The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Liveended with a beautifully tied bow andplenty of reveals. There are no plans for a second season, and arguably no need for one either. But that leaves a hole for fans ofThe Walking Deadwho want to see the post-apocalyptic story continue in any way, shape, or form.
There’s good news on that front because two other spin-offs,The Walking Dead: Dead CityandThe Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon,have received praise and will both be returning. But could there be more from the franchise? After the initial series, the world filled with walkers seems to keep expanding with no end in sight.
There have beenseveralThe Walking Deadspin-offsto date, many of which have ended.Fear the Walking Deadwas the first that launched in 2015, five years afterThe Walking Deadbegan. Commencing the story at the onset of the apocalypse versus after it had already started and featuring a different setting of Los Angeles, Mexico, and other U.S. cities, as well as a different cast of characters,Fear the Walking Deadended its eight-season run in 2023.
The Walking Dead: World Beyondfollowed next, airing for two seasons in 2020 to 2021. It was arguably the least successful of the spin-offs, focusing on a group of teenagers who grew up in the apocalypse. However, the series was crucial to providing context about the Civic Republic Military (CRM), which was central to the plot inThe Ones Who Liveand made shocking revelations about the virus andcause of the zombie apocalypseitself via an eye-opening post-credits final scene.
There was alsoTales of the Walking Deadin 2022, a departure from the usual format. An anthology series, each episode focused on a different cast of characters and different situations within the same apocalyptic world. There was no crossover to the original series beyond one episode featuring the backstory of Alpha (Samantha Morton), one of the original show’smost vicious villains. Each episode was delivered in a different thematic tone, from horror to even comedy. It starred actors like Terry Crews, Olivia Munn, Parker Posey, Jillian Bell, Anthony Edwards, and Jessie T. Usher.
The Walking Dead: Every Season of the Original Series, Ranked
After the onset of a worldwide zombie apocalypse, survivors must fight their way to survive not only the dead but the living too.
The latest spin-offs, both of which were introduced in 2023 with their inaugural seasons, areThe Walking Dead: Dead CityandThe Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon. Both were met with positive reviews and will be returning with second seasons.The Walking Dead: Dead Citycenters around the story of Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) and Maggie (Lauren Cohan). Skippingahead in the timelineby five years, they are both now in New York City and facing formidable new enemies that, in the first season, force them to work together.
As the name implies,The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixoncenters around Norman Reedus’s fan-favorite character. Through circumstance, he winds up in France, where a nun named Isabelle (Clémence Poésy) convinces him to help bring a young boy named Laurent (Louis Puech Scigliuzzi) to a safe location. She wholeheartedly believes he is a Messiah who will help lead humanity into a new world.
The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live
WithThe Walking Deadfinished in 2022 after 11 seasons,Fear the Walking DeadandThe Walking Dead: World Beyonddone as well, andThe Walking Dead: The Ones Who Livewrapping up in a way that suggests the story doesn’t have anywhere else to go, fans are curious to know more about the shows thatare(or might be) returning. These are what’s left to satiate their appetite for walker blood.
The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon
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Filming is already underway on the second season ofThe Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon, which will be known asThe Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon – The Book of Carol.As the name suggests, and as the end teaser scene of Season 1 revealed, Melissa McBride will be reprising her role as Carol Peletier and joining the cast in a main role.
Set topremiere this summer, a teaser trailer shows Daryl fighting off enemies, including Marion Genet (Anne Charrier), the leader of the paramilitary group known as the Pouvoir des Vivants (Power of the Living), who memorably put him in a cage to fight walkers in front of an audience in Season 1. Carol, meanwhile, is visiting a site where Daryl’s motorcycle was last seen, directed to the location by the man she found riding it. She’s still in America, but it’s presumed that the pair will reunite at some point. Ahead of the Season 2 premiere, a third season ofThe Walking Dead: Daryl Dixonis reportedly already in the works as well.
The Walking Dead: Dead City
Also confirmed to be returning for a second season,The Walking Dead: Dead Citydoesn’t yet have a premiere date. The series debuted in June 2023 and had just six episodes. It follows the story of Maggie and Negan, who reunite in New York. She is desperate for his help because her son Hershel (Logan Kim) has been kidnapped. She believes Negan might have a connection to the kidnapper, a man known as The Croat (Željko Ivanek), who was once a Savior.
The pair embark on a reluctant journey to Manhattan together. Maggie seemingly tries to put her hatred for Negan aside, andNegan is desperateto make amends for the heinous things he has done in the past. They’re also being chased by Perlie Armstrong (Gaius Charles), a marshal for an organization known as the New Babylon Federation. Perlie is determined to capture Negan and put him on trial for brutally murdering five men, presumably in cold blood.
The first season ends in such a way that gives Negan no choice but to revert to his old ways, a detail that excites fans who have been itching to see the cult-like leader return, with or without his barbed-wire bat Lucille. But this time, it’s for admirable reasons. He is blackmailed by the real leader, The Dama (Lisa Emery), who needs him to help her unite the communities in Manhattan to fight against the New Babylon Federation. Most importantly, she wants to protect her alternative fuel source production, which harnesses walker bodies in a way that produces fuel that’s more efficient than ethanol.
With Hershel’s life on the line, Negan will have no choice but to comply. Ironically, at Hershel’s urging, Maggie decides to put her obsession with Negan aside just as he’s about to personify the very person she loathes and who continues to haunt her. Given this storyline, the second season ofThe Walking Dead: Dead Cityis poised to be even more explosive and gripping than the first.
The least is known about the future ofTales of the Walking Dead. The first season premiered in August 2022 and aired six episodes through September 2022. Another series was said to be calledMore Tales from the Walking Dead Universe(a working title for now), but that has yet to materialize.
It is rumored to be a six-part short-form scripted series set in the same expanding world. Scott M. Gimple, Executive Producer and Chief Content Officer withinThe Walking Deaduniverse, toldColliderthat he is hopeful the anthology series will return. However, the focus of the interview in January 2023 was on wrapping upFear the Walking Deadand working on the new spin-off projects. RegardingTales, however, he said at the time, “I’m hoping that we can get back to it.” So, there may be more to come in this unique anthology format.
With two confirmed spin-offs gearing up for second seasons, the first of which we’ll see this summer, and the potential forTales of the Walking Deador an offshoot ofthat anthology seriesto return, plenty will come withinThe Walking Deaduniverse. Just because Rick (Andrew Lincoln) and Michonne’s (Danai Gurira) love story seemingly came to an end inThe Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live, the other characters fans have come to know and love, some for almost 15 years, are still continuing their journeys.
Willwe see crossoversor mixing of the worlds as these stories within the same universe evolve? Might Rick and Michonne make cameo appearances in any of them? We’ll have to wait and see. For now, for the foreseeable future, Daryl, Carol, Maggie, and Negan will be leading the charge and keeping the undead alive for some time to come.The entireWalking Deaduniverse is streaming on AMC+, with the originalWalking Deadseries streaming on Netflix as well.
