In this day and age of multiverses and spin-offs, a TV or film franchise, more often than not, refuses to end. A case in point is The Walking Dead. AMC’s horror drama will conclude later this year with the final seven episodes of Season 11. However – a wealth of spin-offs will succeed the series once it bows out. The showrunners confirmed during a panel at San Diego Comic-Con 2022 that The Walking Dead finale will focus on the main story – and steer away from setting up spin-off projects.
“The finale is about completing The Walking Dead story, not setting up spinoffs,” Scott Gimple, The Walking Dead Universe chief content officer, confirmed during the event. The former showrunner, who left the series in Season 8, confirmed that there would be “room for those spin-offs, but full-on, The Walking Dead finale concludes the story of this 11 years. We didn’t want the spin-offs to get in the way of that satisfaction. They live together, I think, very nicely.”
Angela Kang, who succeeded Gimple as showrunner from Season 9, added that “even if there were no spin-offs, it would feel like there is a closure to the show itself.” She agreed that the main series “needs its own ending. But doors are left open, as they so often are in life, and as they were even in the ending of the comic. There’s always a story that’s continuing once the story that you tell on screen has ended, so that’s the spirit.”
From next month, a six-part anthology series, Tales of the Walking Dead, will premiere on AMC and AMC+. Andrew Lincoln and Danai Gurira, who portrayed Rick Grimes and Michonne in The Walking Dead, will be returning for a limited series spin-off in 2023. The Walking Dead returns to AMC and AMC+ from October 2 – with the final seven episodes of Season 11 airing weekly.