Does The Walking Dead: World Beyond revitalize the franchise, or is it, as one critic puts it, “a little bit like beating an undead horse”?
The Walking Dead: World Beyond, a new show about the first generation to grow up in the midst of the zombie apocalypse — is all set to premiere on October 4, but critics have already gotten their first glimpse at the upcoming series. According to them, it’s not all bad…but it’s not all that great, either.
One of the qualms I’ve had about the growing Walking Dead universe is that it could run the risk of feeling like more of the same. Even with the two shows we have already — The Walking Dead and Fear the Walking Dead — there’s a sense of repetition. And based on some of these reviews, it sounds like we’re in for more of the same.
For example, TV Line gave The Walking Dead: World Beyond a C- (based on the episodes they’ve seen thus far). “Those of us who tune in to the other two shows in the franchise have already been here, seen this — and we’ve seen it done with greater artfulness, efficacy and urgency,” writes Charlie Mason. “Adding this third series to the rotation, even temporarily, feels more than a little bit like beating an undead horse.”
TV Guide felt more or less the same when it came to the first two episodes, but gave it an even lower rating: 2/5, essentially a big fat F.
"Still, World Beyond doesn’t offer audiences fresh ideas or even fascinating characters for which to root. Rather — regardless of where you think they fit on the morality scale — it is the same level of banal. Even the zombies don’t seem all that pressed to attack them."
I mean, in the zombies’ defense, they’re probably all too decrepit and torn apart to do much at all at this point, right?
But not all critics feel this way. Variety applauds World Beyond for stretching the franchise in new directions:
"This is not a perfect series: The shots of the undead often look cheap and the rules of how these monsters are evaded have never felt more loosely applied. And yet there’s a willingness to reinvent, to genuinely probe a corner of the universe previously untouched, that makes this series feel serious in its intent and, for fans of the forerunning series, well worth checking out. Its willingness to place two young women at its center, and to make their emotional response to family upheaval the story of the apocalypse, shows a curiosity worth crediting."
I’m still on the fence about the series in general, but I’ve always been a Walking Dead fan, regardless of its ups and downs. I’m definitely going to give the series a shot, and I’m guessing my feelings will align closer with Variety’s.
Also, The Walking Dead: World Beyond is a limited series that will only last for two seasons, so there’s no danger of it dragging on past the point where it stopped being entertaining.
I’m excited that the show has a set beginning, middle and end, but given these mixed reviews, I’m not getting my hopes up too much.
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h/t Metacritic