It looks like the dead will still stay dead. It has been announced that AMC's flagship series, The Walking Dead, will be coming to an end with an expanded eleventh season. However, no need to worry fans, while the parent series will be ending, the brand will still be very much alive via a planned spin-off featuring Norman Reedus and Melissa McBride in their roles as Daryl Dixon and Carol Peletier.
As was announced at this year’s virtual Comic-Con@Home, the pandemic delayed The Walking Dead Season 10 finale will now air as a special episode on October 4, 2020, with 10 additional episodes to air in 2021 for the current cycle. From there, the 11th and final season of the series will run over two-years for a grand total of 24 episodes. So even though fans will have to say goodbye, it will be a while before those farewells take place. Showrunner Angela Kang had this to say about one door closing and another one opening with the new spin-off at AMC:
"I look forward to digging in with our brilliant writers, producers, directors, cast, and crew to bring this epic final chapter of Robert Kirkman’s story to life for our fans over the next two years. The Walking Dead flagship series has been my creative home for a decade and so it’s bittersweet to bring it to an end, but I could not be more excited to be working with Scott Gimple and AMC to develop a new series for Daryl and Carol. Working with Norman Reedus and Melissa McBride has been a highlight of my career and I’m thrilled that we get to keep telling stories together."
It honestly feels like The Walking Dead isn't really ending at all. AMC seems to be going all-in on TWD related shows and it's still very much going to be the highlight of their broadcasting. In addition to the upcoming Daryl and Carol series, current spinoffs Fear the Walking Dead, starting its sixth season on October 11, 2020, and the October 4th premiering YA two-season long The Walking Dead: World Beyond, AMC and Deadverse chief content officer Scott M. Gimple are developing a Tales of The Walking Dead anthology series. The show will be episodic in format and will likely focus on individual characters from the clearly expanding Deadverse, both new and old. On top of this, more TWD shows are in various stages of discussion and here are still the trio of Rick Grimes endeavors, starring Andrew Lincoln, which are in the script stage at Universal Pictures.
In a lot of ways, it makes sense to end the parent series. Off-screen Kirkman suddenly wrapped up the TWD comics after 193 issues in 2019 so there isn't source material to adapt, although that hasn't stopped a show in the past. In addition, leading man Lincoln left two years ago, and Danai Gurira, who joined the MCU after appearing in BLACK PANTHER, departed, so to speak, in March of this year. While the door was never fully closed on Gurira’s Michonne character, who went looking for Grimes after the wounded one-time Sheriff’s Deputy was spirited off by a mysterious helicopter in the fifth episode of Season 9, it seemed pretty clear that the focus of the series had shifted to Reedus and McBride’s characters and thus, explains the spin-off that will focus on their characters. Their spin-off is scheduled to premiere in 2023.
Even though there might be some The Walking Dead fatigue, there is no denying how popular the show once was. Beginning with its third season, the show has attracted the most 18-49-year-old-viewers of any cable or broadcast television series. In season one, the show attracted between four and six million viewers but by season three to six, the show was attracting ten to seventeen million viewers. In 2014, total viewership for the show's fifth-season premiere was 17.3 million, making it the most-watched series episode in cable history. Ratings have slipped in subsequent seasons but broadcast networks would still kill for their numbers. In addition to viewership, the show has been nominated for several awards, including the Writers Guild of America Award for New Series and the Golden Globe Award for Best Television Series-Drama.
Do YOU think it was time to end The Walking Dead? Will YOU watch the spin-offs?