After avoiding the issue for more than 10 years, the mystery of how The Walking Dead virus started was finally explained in spinoff series The Walking Dead: World Beyond. When writing his comic series, Robert Kirkman deliberately chose not to reveal the TWD zombie origins, and throughout the entire story, he never comes close to deciphering the truth. AMC's The Walking Dead also consistently shied away from revealing too much about the zombie virus. The closest The Walking Dead ever came was season 1's CDC episode. However, the Walking Dead: World Beyond season 2 finale post-credits sequence gave the TWD zombies an origin story.
The Walking Dead zombie virus started in Europe. The scene which confirms the origins in World Beyond takes place at a biomedical facility in France. Though long since abandoned, one of the lab's former researchers returns in hopes of continuing her work to discover a cure, but she's accosted by an unidentified survivor. When the scientist declares her optimistic intention to end TWD's zombie apocalypse, her attacker replies, "End this? You started this." On the wall, there's also the rather ominous message, "Les Morts Sont Nés Ici." For non-French speakers, this broadly translates to "The Dead Are Born Here."
How Did The Walking Dead Virus Start
The TWD Zombie Outbreak Began In France
From these two huge clues, only one possible conclusion can be drawn — The Walking Dead zombie apocalypse finds its roots in a French laboratory. According to the smoking man, the facility housed numerous teams (he mentions the Violet team and the Primrose team) that worked on a project that ultimately became the TWD zombie origins. Since the Primrose team had traveled to the U.S. shortly before the outbreak, it's possible other countries were involved in the study too, rather than France alone shouldering the blame.
Moreover, it's implied in the World Beyond post-credits scene that the researchers had no intention of releasing the virus and infecting the world, hinting the virus somehow wriggled its way out. While the smoking man blames the Primrose and Violet teams for creating the virus, the scientist makes an accusation of her own, vaguely stating, "When it [the outbreak] happened... When you did what you did."
Though there's plenty of room for interpretation here, she could be implying that the smoking man was part of a group who, pre-The Walking Dead season 1, learned about the virus being developed and attacked the facility, only to accidentally release it, making both parties culpable.
Robert Kirkman believed The Walking Dead was better served by keeping the outbreak's explanation a mystery, so it's interesting to see the TV series finally abandon that founding principle. However, it's also somewhat unsurprising. Now that Kirkman's comic material is spent, exploring the creation of the zombie virus (and how to stop it) is the next logical chapter for The Walking Dead.
Does Revealing The Walking Dead Virus Origins Kill The Show’s Mystery?
The Zombies Having No Origin Story Underpinned TWD For A Long Time
The revelation of The Walking Dead virus origin essentially kills the show's biggest mystery, but this isn't necessarily a bad thing for television's longest-running zombie series. While viewers are still divided about whether it was a good choice for the ending of Walking Dead: World Beyond, there is always going to be some controversy attached to violating one of the zombie genre's time-honored traditions — keeping the origins of the zombies a mystery.
Though the reveal also goes against the Walking Dead creator's intentions, it's a necessary risk that properly sets up the franchise's next years, which will see the release of several spinoff series. The death of the show's biggest mystery only opens up new mysteries that can support future stories, such as why the French created such a self-destructive pathogen or how the CRM is involved with how The Walking Dead zombie virus took over the planet.
The Walking Dead virus being man-made is just one piece of a convoluted puzzle, and more pieces were revealed in spinoffs like the Daryl Dixon series and The Walking Dead: Dead City series featuring Negan and Maggie, which were both released in 2023. The Walking Dead has always been about the sacrifices and moral dilemmas that accompany a catastrophe of global proportions, so keeping the focus on human nature rather than biological mysteries is in tune with the franchise's overall direction.
Daryl's Spin-Off Shows The Outbreak Ground Zero
Daryl Dixon Season 1 Is Set In France (But Doesn't Reveal Much About The Virus)
Now it's been established where the initial zombie outbreak occurred, the Daryl Dixon spinoff show explored the TWD zombie virus ground zero and took Norman Reedus's character to France. The geography around where the TWD zombie origins first emerged is very different from where the flagship show was set. Many of the characters in The Walking Dead were ripped straight from Robert Kirkman's comic book series, but Daryl was a wholly original creation.
In his spinoff that takes place after The Walking Dead, Daryl sails across the Atlantic to continue his journey in post-apocalyptic France — and it's a much more dangerous place given that's where the virus started. However, while many thought that The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon would probably explore the origins of the zombies featured in The Walking Dead at a much greater capacity, it didn't delve too deeply into the show's lore.
Kirkman Originally Offered A Different Explanation For TWD Zombie Origin
The Zombies Are Created By Space Spores In The Walking Dead Comics
At a 2017 SDCC panel, Robert Kirkman said it was unlikely AMC’s The Walking Dead would ever have the zombie virus origin revealed because it would make the show “boring.” The following year he teased fans in a since-deleted Tumblr Q&A that how the zombie apocalypse started in The Walking Dead was a “sci-fi thing that would make the story all that much weirder.” It wasn’t until January 2020 that the cryptic tease about the start of the zombie apocalypse in The Walking Dead paid off on Kirkman’s Twitter account, though it won't appear in any of The Walking Dead spin-off shows.
In a tweet that has also since been deleted, Kirkman declared “space spores” as responsible for starting the zombie apocalypse. While that isn’t the direction The Walking Dead chose to take, it still would have made for a fascinating choice in the otherwise very earth-bound series. Everything in the series is grounded in reality, but space spores would have stretched the imagination. Perhaps it was too similar of a concept for the series to George A. Romero’s Night Of The Living Dead which featured radiation from space reanimating corpses. With zombie stories so prevalent in the horror genre, creators want stories to stand out.
How Fans Reacted To The Walking Dead Zombie Virus Origin Reveal
Some Felt The Walkers Were Better Without A Backstory
While the origin of the walkers was kept mysterious for many years, reactions to the reveal of the zombie virus in The Walking Dead were somewhat surprising. There were, of course, many fans who were against the decision to reveal how the zombie outbreak started, and others who were happy that The Walking Dead: World Beyond finally answered questions around how the TWD walkers were created. However, especially given how important zombies are to the show, it was surprising to see how uncontroversial the revelation was among The Walking Dead fanbase.
The zombie origins being revealed certainly caused discussions, but it wasn't the big debate-starting point many anticipated it could have been. This is likely because, outside the fact that it specifically started in France, the "reveal" wasn't actually much of a reveal at all. Most fans had already assumed the walkers appeared as the result of some kind of scientific experimentation gone awry. Confirmation that this was the case was welcomed by some, regretted by others, but ultimately wasn't a huge shock.
In other zombie movies and TV shows, most undead are created similarly — in a lab by scientists performing dangerous genetic experiments. Sometimes this is accidental, and sometimes (such as in the Resident Evil franchise), it's deliberate. The only other causes tend to be magic, such as Necromancy, though this wouldn't be fitting for The Walking Dead. Maybe if the spinoffs delve further into the origins of the zombie virus there will be some shock revelations that cause more of a debate. For now, the fanbase seems pretty ambivalent when it comes to what The Walking Dead: World Beyond revealed about where the walkers plaguing humanity came from.
