Warning! SPOILERS ahead for The Walking Dead season 11.
The Walking Dead series finale has to end the story satisfyingly as well as set up numerous future spinoffs, but it will be hard to strike the right balance. The Walking Dead has been the franchise’s flagship show for 11 seasons, keeping audiences enthralled with dangerous antagonists and the ever-present threat of losing a favorite character. Now, as The Walking Dead finally comes to an end, it is responsible for setting up numerous future shows, but the success of these projects is undoubtedly reliant on the audience’s reception of The Walking Dead finale.
This last season of The Walking Dead hasn’t felt much like a finale, largely because of the spinoffs that were arguably prematurely announced. If The Walking Dead series finale can’t pay off 11 years of storytelling in a satisfying manner, there will be little incentive for the core audience to keep on investing in the franchise. Failure to wrap up the central story will make the cancelation of The Walking Dead feel pointless, and the spinoffs feel like a chore, a way to drag out a story that should have already ended, rather than an interesting way to explore far-flung corners of The Walking Dead’s world.
The Walking Dead's Finale Faces A Difficult Balance
The Walking Dead finale needs to that its main goal is to finish its own story, rather than promoting several new ones. The Walking Dead is the story of people that found each other in a world in which they were never meant to survive. It is about the love they found with each other, the happiness, the trust, and the safety. Though the antagonists in the show, such as Alpha, Negan, the Governor, and even season 11’s Pamela Milton certainly made the series more interesting, they helped to tell the story of the survivors and how they continued to rise above conflict and fight for each other above all else.
That is the narrative that The Walking Dead needs to wrap up. The spinoffs should tell completely different stories. While The Walking Dead finale can certainly drop hints about these new projects, it shouldn’t be the main focus. To succeed, The Walking Dead finale should hold back on revealing too much information. That is one way to pique interest, but it also means that there is more time to say goodbye to these iterations of the characters before their lives are irrevocably changed in their respective spinoffs. The Walking Dead's spinoffs should be constructed in such a way that their stories don’t rely too heavily on exposition from The Walking Dead’s finale.
The Walking Dead's Spinoffs Have Hurt Season 11
Announcing the spinoffs before the final episodes was a mistake. One of The Walking Dead’s strengths has always been the omnipresent threat of beloved characters being ripped away when least expected. Glenn’s death, Carl’s death, Jesus’ death, all of these much-loved characters left behind a legacy. And, while their deaths were often shocking, it kept the audience on their toes and invested in the fates of the survivors. Announcing spinoffs for Maggie, Negan, Daryl, Rick, and Michonne mean that all these characters are safe from whatever final battle awaits in The Walking Dead finale. As a result, much of the suspense has been drained from the final season.
It’s also become clear that some of The Walking Dead franchise’s major storylines have been saved for later. This has hurt the pacing and tension of the final season. The CRM is yet to be unveiled, Daryl still needs to discover that Rick is alive, and Michonne has barely been mentioned. Major character events have also been entirely skipped over in this final season, leaving the audience to imagine them for themselves. There’s been a lot of setups, but with only one episode left to go, it’s hard to believe that The Walking Dead finale will be able to wrap everything up agreeably without relying too much on future projects to do the heavy lifting.
The Walking Dead concludes on Sunday on AMC.