The day will come when you won’t be (see what I did there?) tuning in to a new The Walking Dead spinoff. Eventually, The Walking Dead universe will need to be retired because it’s going to get repetitive. But for now, it’s still chugging along like a train. How many The Walking Dead spinoffs exist so far though? Quite a few if you can believe it, especially when including the upcoming spinoffs The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon and The Walking Dead: Rick & Michonne.
Naturally, some of the spinoffs aren’t up to snuff to fans and the following ranking may or may not surprise you. Get your teeth ready because we’re about to chomp at The Walking Dead spinoffs.
4. The Walking Dead: Tales of the Walking Dead
Experiments aren’t always successful and that’s alright, right? Tales of the Walking Dead is an anthology series about isolated stories involving new and already existing The Walking Dead characters. An anthology series for The Walking Dead universe should be fun. Unfortunately, Tales of the Walking Dead fails to grip fans and introduces concepts (such as time travel and loops) that make no sense for the universe as a whole. I haven’t fully watched the show, but from what I can tell, the spinoff will still remain at the bottom. If the series didn’t play around with weird concepts and gave us stories about characters we hadn’t seen in a long time, it would be more interesting.
3. The Walking Dead: World Beyond
Disliking The Walking Dead: World Beyond isn’t unpopular and while I don’t hate it, there are enough problems to land it low on the list. The Walking Dead: World Beyond is a spinoff that focuses on folks who are living in an isolated Midwestern community. Naturally, for their own reasons, some of the teens venture out of their community to see what’s beyond (ha) their walls. The series doesn’t suffer where performances from the cast are concerned and it’s quite diverse in regards to characters of color and queer folks. The Walking Dead: World Beyond primarily suffers from pacing and writing issues that aren’t easily ignored. Check it out but don’t have immensely high expectations.
The Walking Dead: Dead City
It was fair to be skeptical about The Walking Dead: Dead City because nobody asked for the series. Thankfully The Walking Dead: Dead City has proven folks (including myself) wrong about the series as a whole. In an effort to save her son, Maggie (Lauren Cohan) recruits Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) to assist her in New York. It may be a bit fucked up, but Maggie and Negan work quite well together even with their history. And the chemistry between Lauren Cohan and Jeffrey Dean Morgan is noticeable.
The writing for the series is actually not bad, the gore and Walker designs are stellar, and the performances from the main cast are nod-worthy. As someone who has seen all the episodes already, I can say that some fans will be excited about the ending, thus landing the series very high on the list.
1. Fear the Walking Dead
The virtual tomatoes will not penetrate the shield I have set up for this spinoff. Fear the Walking Dead is the first The Walking Dead spinoff, and it was fun to experience it from the beginning. The series originally started at the beginning of the zombie apocalypse and eventually caught up with The Walking Dead‘s timeline.
Season 1-3 focuses on Madison Clark (Kim Dickens) and her loved ones/allies and then Season 4-8A centers on Morgan Jones (Lennie James) from The Walking Dead and the chosen family he builds for himself. Just like The Walking Dead, the series focuses heavily on dysfunctional people and the ways the new world changes them. The writing may not be perfect for every season. However, Fear the Walking Dead was necessary for the franchise and gave us some of the most compelling characters in The Walking Dead universe, many of which are diverse and that’s something I’ve always appreciated about the series. It’s worth tuning into because of the horror, the various performances, and the drama.
(featured image: AMC)
