The Walking Dead was part of a very different television landscape when it premiered back in 2010. For years, it was one of the most successful shows on television, one that would quickly become one of the most defining iterations of its genre. Things won’t be so easy for any of the three major spin-offs currently in the works, however. The Walking Dead: Dead City, The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon, and the untitled spinoff featuring Rick (Andrew Lincoln) and Michonne (Danai Gurira) Grimes are all setting themselves up to fail by focusing on major characters from the original show. If The Walking Dead wants to have any hope of standing out from its substantial competition, it needs to move beyond the original show and stop focusing on characters and stories well past their prime.
There Are Way More Zombie Shows to Compete With These Days
There were other zombie stories when The Walking Dead first began. The show itself was an adaptation of the comics that had been being published since 2003. The iconic MARVEL Zombies comics began to be released in 2005, and the Call of Duty franchise’s zombie mode was first included in 2008’s World at War, just to name a few of the most prominent ones. But there had never been a zombie television show so successful as The Walking Dead. Its compelling performances, grotesque zombie makeup, and mastery of tension allowed The Walking Dead to seize and hold onto the spotlight for years, even as more and more zombie shows began to appear over the next decade.
But a well-made zombie apocalypse show won’t be enough to stand out in 2023. While The Walking Dead premiered with minimal competition, the same cannot be said for its upcoming spin-offs. From HBO’s The Last of Us to Disney+’s upcoming MARVEL Zombies animated series to Netflix’s South Korean hit All of Us Are Dead, there’s ample and diverse competition in the genre. Each of these shows brings something new and interesting to the zombie apocalypse television format.
The Last of Us features macabre yet eerily beautiful fungal zombies but uses them mostly as set dressing for a tightly emotional story focused on its two main characters as they travel across what remains of the United States. MARVEL Zombies will the ante by having its zombie hordes retain their superpowers, making them even more of a threat. And All of Us Are Dead (in addition to being set outside of America) focuses on a younger cast, blending the zombie apocalypse with a coming-of-age narrative. By comparison, The Walking Dead’s zombies are rather vanilla and uninteresting, only a threat to the unprepared and outnumbered. To make a show that stands out, the franchise is going to need to find a fresh new angle to approach its world.
The Problem With The Walking Dead’s Spinoffs
But The Walking Dead franchise doesn’t seem to recognize this problem. Rather than branch out with new ideas that expand its world, all three upcoming shows are focused on major characters from the original series. Dead City features Maggie (Lauren Cohan) and Negan (Jeffery Dean Morgan) in the apocalyptic ruins of New York City. Daryl Dixon centers on the character it’s named after, played by Norman Reedus. And finally, a currently unnamed project focusing on former main series protagonist Rick and Michonne is set to premiere next year. All three of these shows are going to start with a lot of baggage.
Every one of these characters (except for Negan) has been around since Season 2 of The Walking Dead, if not the show’s very beginning. We’ve watched them fight to survive, form relationships, experience tragic losses, and change over the course of 177 episodes of television. We watched Rick and Michonne’s entire relationship develop, and watched them both lose friends, romantic partners, and children. We watched Daryl kill his zombified older brother, and form close bonds with the other characters (especially Melissa McBride’s Carol). And we watched Negan brutally murder Maggie’s husband Glenn (Steven Yeun) and lead their respective communities to war against one another.
That's a massive amount of context for a character being brought into a new show, and that’ll very likely prove to be a hindrance to the franchise. There’s a fine line to walk between using pre-established characters to draw in an existing audience and creating 11 seasons of required viewing for any curious newcomers to understand your show. By choosing to focus on these characters, it seems like these spin-offs are more interested in being continuations of The Walking Dead rather than something new. And that's a risky choice when the general consensus is that the show should've ended years ago.
What The Walking Dead Could Be
And therein lies the problem: The Walking Dead as it currently exists isn’t going to cut it anymore. If these spin-offs are going to have any chance of becoming a hit, they’ll need to do something new and interesting with the formula. There’s so much potential for the franchise to explore that has been ignored for years. What is life like in other parts of the world, like Europe, Africa, or South America? What might a long-running and functional post-zombie civilization look like? What could happen if someone did develop a way to reliably prevent the dead from reanimating? Or why not tell more stories that use the zombie apocalypse to commentate on the world we live in today, like Fear the Walking Dead’s conflict between Broke Jaw Ranch and the Hopi Tribe?
However, the fact that all three of the upcoming shows in The Walking Dead universe are centered on pre-established characters indicates that the franchise has no interest in expanding beyond its original concept. Of all three shows, only Daryl Dixon seems to have the possibility of pushing the envelope, featuring only one pre-established character and taking him across the Atlantic to France. But will that be enough to get it out of the long shadow of the original series? Given the trajectory of the other spin-offs, it seems unlikely. The Walking Dead needs to be moving forward, but it seems more interested in looking back.