The Walking Dead is coming to an end with season 11, but the wider Walking Dead universe just keeps getting bigger. With the announcement of the original AMC zombie series getting ready to wind down comes news of two new spinoff series - an anthology show, and a series focused on the further adventures of Carol and Daryl - that are joining The Walking Dead: World Beyond and the upcoming trilogy of Rick Grimes movies on the release slate.
Following its debut in 2010, The Walking Dead became one of the defining TV shows of the past decade. Based on the comics by Robert Kirkman, The Walking Dead marked the first time that many audiences had seen the zombie genre taken out of the short storytelling form of movies and expanded into a long-running survival story. Frequent and shocking deaths of major characters, along with the constant search for a safe place to settle down, made The Walking Dead a tense and gripping weekly watch.
The Walking Dead hit its peak in popularity with the season 5 premiere, which was watched by 17.3 million people. Since season 7, however, the ratings have been in rapid decline, with the season 10 premiere hitting a series low. Though it's still a monster hit for AMC, the flagship series is now winding down - so here's what the future holds for The Walking Dead universe.
The Walking Dead Season 11
Despite the news of The Walking Dead's end, it's bit early to start saying goodbye. The Walking Dead season 11 will be a mega-sized 24 episodes long, and there are still seven more episodes of season 10 left to air. That means that 31 more episodes of The Walking Dead will air over the next two years, with the show coming to an end in 2022. In a statement, The Walking Dead franchise's chief content officer Scott M. Gimple said:
"We have a lot of thrilling story left to tell on TWD, and then, this end will be a beginning of more Walking Dead - brand new stories and characters, familiar faces and places, new voices, and new mythologies. This will be a grand finale that will lead to new premieres."
This suggests that not only will The Walking Dead season 11 have plenty of time to wrap up its main story and various subplots, but that the final season of the show could also feature backdoor pilots (or at the very least, teases and story set-up) for the upcoming spinoffs. Fans should at least be relieved to know that The Walking Dead writers will be able to plan out a proper ending for the show, rather than it simply being cancelled at short notice. The Walking Dead will continue with the delayed season 10 finale "A Certain Doom" airing on October 4, 2020, followed by six further season 10 episodes in 2021.
Fear The Walking Dead
There's no sign of stopping for Fear the Walking Dead, which returns for season 6 on October 11, 2020. Premiering on AMC in 2015, the spinoff series went back to the start of the zombie outbreak and was initially in Los Angeles, California. Characters from The Walking Dead, such as Morgan and Dwight, have since crossed over to the cast of Fear the Walking Dead, and season 6 will add Dwight's wife, Sherry, to that list. Due to a major time skip in the main series, Fear the Walking Dead is currently seven years behind The Walking Dead season 10, and is currently exploring the setting of Texas. With Fear being AMC's second-biggest hit behind The Walking Dead, expect this spinoff series to keep going for at least a few more seasons - though filming on season 6 is currently incomplete due to the coronavirus pandemic shutting down production.
The Walking Dead: World Beyond
The Walking Dead: World Beyond was first announced (without a title) at San Diego Comic-Con 2018. Matthew Negrete, a long-serving writer on The Walking Dead, will be the showrunner for this spinoff, which focuses on a group of teens who have spent their formative years growing up in the post-apocalyptic zombie world. Unlike the Grimes kids, however, these young people have been mostly sheltered from the worst dangers of the world - something that will change when they "receive a message that inspires them to leave the safety of the only home they have ever known and embark on a cross-country journey to save their father - and possibly the world." The Walking Dead: World Beyond will premiere October 4, 2020 on AMC.
The Walking Dead's Carol & Daryl Spinoff
Two characters are guaranteed to make it out of The Walking Dead season 11 alive: Carol Peletier and Daryl Dixon, whose spinoff series was announced alongside the news of the main series ending. Daryl and Carol first began developing an unlikely bond in The Walking Dead season 2, when Daryl persisted in the search for Carol's lost daughter, Sophia, long after the others had given up on finding her. Since then Carol has evolved greatly as a character, becoming one of the toughest survivors and strongest fighters in the series, despite (or perhaps because of) having suffered a great number of tragic and terrible losses. The Carol and Daryl spinoff will premiere in 2023 with current Walking Dead showrunner Angela Kang taking the creative lead.
Tales of the Walking Dead
The second show announced alongside the end of The Walking Dead is Tales of the Walking Dead, an "an episodic anthology with individual episodes or arcs of episodes focused on new or existing characters, backstories or other stand-alone experiences." Nothing else is currently known about Tales of the Walking Dead, which is still in the early stages of development between AMC and Gimple. It certainly sounds like an interesting prospect, though, since an anthology series has the opportunity to bounce around the United States or even around the world, showing the wider state of the post-zombie apocalypse. There's also no reason for Tales of the Walking Dead to be tied to any particular place in the timeline: story arcs could be set right at the start of the outbreak, or even decades after it. In addition to the anthology series, there are a number of other projects being developed that are set within The Walking Dead universe, so expect more announcements in future.
Rick Grimes' Walking Dead Movies
Rick Grimes actor Andrew Wilson left The Walking Dead in season 9, since his commitment to the show was forcing him to spend months out of every year away from his UK-based family. The other characters in the show were led to believe that he'd been killed, but in Rick's final scene he was shown being transported away by a mysterious helicopter. Immediately after his departure it was announced that Rick would return in a trilogy of movies produced by AMC Original Films, which are promised to have a much bigger, motion-picture scope and feel compared to the TV show, with feature film-level budgets. There's been little news regarding the Rick Grimes movies since then, though Michonne's exit from The Walking Dead did set her up to join Rick on his next adventures. Alongside the announcement of The Walking Dead season 11, AMC confirmed that a Rick Grimes movie is still on the way, though it doesn't yet have a release date.