Some people may love to muse on how far The Walking Dead has fallen, at least critically speaking, but it is still one of the biggest shows on TV. Considering how almost universally popular The Walking Dead was for a time, it is easy to see why an army of detractors eventually formed. Hype naturally provokes backlash, and with the natural ebbs and flows in quality that even some of the best TV shows go through, The Walking Dead has concocted the perfect recipe for earning haters.
That is not to say that The Walking Dead does not have flaws, and that some seasons have not been much better than others. The common refrain among many is that Walking Dead is far from its best days, and that the show really should have ended years ago. Those people will see their wish fulfilled when The Walking Dead signs off after season 11, but it will be a hollow victory, as the overall Walking Dead franchise is poised to continue for perhaps decades to come.
Contrary to what those not in love with the show might attest, many people still watch The Walking Dead on AMC and its various streaming arms. Not to mention that the show may still attract new viewers who've yet to see the older seasons still available on services like Netflix. The Walking Dead may feature lots of rotting corpses, but the franchise's own death looks unlikely to happen anytime soon. The Walking Dead still remains a cash cow franchise for AMC.
When Did It Become Cool To Hate The Walking Dead?
While Rick and company's adventures at Hershel's farm during season 2 are often pointed to as a lower point for The Walking Dead after a strong debut season, there was one particular event that seemed to spur a mass exodus from the fandom. Season 6's finale famously saw the first appearance of Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), a character many would argue is The Walking Dead's quintessential villain. Negan had most of Rick's group lined up on their knees, pledging to kill one of them with his weapon Lucille right before the season ended.
The ploy worked in the short term, with huge viewership for season 7's premiere, with even some lapsed viewers coming back to see who Negan slayed. Similar to The Walking Dead comics, Negan violently killed both Abraham and Glenn to the shock of viewers, comprising two of the most hard to watch murders in TV history. While The Walking Dead had never shied away from gore, this proved too much for a large percentage of the audience, kickstarting a mass withdrawal in viewership and ending the show's peak of popularity. Over time, a substantial hated against the show grew.
Walking Dead Is Still One Of The Most Popular Shows
At its peak, The Walking Dead was drawing in 15-17 million same-day viewers on a weekly basis, an absolutely gargantuan number for a cable original. At that point, Walking Dead was not only the highest-rated scripted show in the prized 18-49 viewer demographic on cable but for all of TV. Many years later, The Walking Dead's ratings are definitely far removed from their heyday. Each new episode draws between 2 and 3 million same-day viewers on AMC, which is a steep decline from season 6 to be sure. In the grand scheme, this is still not bad at all.
During the time that The Walking Dead shed much of its viewership, linear TV as a whole has continued to hemorrhage viewers, with more people content to be entertained by streaming content. When compared to the competition in 2022, The Walking Dead still boasts some of the best overall viewership numbers for a scripted program, and it's also still the top show on cable among the 18-49 demo. In fact, spinoffs recently ended The Walking Dead: World Beyond are in the top 10 in that category too. Basically, The Walking Dead's main show is by no means going out on the bottom.
Walking Dead Became Great After Rick Grimes Left
Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) will forever be the character most associated with The Walking Dead. No doubt, many loyal viewers do miss the former Atlanta lawman. That said, the show has drastically improved since his departure during season 9. The Walking Dead had been too focused on Rick in particular for a long time, especially his conflict with Negan. With a cast this big, it was sad that so many great characters got short shrift. Without Rick in the center, The Walking Dead became a true ensemble piece and offered more characters more interesting things to do.
This uptick in quality did not only coincide with Andrew Lincoln's departure as Rick though, as the same period saw the emergence of Angela Kang as The Walking Dead's new showrunner. Departing showrunner Scott M. Gimple had seemed to become burnt out, with a lot of recent Walking Dead storylines appearing to run on autopilot. Kang freshened The Walking Dead up post-Rick with new characters getting focus, new villains quite unlike those seen before, a sizable time jump that allowed for some characters to evolve in interesting ways, and new points of conflict among the society of a world so far beyond the apocalypse.
The Walking Dead's Future Is Really Exciting Now
While The Walking Dead season 11, part 3 will bring the original zombie TV show to a close, those who still love the franchise have an absolute smorgasbord of new content still to look forward to. Perhaps biggest of the lot is the trilogy of theatrical movies starring Rick Grimes that are still in the pipeline and will explore what happened to Rick after his disappearance. Lead TV spinoff Fear the Walking Dead is also not planned to sign off anytime soon, already renewed for an eighth season.
The limited two-season run of The Walking Dead: World Beyond may be over, but its end set up a development that could change everything going forward, that being the reveal of a new type of zombie that is smarter and faster than usual. On top of all that is three announced spinoffs in the works, one starring Daryl, another called Isle of the Dead that follows Negan and Maggie in Manhattan, and an anthology series titled Tales of the Walking Dead. The latter may be the most interesting prospect, as it allows for both new characters to be introduced and past characters to temporarily return from the dead. In short, it is still a great time to be a Walking Dead fan.