You Can’t Have Too Many Zombies: The Walking Dead Universe

The Walking Dead has grown from a single show smash hit for AMC to a sprawling universe of shows. With several more in the works, what are all the Walking Dead shows that have aired so far and which ones are still on their way?

Shows that have already premiered:

The show that started it all, The Walking Dead premiered in 2010and follows a ragtag group of survivors in a post-apocalyptic world filled with zombies. The series, based on the comic by the same name, established the majority of the major rules of the series (such as how a person is turned into a zombie, how to destroy them, how to avoid them, and other aspects of zombie behavior). The body count on this show has been tremendous (even ignoring the zombies themselves), creating a nobody is safe mentality. After its eleven-season run, The Walking Dead has Part C of its final season to air before ending for good.

Premiering in 2015, Fear the Walking Dead, was the franchise’s first spin-off. Following the Clark family and few others, the spin-off was set up as a prequel to the original series, showing how the public experienced the start of the zombie apocalypse. A few time jumps, the death of most of the Clarks and other original characters, and a couple characters jumping over from the main series later and Fear has now caught up in time. In addition to the zombie apocalypse, the characters are also dealing with the fallout of a nuclear bombs being detonated in Texas. Fear is currently in the middle of its seventh season.

In 2021, Walking Dead: World Beyond became the third series set in The Walking Dead universe. Designed as a limited series, the series was set ten years after the start of the zombie apocalypse in Nebraska. A group of teenagers have come of age largely sheltered for the apocalyptic world beyond their colony. The father of two of the teens, Hope and Iris Bennett, has left to work with the Civic Republic (first introduced in The Walking Dead, though with little detail) to try to create a cure for the zombie virus. When they receive a mysterious message from their father indicating that he is in danger, Hope, Iris, and several friends and allies set off to find and rescue him. With a much younger cast, this series was no less bloody than the others, but it features significantly fewer character deaths. The series concluded after two seasons.

Shows that have been announced:

Previously announced in September 2020 as a spin-off starring Carol Peletier (played by Melissa McBride) and Daryl Dixon (played by Norman Reeds), the Untitled Carol & Daryl Spin-off will now only feature Daryl. McBride withdrew from the show when the logistics of moving to Europe, where the show would be filmed and set, became logistically too difficult for her. Few details have been released about the series, which will be set after The Walking Dead ends, is expected to premiere some time in 2023.

Also announced in September 2020, Tales of the Walking Dead is set to be an anthology series featuring familiar and new Walking Dead characters. The only known character returning to the anthology is Alpha of the Whispers (played by Samantha Morton), though more are likely to come. New cast for the series that have been announced include Anthony Edwards (Inventing Anna, WeCrashed), Parker Posey (Lost In Space), Terry Crews (Brooklyn Nine-Nine), Poppy Liu (Dead Ringers), Jillian Bell (Rough Night), Olivia Munn (Violet), Danny Ramirez (The Falcon & The Winter Soldier), Loan Chabanol (Fading Gigolo), Embeth Davidtz (Old, Ray Donovan), Jessie T. Usher (The Boys) and Gage Munroe (Nobody).

Announced in March 2022, The Walking Dead: Isle of the Dead is set to star Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s Negan and Laurie Cohan’s Maggie in Manhattan after The Walking Dead ends. The pair have significant history and bad blood between them—Negan brutally murdered Maggie’s husband Glenn in front of her—but have recently reached truce of sorts. Little is known about the series, which is set to premiere in 2023. When original The Walking Dead lead Rick Grimes (played by Andrew Lincoln) left the show, it was announced that he would return for an as-yet untitled series of films. Updates on this series, expected to be a trilogy, have been scarce, though rumors of a Rick-Michonne spin-off series have recently surfaced.

The Walking Dead Universe. Courtesy of AMC.