All 11 'The Walking Dead' seasons, ranked

It may be difficult to recall, years later, how innovative and positively shocking the first season of The Walking Dead was when it aired on AMC in October through December of 2010. The inaugural season accomplished many things, amongst them launching the careers of Jon Bernthal and Steven Yeun, reinvigorating that of Norman Reedus, and proving that Andrew Lincoln could play more than the world's creepiest sign twirler.

In addition to bringing us some of our most beloved actors, not to mention characters, The Walking Dead introduced a new watermark for television violence, pushing the acceptable standards from the stylized, benign realm of CSI and 24 into full-on NC-17 territory. Mad Men, along with Breaking Bad, may have introduced the era of peak TV, but it was The Walking Dead that made the most indelible and immediate impression, a show that became a consistent ratings juggernaut and would shape the television landscape into the present. Just consider: The phrase "midseason finale" did not exist before Rick Grimes and his crew came onto the scene.

Throughout the cast departures (and returns), heartbreaking deaths, and innumerable Zombie Kills of the Week, The Walking Dead has continuously captured the collective imagination and kept fans on their toes with a cascade of unexpected revelations. While the series concluded its 11th and final season in November 2022, it's not anywhere near the end of this undead universe. Fear the Walking Dead is ongoing. Daryl Dixon (Reedus) will have his own spin-off as well, while The Walking Dead: Dead City will follow the unlikely pair of Maggie (Lauren Cohan) and Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) to a postapocalyptic Manhattan. Of course, Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) himself will return along with Danai Gurira's Michonne in a six-episode series set to air on AMC+ in 2024.

To commemorate the continued success of the Walking Dead franchise, we've ranked all 11 seasons of the flagship series below, from worst to best.

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11. Season 8 (2017–18)

Much like a human pursued through the night by ravenous walkers, the eighth season of The Walking Dead rounded home twitchy, exhausted, and out of ideas. The All Out War thread ultimately built to very little, making one realize that even at its previous, most clickbait-generating nadir (see below), the show at least had the decency to be fitfully interesting.

The return of family-man Morales from the first season was the greatest indication that the creative minds are out of ideas. In the intervening years, Morales had lost his wife and daughter and joined up with Negan's Saviors. That's a compelling arc that the show did absolutely nothing with, instead trotting him out for a limp reveal before Daryl murdered him just as quickly. It's cheap, nasty stuff — unfortunately, not in a good way.

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10. Season 7 (2016–17)

Many diehard fans were outraged when it was revealed that both Abraham (Michael Cudlitz) and Glenn met Lucille at the end of season 6, but it was a move largely in step with the no-one-is-safe ethos The Walking Dead had forever cultivated. The biggest problem with that revelation was that season 7 seemed to have nowhere to go after the secret has been told.

Though the addition of Negan — one of the more charismatic characters on the show (perfectly played by Jeffrey Dean Morgan) — injected a bit of flavor to the proceedings, most of the episodes meandered around compelling ideas without ever embracing them. The Oceanside story line, in particular, was woefully underserved. Worst of all, there seemed to be difficulty assigning meaningful action to each member of the expansive cast, one of the show's great skills in its earlier seasons.

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9. Season 6 (2015–16)

Steven Yeun walking dead — Steven Yeun in 'The Walking Dead.'. Gene Page/AMC

This is the season in which The Walking Dead seemingly became too aware of its cultural impact, with the inventive subversion of the previous installments replaced with goading trickery designed to inspire reactions from everyone rather than satisfaction for anyone.

Glenn's "death," summarily followed by his reappearance, was sloppily handled both on and off camera. (Removing Steven Yeun's name from the credits will likely go down in TV history as the primary example of creative attention being put in all of the wrong places on a juggernaut series.) Likewise, the ultimate cliffhanger at the end of the season felt devised simply to spark conversation rather than serve as a natural conclusion to the season's arc. Coming on the heels of season 5 and the escalating quality of the series to this point, season 6 was a particular letdown.

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8. Season 10 (2019–21)

Arguably the series' most-assured mix of high-octane, gory action and slow-burn story development, season 10 proved that The Walking Dead was very much reanimated from its mid-2010s slump. It was also the finest season for Negan, who completed a villain-to-hero arc worthy of a Fast and Furious sequel with his infiltration of the Whisperers, while also claiming the standout episode with the finale, "Here's Negan."

The only misstep in this season was five of the additional six episodes, which were added to the run when the pandemic disrupted the original plans to air the finale, as complicated effects work for the episode was unable to be accomplished remotely. While that run did give audiences "Here's Negan," the five episodes that preceded that terrific installment felt vaguely uneasy, like auditions for a series of so-so Walking Dead spin-offs that didn't make it to air. While it's creatively admirable (and much-appreciated) to add further episodes during lockdown whilst utilizing those limitations to tell the stories, most of them could not help but feel hampered by their limitations, and, as a result, cast a shadow on an otherwise exceptional season.

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7. Season 11 (2021–22)

Season 11 contained some of The Walking Dead's strongest all-out horror episodes, none more so than episode 6, "On the Inside", which tracks Connie (Lauren Ridloff) and Virgil (Kevin Carroll) through an abandoned house as they fight for their lives against a vicious crew of feral cannibals. The final season brought into clear focus the broad scope of the entire series. Outside of soap operas, it's hard to find a non-comedic television show that allowed its cast to develop and change their characters over such a luxurious period of time. The fruits of this labor played out most vividly in Maggie's astonishingly nuanced character arc; her reentry into the community only to find Negan (who, let us not forget, killed her beloved Glenn) as an ally, was one of the sharpest narrative turns the series accomplished during its run.

A significantly livelier show than it had been in the previous two seasons, this 11th outing consistently delivered on the grand-guignol thrills that made the show's name while doubling down on spiky character development and subversive resolutions which provided few easy answers. In its final beats, the series deftly walked the line between tying up some story threads and leaving breadcrumbs for future spin-offs, absolutely sticking the landing for the long-running show and satisfying longtime fans while leaving us properly excited for what's to come in the Walking Dead universe.

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6. Season 2 (2011–12)

The Walking Dead (Season 2) — Gene Page/AMC

There are certainly highlights within this sophomore season, namely Jon Bernthal's fearsome portrayal of Shane's descent into full-on villainy and his showdown with Rick, which remains one of the most gorgeously photographed sequences on the show.

Additionally, the mass slaughter of the walkers that Hershel (Scott Wilson) had sequestered in his barn, including a walkered-up Sophia (Madison Lintz), served as an emotional high point not just for the season but the entire series; and Steven Yeun continued his run as the finest actor on the show, developing Glenn so closely to his comic book counterpart that it is often uncanny. His and Maggie's romance this season was particularly well-developed, and the most tangible byproduct of the rich character work this season was working toward with its more patient pacing. It cannot be avoided, however, that after the giddy sugar rush of season 1, season 2 was a bit of a damp squib overall. These 13 episodes were collectively emblematic of the terminal illness that continues to afflict many shows and limited series: It is muuuuuch longer than it needs to be. Six episodes, like the first season, would have been a perfect length for the story told here. Instead, seven additional hours, much of it reiterating the same beats, bogged down the aspects that worked and left an overall unsatisfying impression.

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5. Season 9 (2018–19)

A rip-roaring return to form, and a massive improvement over the previous three seasons, The Walking Dead came out of the gate with something to prove at the top of its ninth season and, boy, did it. With Alpha and the Whisperers, (certainly the greatest post-punk band that never was), the show finally introduced a villain as fearsome as the Governor.

After several seasons of complacency, fans were reassured that The Walking Dead was just as vicious and no-holds-barred as it's always been when it unleashed its much-discussed "Red Wedding" moment, when it was revealed that Alpha (Samantha Morton) had speared the heads of several fan favorites. A lesser series would have soft-pedaled that turn, swapping out our beloved characters for more disposable heads to fill those stakes, but The Walking Dead played it through. It's also hard to imagine a series that handled the exit of its longtime protagonist better than season 9 of The Walking Dead. By jumping forward six years after Rick's assumed death, and shifting focus to an older Judith (Cailey Fleming), the show managed to fully reinvigorate itself while not for a moment reminding us that the actor or the character we loved was no longer present. It was a breathtaking feat of writing and direction, as was most of this stellar season.

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4. Season 4 (2013–14)

The fourth outing did a masterful job of blending old and new whilst charting a course for future seasons. For the first time in the show's history, The Walking Dead began to fully embrace its horror roots, especially in the prison setting, which was employed to wonderful effect here and lent the episodes a bit of a funhouse quality.

It was also the first season in which Rick's group splintered into smaller contingents, after Hershel's death at the hands of the Governor, which allowed a show already known for its in-depth character development to dive deeper into the relationships between new characters like Abraham, Rosita (Christian Serratos), and the cure-obsessed Eugene (Josh McDermitt). While Carol and Lizzy perhaps share the most memorable moment of this season, it's the inexplicable bond that formed between Daryl and Beth that has lingered long.

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3. Season 5 (2014–15)

The Walking Dead _ Season 5, Episode 8 — Gene Page/AMC

Within season 5 are some of the strongest character introductions and payoffs the series has offered. Carol's return and redemption, after her banishment from the group, was a thrilling turn for the character, so evocatively rendered by Melissa McBride over these many seasons.

If there was any character that deserved her redemption, it was Carol, and season 5 milked that turn for every ounce of emotion it held. We also met Father Gabriel, one of the most fascinatingly conflicted characters and ultimately one of the central players on the show. The reveal that the inhabitants of Terminus had turned cannibalistic was ridiculous in the best fashion; it was handled with an exploitation movie sensibility that, if anything, made one wish The Walking Dead indulged more often in loony-bin thrills, and led to a series highlight when Bob (Lawrence Gilliard Jr.) delivered a terrific punchline to a group of hungry Terminians feasting on his leg.

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2. Season 3 (2012–13)

After the second season treaded water and seemed unsure of where to take the characters, or how big to make the world, season 3 rather instantly righted itself with the introduction of Michonne and the power struggle between Rick and the Governor, David Morrissey's diabolically sociopathic leader of the Woodbury commune. While Negan is somewhat erroneously regarded as the most fearsome and relentless villain, the Governor always seemed a much more unstoppable force with a greater capacity for evil than Negan ever possessed. His unadulterated psychopathy led to some of the most fascinating and brutal moments across this season and the next.

Along with the Governor, and the compelling rendering of Woodbury, TWD's third season juiced the franchise in all the right ways, featuring a wealth of standout moments and episodes that allow it to rank right alongside the first in terms of quality. It got back to the propulsive storytelling of that initial run without sacrificing characters, but it also wasn't afraid of killing off a litany of central figures (see ya later Laurie Holden's Andrea, see ya...never, I guess, Sarah Wayne Callis' Lori), showing viewers that The Walking Dead had no intention of softening up.

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1. Season 1 (2010)

It's impossible to surpass The Walking Dead's first season in terms of quality and consistency. These first six episodes were lean and unrelenting, never letting up on the gas pedal, and unequivocally the best the series had to offer in terms of pacing and thrills.

Yet, first-season showrunner Frank Darabont (who also directed the pilot) and his crew were adept at incorporating patient, unexpected character development amidst the chaos without disrupting the rollercoaster nature. The pilot, along with the fourth episode, "Vatos," are two outstanding hours of television that represent the absolute peak of the series, an adaptation that satisfied what fans of the comic expect while also changing just enough that the show could stand as its own unique experience.

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