The Beginning of “The Walking Dead’s” End Explained
Your complete guide to cancelled air dates, expanded seasons, webisode extras, and the final run of episodes.
The Walking Dead’s long-awaited 11th and final season premieres (to the general public, that is, and not to premium-subscription consumers) tonight, Sunday, August 22. It caps a long and twisting path to get to this point – both to new proper Walking Dead episodes, generally, and to the television series’s ending, specifically.
Given just what a cultural touchstone the post-apocalyptic show has been over the past 11 years, and given just how much further the franchise will expand (there are three series presently on the air, with two more set to launch within the next few years and a currently-in-development trilogy of films), it’s worth taking a moment to run down what’s set to arrive throughout the remainder of this year and just how, exactly, we got here; with truncated runs, expanded episode counts, a constantly-in-flux schedule, and, of course, the completely unexpected announcement that the 11th season would be the last, it’s a lot to keep track of.
The Beginning of the End: Early 2020
When The Walking Dead’s season 10B – that is to say, what was meant to be that year’s latter eight installments – premiered on February 23, 2020, everything was proceeding according to a well-honed plan that had been in place since 2012. Within the next month, however, the rug was pulled out from under the entire world thanks to the coronavirus pandemic, which resulted in every Hollywood production shuttering – and as the next several weeks turned into the next several months, and as the temporary shutdowns dragged out into indefinite ones, AMC was put in a difficult spot.
The cable channel and Walking Dead’s producers were left with only one choice: air all the already-finished chapters until they ran out, and then hope that work could resume on completing the remainder as quickly as possible. Fortunately for them, seven of that season’s then-final eight episodes were already in the can, leaving only post-production to wrap on the finale (a process in which visual and sound effects, color grading, and the sound mix are all finalized – something that isn’t typically locked in until three weeks before the broadcast date). As such, ep 1015 dropped on April 5, accompanied by an ambiguous “later this year” teaser for the story’s conclusion.
The sizable delay was a far bigger blow for the franchise than just making audiences wait an unknown amount of time for one single installment; AMC had planned on debuting the third TV show, The Walking Dead: World Beyond, that same night as the season 10B closer, to maximize ratings as much as possible (a move which had been done almost exactly three years previously, when the character of Morgan Jones left the mothership series for the first spinoff, Fear the Walking Dead). And once that new entry had concluded its short first season, then Fear’s sixth season was set to commence – what was meant to be the beginning of the Walking Dead Universe’s 10th anniversary, which was supposed to have hordes of zombies invading viewers’ television screens the entire year round.
Returning to Life: Fall 2020
Once it became clear that covid-19 wasn’t going to go anywhere anytime soon, and that productions would simply have to learn how to live with the disease in the form of copious new safety precautions, the decision was made, at long last, to finish work on The Walking Dead’s season 10B. That last chapter finally aired on October 4, 2020, almost exactly six months after audiences got to see the previous episode and at precisely the time when the already-greenlit season 11 would, in a non-pandemic world, have begun. The development also kicked into gear the other attached properties, triggering World Beyond’s premiere that same night and, the following week, the advent of Fear the Walking Dead’s season 6A – the first time, minus the occasional supplemental webisode series, that two Walking Dead shows aired concurrently.
Everything would be wrapped up by November 29, marking a short-but-sweet deluge of undead content for audiences that were in the midst of a highly uncharacteristic drought (though, it should be noted, that Fear’s half-season was similarly cut short by one installment, repeating the same pattern from the beginning of the year).
Getting Back up to Speed: The First Half of 2021
The announcement of The Walking Dead’s season-10B-finale date came with another, shocking revelation: an additional tranche of six “bonus” episodes was ordered for early 2021, meaning that, for the first time ever, one of the show’s annual outings would consist of a third section.
The reasons for stuffing these extra tales in between seasons 10B and 11A are manifold, starting with the fact that the storytelling of the new season had already begun being plotted out months previously (before being put on hold, thanks yet again to the novel coronavirus), and throwing away all of that preproduction work was simply out of the question. Then there’s the more pragmatic concern of actually shooting during a pandemic; with vaccines still months away from being administered, the cast and crew had to contend with streamlined processes and (mostly) socially distanced sets – requirements that made impossible the series’s ordinary crush of walkers and bigger-budgeted action scope. As such, season 10C’s entries would mostly be smaller, more personal, bite-sized stories, seeding some of 11A’s developments and, more importantly, serving as the template for their filming (along with those of Fear the Walking Dead, World Beyond, and, presumably, all other AMC shows).
These “bonus” installments ran from February 28 to April 4, 2021, filling the gaping hole that viewers were keenly feeling – that was the stretch of the calendar that would’ve normally been occupied by the back half of a usual season. It also allowed Fear enough time to reconvene (using those new production protocols) and finish out its sixth season; those eps started up the week afterwards, on April 11, and concluded on June 13.
By the time June – and, therefore, the first half of ‘21 – came to a close, fans could be forgiven for feeling that things were more or less back to Dead normal.
Well, except for one small morsel of knowledge that now hung over all the proceedings.
Back in Full (Modified) Swing: The Latter Half of 2021
If the news of an extended Walking Dead season was buzzworthy, it was nothing compared to the announcement that followed a month-and-a-half later, in early September 2020: the already-ordered 11th season would be the television show’s last. What’s more, to give the writer-producers enough time to adequately provide an ending (particularly since the first eight episodes were already mapped out), an additional eight chapters would be tacked on to the order. Yes, that’s right – right after getting a season 10C, audiences would now also be receiving an 11C.
To help pave the way for the sudden denouement, a kind-of riff on the webisode undertakings started streaming on the premium service AMC+. The Walking Dead: Origins consisted of four releases that recapped the journeys of the four biggest characters – Daryl Dixon, Maggie Rhee, Negan Smith, and Carol Peletier – thereby simultaneously refreshing fans’ memories while also kicking the marketing machine into overdrive. This miniseries lasted from July 15 to August 5, 2021, leaving only two weeks for audiences to rest before the main event began.
And that big event, of course, is The Walking Dead’s long-delayed season 11A, which starts today, Sunday, August 22 (though subscribers to AMC+ could have already watched it last Sunday, the 15th – a feature that will continue all the way through to the end of the year). Now billed as the first part of the series’s final “trilogy,” it is set to conclude on October 10, at which time a repeat of last fall’s zombie-palooza will be instituted.
October’s crowded calendar, in fact, looks a little something like this: the month’s first two weekends will be shared between Walking Dead and The Walking Dead: World Beyond, with season 11A winding down and season two just starting up, respectively. Fear the Walking Dead’s season 7A will kick off the following weekend, on the 17th, once again running currently with its successor series.
Although no firm dates have been provided for November and December – and although there has been no word yet on whether some episodes will be doubled up, as what happened with World Beyond’s last two first-season installments – one can expect both Walking Dead spinoffs to wrap up on or by Sunday, December 5, 2021.
2022: Whence the Future?
The release dates for Fear the Walking Dead and The Walking Dead: World Beyond’s upcoming seasons are relatively recent pieces of information, having dropped only during San Diego’s Comic-Con@Home in late July – which means that guessing what 2022 has in store is a wide-open proposition. Still, certain educated guesses can be made, and they all revolve around the assumption that next year will largely be a repeat of 2021, just as this upcoming fall is largely a retread of 2020’s.
If so, then next year would unfold with the following air dates: The Walking Dead’s season 11B, from February to April; Fear’s 7B, from April to June; and, finally, Walking Dead’s 11C – the final segment of its ending “trilogy” – from August to October. Actually, betting on episode 1124, the series finale, landing in October 2022 is the closest thing to a guarantee, no matter how the rest of the preceding year shakes out; this is, after all, the month when the show started all the way back in 2010, and going off-air as close as possible to the exact anniversary date of October 31 has all the sorts of symbolism that AMC clearly craves.
The Walking Dead’s final season begins airing to the general public tonight, at 9:00 pm EDT, on AMC.