The Walking Dead series premiered on AMC on Halloween night 2010. The pilot episode of this series is a prime example of how you start a series the right way by setting the tone from the get. This episode began with the death of an undead child, which was a shock to viewers who in that moment knew this was something exciting and different.
Based on the comic created by Robert Kirman, Tony Moore, and Charlie Adlard, the series took many liberties to make itself bigger and better than the source material, adding new characters and different character arcs. Some of these changes and additions were frowned upon by fans of the comic story, but overall, they gave the series much depth.
In 2015, AMC announced a new series, a companion to the flagship Fear the Walking Dead. This story begins at the onset of the outbreak as viewers travel along with the characters as they quickly acclimate to a world overrun by the undead.
The limited two-season seriesThe Walking Dead: The World Beyond would follow in 2020. It was an apocalyptic coming-of-age series with a significant focus on the CRM (Civic Republic Military).
Tales of the Walking Dead was an episodic anthology that told stories at different periods after the outbreak in different locations within the United States. All of the episodes introduced new characters except one, which featured the origin story of Samantha Morton's Alpha.
The next phase of spinoffs would be a series of direct spinoffs which are set after the conclusion of The Walking Dead, featuring many familiar charcters from that series.
The Walking Dead: Dead City features the continued stories of Maggie (Lauren Cohan) and Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) as they navigate post-apocalyptic Manhattan. This series will continue in 2025 with its second season.
Norman Reedus, who plays Daryl Dixon in TWDU, got his own spinoff in The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon. This story follows Daryl all the way to France where he encounters many new people. The second season, sub-titled The Book of Carol, re-introduced Carol Peletier (Melissa McBride) to the story, and the series will premiere its third season in 2025.
The sixth spinoff, The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live featured the long-awaited reunion of Rick (Andrew Lincoln) and Michonne (Danai Gurira). While this series has been called limited, that doesn't mean viewers will never see these characters again.
While the spinoffs have been excellent additions to TWDU you can't beat the main series for originality and paving the way for the spinoffs to follow.
The Walking Dead series is, by far, the best of the franchise. Without it, the spinoffs wouldn't have been possible, as no one expected the flagship to explode into the mainstream as it did. The series concluded in 2022, and fans still talk, read, podcast, and, as with this writer and numerous others, continue to create content around this story.
