The Big Picture
- The Walking Dead continues to expand its universe with spinoffs and new series, showcasing different characters and storylines.
-
Fear the Walking Dead
explores the early days of the apocalypse in Los Angeles, while
The Walking Dead: World Beyond
follows the first generation growing up in the post-apocalyptic world. -
The Walking Dead: Dead City
focuses on the unexpected team-up of Negan and Maggie as they search for Maggie’s kidnapped son, while
The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon
takes Daryl to France and introduces new challenges and characters.
The Walking Dead might have ended in its run in 2022, but it continues to spawn spinoffs and strengthen its legacy. The post-apocalyptic series about sheriff Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) who wakes up from a coma only to find out that the world has been overrun by zombies (known as “walkers” on the show) has greatly evolved since its inception in 2010. Some characters we loved either died too soon or left the series and conversely, some enemies we couldn’t wait to shake overstayed their welcome. We watched characters fall in and out of love, question their purpose in the new world, and try their darndest to stay alive.
The first side stories began in 2011 with the web series Torn Apart, which told the tale of Hannah, the creepy “Bicycle Girl” Rick killed in The Walking Dead pilot. Then in anticipation of Season 3 of the flagship series came Cold Storage, which featured the story of a desperate man trying to find his sister, then The Oath, which explored the people behind the iconic “Don’t Open, Dead Inside” warning, and 2017’s Red Machete gave us the origins of, well, Rick’s red machete that Gareth came to know all too well.
Several team-ups either have already or are set to grace our small screens, the most unexpected being Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) and Maggie (Lauren Cohan) in The Walking Dead: Dead City, which was renewed for Season 2. Our favorite crossbow-wielding walker hunter Daryl Dixon (Norman Reedus) leads the aptly-titled The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon, which we can watch as we wait for Rick and Michonne’s (Danai Gurira) epic reunion series The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live. So cover yourself in some walker guts. It’s time to dive into the ever-expanding world of The Walking Dead.
‘Fear the Walking Dead’ (2015 – 2023)
The first real taste we got of a spin-off came back in 2015 with Fear the Walking Dead. Instead of taking place in Atlanta, Georgia in the middle of the madness, the first three seasons take place in Los Angeles, California, and starts pre-apocalypse. With dramatic irony on full display, the audience is able to watch a blissfully unaware family deal with the struggles that come with being human, not killing dead ones. The series is led by high school counselor Madison Clark (Kim Dickens), who lives with her fiancé Travis (Cliff Curtis) and is busy raising her daughter Alicia (Alycia Debnam-Carey) and drug-addicted son Nick (Frank Dillane). Their normal life, as the title suggests, is consumed by fear once more and more people around them succumb to this mysterious plague.
Season 4 turns the tables a bit. The surviving members of the original cast, as well as any stragglers they picked up along the way, meet Morgan Jones (Lennie James), a man that Rick Grimes and fans of The Walking Dead have a complicated relationship with. He brings his expertise and checkered past to his new group, for better or for worse. Another familiar, albeit severely burned, face joins the cast in Season 5. Negan’s former right-hand man Dwight (Austin Amelio) makes his way to the group once he’s kicked to the curb by Rick in The Walking Dead. And if that’s not enough, the spin-off has three web-based spin-offs of its own in Fear the Walking Dead: Flight 462, Fear the Walking Dead: Passage, and The Althea Tapes. Fear the Walking Dead, which also stars Jenna Elfman, Colman Domingo, and Mo Collins, is in its eighth and final season.
‘The Walking Dead: World Beyond’ (2020 – 2021)
The Walking Dead: World Beyond is a bit easier (or at least quicker) to digest. Created by Scott M. Gimple and Matthew Negrete, this two-season limited event takes place in Nebraska 10 years into the apocalypse and follows the first generation to come of age in this new, complicated, and terrifying world. Blood, guts, and walkers is all they know, and quite possibly, all they will ever know. The core four teenagers the show focuses on are the science-oriented Iris Bennett (Aliyah Royale), her daring sister Hope (Alexa Mansour), the morally ambiguous and dangerous Silas Plaskett (Hal Cumpston), and inquisitive 15-year-old Elton Ortiz (Nicolas Cantu).
If you’re also still wondering where The Walking Dead’s Jadis (Pollyanna McIntosh) whisked Rick off to in that helicopter in The Walking Dead Season 9, Episode 5 titled, “What Comes After,” then Season 2 of The Walking Dead: World Beyond might have some answers. Jadis had been in contact with a group known as the Civic Republic at the time of the bridge explosion that nearly took out our favorite sheriff. (In fact, it was their helicopter that rescued Rick.) In Season 2 of World Beyond, we learn that Jadis is now part of their team that’s trying to rebuild for the future. Could Rick be somewhere nearby, and perhaps one of the first survivors to try their new serum?
‘Tales of the Walking Dead’ (2022)
Created by Channing Powell, who has experience working on both The Walking Dead and Fear the Walking Dead, the series Tales of the Walking Dead consists of six standalone episodes that focus on a different group of both old and new characters in the original world of The Walking Dead. This anthology series features the most impressive cast in the franchise to date, including Olivia Munn, Parker Posey, Terry Crews, Jillian Bell, Poppy Liu, and Anthony Edwards.
‘The Walking Dead: Dead City’ (2023 – Present)
Maggie and Negan take Manhattan? Fans of The Walking Dead are well aware that Negan and Maggie didn’t get off on the right foot (er, bat), since Negan brutally battered Maggie’s husband Glenn Rhee (Steven Yeun) to death with Lucille, Negan’s barbed-wire laced baseball bat. Since that bloody moment, Maggie rightfully hated Negan’s guts. But as The Walking Dead progressed, viewers witnessed a sort of role-reversal between the two survivors. Negan has slowly evolved into a more mellow and level-headed individual while Maggie, scarred from her past and concerned for her future, has taken on a more merciless persona. The final season planted the seeds for a fruitful story of the two frenemies, with them both realizing they have more in common than they’d like to admit.
The Walking Dead: Dead City (formerly titled Isle of the Dead) is a refreshing installment in the undead universe, as it organically and successfully paired up Negan and Maggie as they — in a very unlikely twist — work together to find Maggie’s kidnapped son, Hershel (Logan Kim). He’s being held hostage by The Croat (Zeljko Ivanek), one of the most ruthless villains we have yet to face, and is also an old pal of Negan’s from when he was part of the ex-antagonist’s group the Saviors, as evident in flashbacks. Dead City, which was initially intended to be a limited series, has been renewed for Season 2.
‘The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon’ (2023 – Present)
Fans were over the moon in 2020 when it was announced that Norman Reedus’ sloppy-haired, brooding Daryl Dixon would be getting a spin-off series with Melissa McBride’s badass Carol. Whether they’re consoling each other over the loss of loved ones or hurling acorns into a rusty tin can, these two might just be the show’s best pairing. But tragedy struck when the project made a major relocation to Europe, which made the shoot “logistically untenable” for McBride. AMC, however, has made it clear that Carol is always welcome back, saying in a statement, “Melissa McBride has given life to one of the most interesting, real, human, and popular characters in The Walking Dead Universe…We know fans will be disappointed by this news, but The Walking Dead Universe continues to grow and expand in interesting ways and we very much hope to see Carol again in the near future.”
Created by Angela Kang, The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon will take us where no TWD character has ever gone before: France! The series follows Daryl after he leaves the Commonwealth and winds up in France (again, not sure how, and quite possibly, neither is he). Not only is he trying to get his bearings, but he winds up being responsible for helping a young boy escape an intense religious movement. How (and why) the heck did Daryl cross the Atlantic? Will he eat a croissant? Do walkers growl with a French accent? One thing is for certain: Melissa McBride is indeed set to appear in the series! The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon also stars Clémence Poésy and Adam Nagaitis and was recently renewed for Season 2 ahead of its series premiere.
‘The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live’ (TBD 2024)
It’s almost time to reunite with good ‘ol Grimes. Fans were utterly devastated when they heard that Andrew Lincoln, who played the lead character Rick Grimes for nine seasons of the show, would be leaving the series. In typical Rick fashion, his final episode featured him risking his life for the ones he loved. Thankfully, Rick somehow survived the bridge explosion and was rescued by Jadis’ helicopter and flown to an unknown location. A lot has changed for our surviving characters since Rick was whisked away, and frankly, the flagship series was never the same. The rumblings of a Rick Grimes return, however, is something fans have clung to for quite some time.
Initially, Lincoln signed a three-picture deal to star in the first The Walking Dead movies, which were set to be shown exclusively in theaters and were expected to focus on Rick’s whereabouts following that bonanza bridge moment. But during a surprise pop-in at the 2022 San Diego Comic Con, Lincoln and Danai Gurira updated the eager fans on the major behind-the-scenes changes. Instead of the Rick-centric film trilogy, the two characters (who also became lovers later in the series) are set to lead a new show that will continue their journey among the dead as they reflect on what they have been through both together and apart. Rick and Michonne, unsurprisingly, made a brief appearance in the series finale of The Walking Dead,perhaps teasing what their show will look like. Gurira and Lincoln, who have become more involved in their characters’ development, are executive producing and Jadis is also expected to return. The series is slated to premiere in 2024.
