It’s been years since I unequivocally liked the show, whereas I still like my wife. Here’s how far back I go with this show: I’m a husband and a father who took my time getting to the altar and delivery room, but I met Carol and Daryl before I met my wife. Only two characters from the first season lasted continuously to the end: Carol (Melissa McBride) and Daryl (Norman Reedus). I’m not sure how it happened, but I’ve been in a long-term relationship with The Walking Dead, which (amid its trio of spinoff setups) played against type with a mostly optimistic, sentimental series finale. There’s a lot of TV out there. We want to help: Every week, we’ll tell you the best and most urgent shows to stream so you can stay on top of the ever-expanding heap of Peak TV. And for better or worse ( depending on the episode), it told an expansive story, one that followed in the footsteps of the comic without always being beholden to it. It kickstarted the aftershow trend, launched a wave of zombie shows and comics adaptations, established big- and small-screen stars, and became a very visible example of increasing cast diversity on TV. It helped usher in an era in which shared universes based on genre IP would become the calling cards for networks and streaming services: Game of Thrones for HBO and HBO Max Marvel and Star Wars for Disney+ Star Trek and ( most) Taylor Sheridan shows for Paramount+ The Boys and The Lord of the Rings for Prime Video. It spawned a still-extant franchise and remade AMC into a Walking Dead delivery system responsible for one completed spinoff ( The Walking Dead: World Beyond), two active spinoffs ( Fear the Walking Dead and Tales of the Walking Dead), and at least three future spinoffs slated for 2023 ( The Walking Dead: Dead City, featuring Lauren Cohan’s Maggie and Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s Negan, and the self-explanatorily titled Daryl Dixon and Rick & Michonne). SpoilerTVĭespite The Walking Dead’s latter-day decline, the series leaves a large legacy. The series’ linear ratings first skyrocketed and then crashed, a consequence of variable writing, repetitive plotting, and the industry’s shift toward streaming, which saw the series’ back catalog added to Netflix and new episodes premiere on AMC+. As the creative reins passed through the hands of four showrunners and fan-favorite characters came and went, The Walking Dead’s quality waxed and waned in frustrating fashion, fluctuating from pulp to prestige and silly to serious from episode to episode and season to season. ![]() Early seasons offered a frequently watchable blend of creature feature and golden-age drama with existential stakes, courtesy of an ever-popular postapocalyptic setting. It premiered in October 2010, a different time for TV, when fellow AMC series Breaking Bad and Mad Men were midway through their runs, cord-cutting was a fledgling movement, and the first Netflix scripted original was more than a year away. If a reanimated corpse falls in a forest in Georgia and no one is watching, does it make a sound? The Walking Dead has generated less and less noise in recent years, as its viewership and cultural salience have ebbed. After 12 years, 11 seasons, and 177 episodes, the TV institution that introduced audiences to Rick and Carl, Carol and Daryl, Maggie and Glenn, Morgan and Michonne, and several settlements’ worth of other mostly long-departed protagonists-not to mention a host of sadistic, tyrannical adversaries, from the Governor to Gareth to Negan to Alpha to Season 11’s new governor, Pamela Milton-is finally no more. But even the undead decompose, permanently impale themselves, or suffer fatal brain injuries eventually, and the series that gave countless extras screen time as shambling corpses couldn’t keep shuffling forward forever. On Sunday, the series finale of The Walking Dead aired on AMC, spurring all but the hardest-core Deadheads to wonder, “Wait, The Walking Dead was still on?” It was, somehow Robert Kirkman’s comic ended more than three years ago, but the TV adaptation long outlasted its source series and its own peak popularity, prompting persistent comparisons to its untiring titular monsters.
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