The Walking Dead Complete Guide: All Spin-Offs & Watching Order
The franchise is getting bigger and bigger.
The Walking Dead is a full-fledged television universe with more than 300 episodes, a dozen video games, and a huge fan base that has not lost interest in the franchise in 14 years.
The main series is about the survival of a group of people after a zombie apocalypse that has destroyed human civilization. AMC was able to turn The Walking Dead into its biggest brand, which continues to live on despite the finale of the original series in 2022.
We have put together a guide to the zombie universe to answer how to approach it and where to start watching.
1. The Walking Dead, 2010-2022
The original series followed a group of survivors gathered by Rick Grimes for eleven seasons. The cast changes, people come and go, many beloved characters die, but the essence remains the same – the search for a safe place not to survive, but to live.
Grimes finds it in Washington, in a colony called Alexandria. He decides that it is time to stop traveling around the US, he must fight for this place. Not without difficulty, he manages to create peace in the region, after which Rick himself disappears without a trace.
The series ends with a conditional happy ending and an open finale with the possibility of continuing the story of a dozen characters. This is what AMC has done in the spin-offs.
2. Fear the Walking Dead, 2015-2023
The first and biggest spin-off. Over the course of eight seasons, its creators tried to experiment by introducing things that weren't in the original comics, but that could be explored in the context of a zombie apocalypse.
For example, the first season showed the beginning of the pandemic in Los Angeles. Madison and her impromptu group then fled to Mexico on a yacht and spent several seasons there.
This was the first opportunity for viewers of the TV universe to see what was outside the US and how the epidemic manifested itself in other countries.
3. The Walking Dead: World Beyond, 2020
A short, complete two-season series about a generation of teenagers who grew up after the zombie outbreak.
Two sisters, Hope and Iris, live in a small colony that is part of the Alliance of the Three. They learn that one of the members of the Alliance, the Civic Republic, is planning to get rid of the other two by causing an accident that will result in the death of all inhabitants.
After learning of such an incident in Omaha, they embark on a perilous journey to Portland to warn the people of the impending threat.
4. Tales of the Walking Dead, 2022
An anthology series that features stand-alone episodes in different genres.
For example, in one episode we see the romance between the characters of Terry Crews and Olivia Munn, in another we see a flashback into the past of Alpha, and in another there is a Groundhog Day-style episode in which the characters of Parker Posey and Jillian Bell are stuck.
5. The Walking Dead: Dead City, 2023-...
The first of the spin-offs that continued The Walking Dead after the series finale. In it, Maggie finds Negan and asks him to help her rescue her son. He has been kidnapped by Horvath's men, who have settled in Manhattan in New York and formed his own gang.
Negan agrees, but this journey becomes another test of their relationship, for despite all his merits, Maggie has never forgiven Negan for killing her husband.
6. The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon, 2023-...
In the second spin-off after the Walking Dead finale, Daryl Dixon finds himself in France. He is asked to escort a teenager named Laurent, who the locals believe will become the new messiah, to a safe place.
Along the way, Daryl faces new types of zombies and a French nationalist movement that is experimenting with the virus in hopes of containing it.
7. The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live, 2024
The third spin-off after the finale of The Walking Dead. In it, the writers return to the topic of Rick Grimes' disappearance after the ninth season of the original series and tell how he ended up among the soldiers of the Civic Republic.
Michonne went looking for him, and she also had to end up among the ranks of the militarized community in order to find a way to escape with Rick.