The Walking Dead Universe Might Outlive Even the Zombies
Photo Courtesy of AMC
Trends come and go, but zombies are forever.
With The Walking Dead: Dead City’s recent premiere (and runaway success) after last year’s finale of the long, long-running O.G. The Walking Dead, in addition to the eighth season of Fear the Walking Dead making its rounds, it seems we simply can’t get enough of the undead. And just like the creatures that roam this one post-apocalyptic universe, it does seem like The Walking Dead will never die—nor does anyone particularly want it to.
And make no mistake: the former three are not the only iterations of the Kirkman Cinematic Universe, either. They just happen to be the biggest and most popular. (Other iterations have included World Beyond, Tales of The Walking Dead, and Dead in the Water, to name only a few.) AMC is dragging spin-offs from shallow graves at a faster pace than most zombies can walk.
The harshest fans claim that, with all these spin-offs, AMC is just milking the cash cow for all it’s worth; that the real story, first birthed by Robert Kirkman in 2003 with his comics, was buried a while ago (perhaps with the death of Carl Grimes in Season 8, but likely long before). Yet, the way the shows approach its zombies—and, more importantly, its human characters and their relationships with each other—is what has given it a solid leg to stand on in the past, and for decades to come.
The horror genre has never been my favorite, but for some reason, I’m kind of obsessed with zombies—and if the Internet is any indication, I’m certainly not alone. Perhaps it’s because zombies were once humans, and the science behind zombification isn’t completely out of the realm of possibility. Yet while media like Zombieland, 28 Days Later, and now The Last of Us are all big players in the psychological minefield that is zombie media, there is something special about The Walking Dead universe.
TWD was by no means the first piece of zombie literature to grace our screens—or pages, if you’re a fan of the comics—when Rick Grimes first appeared on T.V. in 2010. Despite this, it has almost become its own sub-genre in the zombie zeitgeist at large. Dead City is its third, official full-length T.V. brainchild (others have been limited series or anthologies), and is set in New York City. This is a much different setting from the original streets of rural Georgia or FTWD’s L.A., which was criticized upon its release, because, save for its location, not much seemed different from the original. While this is somewhat true, FTWD worked because it takes place on the opposite side of the country, in a city—Los Angeles—where people are innately different than Southerners.
Unlike FTWD, however, which introduced entirely new characters upon its conception (until Morgan was introduced in later seasons), Dead City is doing something different that will surely pull in the most loyal fans, past criticisms be damned: fan favorites Maggie and Negan are the stars, paired up to navigate new obstacles.