort of a shocker to me.”

AMC seems desperate to make it clear the Walking Dead universe is not ending, but in doing so, they really undercut the weight of their finale by making it clear just who was starring in all these upcoming spin-offs well before the original show ended. Now we have a much, much smaller list of characters who truly seem “at risk,” and it includes none of the biggest stars of the show. The “OG” members are all safe at this point, minus perhaps Carol, but there have even been hints that she’ll survive to send Daryl off at least, even if she’s not co-starring in his series any more. She may even end up with her own, separate show as well.

Tonight marks the first episode of the third batch of season 11 episodes, marking how dragged-out this finale season has been. We already knew it was going to need to be wildly different from the comics, as all the major things that happen in the source material, the conflict with Michonne, the death of Dwight and Rick, and the flash-forward in time with a grown up Carl, all would have to be changed because literally none of those character are even on the show any more. But if you were thinking Daryl might stand in for Rick or something, clearly that’s not happening either.

To me, this feels like a move that AMC made to assure investors that it was not losing its biggest draw of the past decade, announcing a slate of high profile spin-off starring all the big actors from the main series. But it really has made this final season kind of a wash in many ways, with tension zapped out of so many moments because you know precisely who is not allowed to die.

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