Blair and Gina's story in Tales of the Walking Dead episode 2 throws the spinoff's canon status into doubt. AMC is currently figuring out how many bloody chunks The Walking Dead can be chopped into. With the main series' ending now imminent, at least three spinoffs are already confirmed, with the pungent possibility of more lingering in the air. Online one-shots aside, The Walking Dead has already splintered into Fear The Walking Dead and Walking Dead: World Beyond, and Tales of the Walking Dead represents the fourth major entry in AMC's ever-growing horde.
Shaking up the usual format, Tales of the Walking Dead is an anthology series not anchored to any specific time, location or character. Episode 1 ("Evie/Joe") focused on an Ohio "prepper" over a year into the apocalypse, whereas episode 2 ("Blair/Gina") begins in an Atlanta insurance office right when the infection starts going viral. Nevertheless, viewers would've strolled into Tales of the Walking Dead assuming the spinoff was canon to all that came before - that these isolated stories were happening while our heroes from The Walking Dead, Fear The Walking Dead and Walking Dead: World Beyond were doing their thing elsewhere.
Episode 2 suggests not. "Blair/Gina" throws itself fully into sci-fi territory by employing a time loop concept. Circle of Trust secretary Gina (Jillian Bell) and her narcissistic boss Blair (Parker Posey) keep replaying the same hour over and over, changing their actions each time in hopes of surviving until 5pm. The timey-wimey element is so far outside The Walking Dead's typical boundaries, one must question whether Tales of the Walking Dead still occupies the same continuity as Andrew Lincoln's Rick Grimes, or whether it's a "What If...?" style series that takes Robert Kirkman's apocalypse as a setting, but leaves his rule book behind.
Is Tales Of The Walking Dead Canon?
Tales of the Walking Dead episode 2 gives itself a canon "get out of jail free" card. In the opening sequence, Gina is researching the folie à deux psychological phenomenon where two people share the same delusory vision. Fast-forward to their final scene, and Gina suggests everything she and Blair experienced since first encountering each other at the gas station has been a hallucination. Her theory posits that after developing a symbiotic bond as co-workers, the trauma of the zombie outbreak triggered full-on folie à deux symptoms, which means Blair and Gina are, essentially, dreaming. This allows Tales of the Walking Dead episode 2 to remain (just about) within franchise canon, similar to the main series episode where Michonne imagined an alternate life under Negan's Saviors.
If Gina's amateur diagnosis is false, however, Tales of the Walking Dead episode 2 must be taking an immediate left turn at the canon intersection, and cannot be considered part of Rick Grimes' world. "Blair/Gina" then becomes a one-off exploration about what might happen if The Walking Dead's flux capacitor was on the blink. And if Tales of the Walking Dead episode 2 isn't standing under AMC's canon umbrella, other episodes may follow suit. Evie & Joe's motorcycle journey in episode 1 does absolutely nothing to contradict Walking Dead continuity, but also contains absolutely nothing to reference the preexisting universe. And although Samantha Morton is scheduled to reprise her role as Alpha in Tales of the Walking Dead episode 3, maybe her backstory won't be the same as what viewers already witnessed in the main series.
Tales of the Walking Dead continues Sunday on AMC.