‘The Walking Dead’: Season 10, ‘Fear,’ and ‘World Beyond’ Updates

Is it a little on the nose that the most popular post-apocalyptic franchise on the planet’s one weakness turned out to be a global pandemic? Maybe so, but like most of the rest of the world, production on The Walking Dead and its spinoff shows and movies has pretty much halted for the time being as we all shelter in place and wait out the Coronavirus panic.

And it’s been hard not to think about The Walking Dead during this time; though thankfully the dead haven’t risen from their graves and started eating us — yet. Like with Contagion and other pandemic thrillers, the hundreds of hours of Walking Dead aired offer a certain sense of comfort to fans, knowing that if Daryl Dixon (Norman Reedus) and crew made it through, we will, too.

The good news is, there’s plenty of The Walking Dead to binge in your time of need, and there should be at least a few more episodes aired. However, the longer this goes on, the more it’s going to impact the franchise — and that’s something even Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) may not survive. Here’s what we know about what’s coming up for The Walking Dead, Fear the Walking Dead, The Walking Dead: World Beyond and more.

Is The Walking Dead going to air the rest of Season 10?

The answer, unfortunately, is no. In a statement released today by AMC, the network said:

“Current events have unfortunately made it impossible to complete post-production of The Walking Dead Season 10 finale, so the current season will end with its 15th episode on Sunday, April 5. The planned finale will appear as a special episode later in the year.”

This past weekend saw Michonne leaving The Walking Dead (though she’ll probably be back in the franchise at some point) with the season’s thirteenth episode, “What We Become.”

When will The Walking Dead Season 10, Episode 14 “Look at the Flowers” air?

Next up on Sunday, March 29 at 9/8c on AMC — or 48 hours earlier on AMC Premiere — we should get to see Season 10, Episode 14, “Look at the Flowers.” The ominously titled episode calls back to a classic Carol (Melissa McBride) moment from Season 4’s “The Grove,” when she was forced to kill the young Lizzie (Brighton Sharbino) after the latter killed her own sister. Here, we’ll be dealing with the fallout from Carol and Negan’s (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) alliance to kill Alpha (Samantha Morton), the leader of the zombie skin wearing Whisperers.

Not only that, but it looks from the promo (you can watch below) that Eugene (Josh McDermitt) will be trekking out to meet with Stephanie (Margot Bingham), a.k.a. the lady he’s been talking to on the radio for the past season or so. If you read the comics The Walking Dead is based on, you know where this is (probably) heading: Stephanie is a representative of a community called the Commonwealth that is far beyond the technological capabilities of Alexandra/Hilltop/Oceanside; though of course they’re hiding secrets of their own. Whether they’re connected to the overarching mystery of the franchise, the three rings/helicopter people/CRM army that took Rick Grimes and briefly plagued the Fear the Walking Dead folks remains to be seen.

Lots more will happen in the next episode, as Alpha’s head gets stuck on a pike, Daryl confronts Negan, and Alpha’s second in command Beta (Ryan Hurst) discovers her severed head and I’m sure takes the news extremely well.

When will The Walking Dead Season 10, Episode 15 “The Tower” air?

The penultimate episode of the season is currently scheduled to air on Sunday, April 5 at 9/8c on AMC, and 48 hours earlier on AMC Premiere. The capsule description teases, “The communities prepare for the final battle of the Whisperer War; meanwhile, Eugene’s group encounters Princess,” which is actually a lot more info than we used to get back in the day for the show where’d they be like, “The dead walk; someone is upset.”

Anyway, as noted about the previous episode, Beta is not going to take Alpha’s death lying down, and will be mustering what’s left of the Whisperers to take on Daryl and crew. In the comics, Beta also survives beyond Alpha; though in the books they release the herd at this point, which surrounds our good guys – an event that already happened on the show.

As for Princess? She’s a character from the comics as well, a manic pixie dream girl of the zombie apocalypse who becomes important to the Commonwealth storyline. On TV, Princess, a.k.a. Juanita Sanchez, will be played by Paola Lázaro.

When will The Walking Dead Season 10 Finale, Episode 16 “A Certain Doom” air?

The Season 10 finale of The Walking Dead was scheduled to air Sunday, April 12 at 9/8c on AMC, and 48 hours early on AMC Premiere. As is, it will air at an unspecified date later this year.

So what can we expect when it does air? The end of the Whisperer War, for one. Probably a big death or two, for another. Maybe a reunion between Connie (Lauren Ridloff), who was first lost in some collapsing caves, and then got separated from Magna (Nadia Hilker) in a zombie herd, and Daryl? That would be nice and romantic. Perhaps everyone’s favorite biker could finally get some smoochies, after 10 seasons.

We can also probably expect the set-up of Season 11, which (as mentioned above) will probably be some riff on the Commonwealth storyline from the comics. Speaking of Season 11, though…

When will The Walking Dead Season 11 premiere?

Great question! Though it seems at the current time that The Walking Dead Season 10 will air as normal up to the season finale, Season 11 is the first that may be greatly impacted by COVID-19. A lot (of course) depends on what happens in the next few weeks in Georgia. As of this writing, the state — home to The Walking Dead‘s massive production studio — has not shut down, though critics are pushing the governor to do so.

Normally, The Walking Dead is a year-round production; with one season wrapping, the crew prepping for the next season, then filming beginning again (usually around May). Right now, pre-production for Season 11 is on hold, while the writers are diligently working on scripts and overall arc. Last we heard, production was planned to resume in late April; but that may get pushed later, depending on how things fall out. Though no premiere date has been announced for Season 11 — that usually happens at San Diego Comic-Con in July, which is, itself, in doubt — The Walking Dead consistently debuts in October. The later Walking Dead has to wait to start shooting, the closer they’ll come to having to push that premiere entirely.

As is, though, given the smoothness and flexibility of The Walking Dead operation, it’s arguably one of the few shows in a very good position to hit its target debut date, since crew, cast, staff and even the production facilities have been stable for years. They’re still planning on pushing the debut down the road a few weeks, but that may mean late October versus the first weekend in October start dates of Seasons 9 and 10.

When will Fear The Walking Dead Season 6 premiere?

Though no debut date has been announced for Fear the Walking Dead Season 6, which finds the potentially but probably not dead Morgan Jones (Lennie James) and company dealing with a new community, we can sort of extrapolate when it might have premiered. The new spinoff The Walking Dead: World Beyond was supposed to premiere on April 12 right after The Walking Dead Season 10 finale (more on this in a second). The first season of that show was (and is) 10 episodes, so if it ran straight through would have wrapped up around June 14.

Fear has alternated between an April and June debut date for the past few seasons, so it stands to reason that AMC might have premiered Fear the Walking Dead Season 6 after the World Beyond finale, or the week following that. Then in usual circumstances, Fear runs its 16 episode season in two chunks, with a two-ish month break in between.

These, naturally, are not usual circumstances. Fear halted Season 6 production (which is based in Austin, Texas) midway through the season, syncing up luckily with a one week filming hiatus. As of a few weeks ago, Fear was planning on reconvening on April 13. This is idle speculation, mind you, but depending on how many episodes were finished — the show has been filming since the beginning of the year — it’s possible they may still be able to air on a regular schedule; or with a potential later start date, and less of a break than normal.

When will The Walking Dead: World Beyond premiere?

Yeah, so about that. The first 10 episode season of the teen focused spinoff was supposed to premiere on Sunday, April 12 on AMC. However, late on Friday night (March 20), AMC dropped the news that the series was delayed indefinitely, though still “coming later this year.”

There are a number of possible reasons for this, and the mind could certainly immediately go to “teens dying? now?” But sensitivity issues aside, there are a number of more business-focused reasons for the World Beyond delay. The first is that though the season is done shooting, COVID-19 is shuttering post-production houses, as well, and the series wasn’t done editing. The second is that with all of TV in flux, having a mostly done 10 episode complete season banked for the end of the year is a good idea for an ad-supported network like AMC.

The third, more complicated reason is that The Walking Dead is a massive machine, as you can probably tell from the schedule speculation above. World Beyond is part of that schedule; but it’s also a key part of an overall story being told in The Walking Dead universe that involves the mothership show, Fear, World Beyond and a still planned Rick Grimes focused trilogy of movies. With World Beyond airing as a two season long limited series event, it stands to reason that whatever happens on that show may feed directly into setting up the movies. That means the scheduling of the entire Walking Dead universe has to coordinate with Universal’s theatrical schedule — which has also been massively impacted by Coronavirus. Speaking of which…

So what about those Walking Dead movies? When will they be released?

Even before productions were shut down, there were no release dates or production schedule announced for The Walking Dead movie, or movies. We know that Andrew Lincoln will be in them, the first one will be released theatrically by Universal, and there’s a good chance that Michonne (Danai Gurira) will be popping up at some point, too, because last we saw her she was heading off in search of Rick. But at the current time, I’d put even more of a question mark on them than usual. Whatever happened to Rick, and wherever he went, we’re going to have to wait a while to find out.

This story has been updated to include the delayed finale of The Walking Dead Season 10.

Where to watch The Walking Dead

Where to watch Fear the Walking Dead