The Walking Dead: World Beyond finally announces a premiere date, and reveals it will only run for two seasons. AMC’s Walking Dead slate already seemed pretty full with the flagship series entering its tenth season and the first spinoff Fear the Walking Dead headed into season 6. But last summer, the network nevertheless announced the imminent arrival of yet more TWD content in the form of a second Walking Dead spinoff series.
When details about the new spinoff eventually made their way out, it was revealed that the show would take place ten years after the start of the zombie apocalypse, and would involve a group of young survivors who have grown up knowing nothing else but the dangers of a zombie-infested reality. Entitled The Walking Dead: World Beyond, the show will see this group of young characters venturing out of the safety of their community to test themselves against the harsh world outside and all its undead hazards. A World Beyond trailer was released back in October, but no official premiere date was revealed at the time.
Now, AMC has finally settled on a kick-off date for their latest venture into the Walking Dead universe. The official Walking Dead: World Beyond Twitter revealed the April 12th, 2020 premiere date for the show, and also revealed that it will have just a two season run. See their tweet in the space below:
The interesting detail here of course is that AMC has put a definite expiration date on World Beyond, announcing ahead of time that the story will last just two seasons. One of the complaints about Walking Dead and Fear the Walking Dead indeed is that the shows have gone on too long and undergone too many resets over their course of their extended runs, but AMC appears to be dodging such issues with the new spinoff, letting fans know ahead of time that they can expect the story to wrap up after two seasons.
The two season story arc for the new series may in fact mark the beginning of a new way of doing business for TWD, one that emphasizes more limited storytelling over the open-ended series approach. Indeed, TWD overseer Scott Gimple recently teased the possibility of more limited event shows set in the universe, with deceased characters from the original show perhaps returning (Chandler Riggs even took to social media to tease fans about Carl maybe coming back from the dead).
Given complaints about Walking Dead and Fear the Walking Dead losing their way over the course of their greatly extended runs, it’s probably a wise move for Gimple and company to put definite length limits on any new TWD content they develop. This way, audiences can know they will get a full and complete story over a certain period of time rather than being asked to come back week after week for yet another zombie series that starts strong but begins to meander as writers are asked to keep churning out more story without a definite plan in mind. It will be interesting to see if The Walking Dead: World Beyond indeed succeeds in delivering a satisfying closed-ended story set in the zombie-plagued universe.