It’s The Walking Dead day at our kind of sad, not in person Comic Con happening this weekend, and we are starting to get a picture of when the show is coming back, to a certain extent.
There are three series to get through, and we have dates set for the return of all of them, even amidst COVID filming and post-production problems.
We are still about two months away from the return of The Walking Dead, and that includes the long awaited season 10 finale that was cut off the end due to the pandemic shutdowns.
So the dates we have are:
October 4, 2020 – The Walking Dead Season 10 finale airs, followed immediately by the pilot of The Walking Dead: World Beyond, which is how it was supposed to air in the first place months ago.
October 11, 2020 – A week later, Fear the Walking Dead will return for its “anthology” season 6 which will feature a bunch of individual character episodes and time jumps. I believe this means that World Beyond and this will be airing on the same night in the fall.
The Walking Dead’s event wasn’t really “live” as they just posted an hour long YouTube video of their panel right at 4 PM ET that you can kind of skip through, but I found that news and ran with it. I am still not sure what is going to happen with season 11 of the show, but considering season 10 has not begun filming yet, it is a safe bet that we will not see that until some time in 2021, pandemic permitting.
There are a number of questions we need answered in the season 10 finale, the three most pressing being A) who kills Beta (I mean, assuming someone kills him and we don’t have another imprisoned Negan situation on our hand B) how Maggie comes back and what she’s been doing C) who that mystery masked person is from the season 10 finale trailer (see above).
It’s good to see The Walking Dead returning, but we may have to wait a bit for the series, all the series, to get fully back on their feet. October is the jumping-off point, but there remain filming and post-production issues to overcome, which may be difficult, especially given a show that constantly features…enormous hordes of zombies crammed into small spaces. Yes, I think we understand the irony of a show about zombies contending with an actual deadly virus pandemic, but it seems they are trying to make it work while being safe.
I am excited to see the finale, certainly, and I can finally talk about World Beyond after watching the pilot like three months ago and having that embargo moved indefinitely. But there are still over two months to go, so fans will have to wait a little longer. Check back here for news items that may pop up in the next hour or two here.
Update: So two things confirmed – Season 11 is indeed delayed to 2021, but other than that there are going to be six “bonus” season 10 episodes that air in early 2021 before season 11. Yet the finale is staying the “finale.” We are sort of in uncharted waters here, but we’ll figure out what that means down the road, I suppose. They probably sort of had to restructure the entire next season, and this may be a part of that.
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