The Walking Dead crew discuss ending the show after 11 years

Believe it or not, AMC’s long-running zombie series The Walking Dead is finally ending later this year. That’s 11 seasons in 11 years, totaling well over150 episodes! The show will conclude at pretty much the same point in the timeline as Robert Kirkman’s comics.

It was only a few years ago that the folks at AMC had aspirations to keep the show on air for forever. In 2019, AMC boss David Madden hinted to TheWrap that there were no plans to end the show anytime soon. “I’m not saying the show will go 20 seasons,” he said. “But I’m not saying it won’t.”

Fast forward a couple of years and the show is about to make its final bow. Apparently, that decision was not made lightly. “It certainly was hotly debated and discussed,” AMC president Dan McDermott told Entertainment Weekly. “Not only internally here, but with [Walking Dead chief content officer Scott M. Gimple], and Angela Kang, and the creative team. At the end of the day, all great shows have to come to a conclusion. We’re talking about 11 seasons of this one.”

Gimple himself was taken aback by the announcement. He had plans for future storylines which suddenly needed to be condensed, removed or put on the back burner for future spinoff projects. “That was AMC,” he said. “It was heavy when it happened. I wasn’t expecting it and had all sorts of plans for the future. When the end was announced, it was like, ‘Okay, how do we pivot?’ ‘How do we enmesh even some of our plans for the future into this final season? And how do we do it in other ways, outside the series?”

I imagine that Robert Kirkman suddenly ending his comic without warning made producers wonder if they should wrap things up as well.

Could we see Rick and Michonne in The Walking Dead series finale? 

The Walking Dead hasn’t really kept too many secrets about its final season. I mean, we know that most of the central cast will survive because they’ve already been confirmed to appear in spinoff shows. So if the writers are going to shock us, it’ll have to be something big.

And what’s bigger than the return of Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) and Michonne (Danai Gurira)? That’d be more than enough to drive the fandom wild. When EW asked about a potential return, Angela Kang gave just about the most obvious response ever. “I can’t answer that question. But I appreciate you asking.” Gimple also played it coy: “I’d never tell you that in a million years.”

The Walking Dead spinoffs: Less is more

Several Walking Dead spinoffs are on the way. Unlike the main series, which had 24 episodes in its final season, the spinoff shows are starting smaller. “Going forward, the Rick and Michonne show is six episodes,” said McDermott. “The Daryl Dixon show is going to be six episodes. The Maggie and Negan show is going to be six episodes. We have Tales of the Walking Dead. So you’re actually going to see fewer hours of Walking Dead content on our platforms.”

The main show may be ending, but The Walking Dead franchise is far from dead. Dead City, the one with Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) and Maggie (Lauren Cohan), is set in a zombie-infested Manhattan.

You can catch the final eight episodes of The Walking Dead season 11 starting October 2. As always, AMC+ subscribers can get new episodes one week early.

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