Why will The Walking Dead: World Beyond only last two seasons?

The new Walking Dead spinoff will only last 20 episodes over two seasons. Why are they doing it like this? Showrunner Matt Negrete has an explanation.

The Walking Dead is just a matter of days away from airing its much-anticipated season 10 finale, and right after that, we’ll be watching the pilot for an all-new spinoff: The Walking Dead: World Beyond.

Unlike The Walking Dead and Fear the Walking Dead, which have both endured multiple seasons, World Beyond will last only 20 episodes over two seasons. Why the time limit? Speaking to Entertainment Weekly, showrunner Matt Negrete has an explanation.

World Beyond looks to be unlike anything we’ve seen the Walking Dead universe before. Set 10 years into the zombie apocalypse, the series follows a group of teenagers who escape their safe community in order to embark on a treacherous quest. Sounds like a much more young adult “coming-of-age” plot than The Walking Dead, right? I feel like it’s an attempt to reinvent the franchise so things don’t become stale.  So far, the reception hasn’t been great, with the series receiving mixed reviews from critics.

But if fans reject it, AMC can just move on to the many other spinoffs it has planned. Of course, Negrete isn’t putting it quite like that. “The thing about World Beyond, it was always about how can we make this feel different?” he said. “How can we support expectations in a lot of ways? And one of those is not having it necessarily be open-ended. I’m kind of two minds about it, because right now we’re breaking episode seven of season two with the writers, and we’ve all fallen in love with these characters. So I think for all of us, we feel like we could write these characters forever. But, at the same time, it’s nice to be able to approach a series from beginning to end kind of knowing what our ending is going to be and working towards that ending.”

"It’s not like, ‘Oh, we’ll see what happens in season 6,’ or whatever. We’re going to go two seasons. It’s going to be 20 episodes total. It’s challenging, because there’s a lot we need to fit in those 20 episodes. But, at the same time, it’s great to approach it knowing what you’re working towards."

If they’re breaking the seventh episode of the second season, that means Negrete and his team are almost finished writing the entire show. “We’re closing in right now with the writers on the last few episodes,” he said.” So we’re getting down to the wire. It’s exciting. I hope people dig it.”

Personally, I’m excited to watch it, because it’s something unique and different from the franchise. And if we don’t like it, well, we have other options. After The Walking Dead comes to an end with season 11, we’re getting a spinoff featuring Daryl (Norman Reedus) and Carol (Melissa McBride), as an anthology show called Tales of The Walking Dead. We’ll also get a series of movies following Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln).

And we’re getting Fear the Walking Dead season 6 just a week after the season 10 finale. It might be going under the radar a bit considering the hype around the other shows, but we’ve been given some rather interesting teasers lately, including one posted by star Jenna Elfman (Naomi):

The official Fear The Walking Dead Twitter account also got in on the act with a short but action-packed teaser:

Both The Walking Dead season 10 finale and the premiere of World Beyond air October 4. Fear the Walking Dead season 6 releases a week later on October 11. That’s a whole lot of zombies.

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