The hit TV hit The Walking Dead asks what happens after the world is overrun by zombies. But what happens after that? The? The Walking Dead: World Beyond shortens to 10 years after the zombie apocalypse and meets the adult children in a strange new world. Let's call it Booksmart with Zombies. Stand by me with more corpses. The breakfast club with current clubs.
World Beyond will unfold in just two seasons, starting on AMC Sunday October 4th in the US. International viewers will get a sneak peek when the show premieres on Amazon Prime Video on October 2nd. We're up to Season 10 of The Walking Dead and Season 6 of Fear the Walking Dead, which means quite a bit of time has passed since the day The Undead rose, and that's the angle World Beyond takes.
The new show will open in a community that has settled into the new normal. Schoolchildren learn how to poke "empties" through the eye. Excursions are accompanied by tough guys with leather jackets and sharp sticks. The townspeople live in beautiful houses, but the terminally ill have bars on their doors just in case. These are people who found a way to live among the dead.
Of course, anyone who watched the original Walking Dead series knows what happens when people settle too much in even the most convenient of settlement. Except in the world beyond. The first of the two biggest problems with World Beyond is that it's just pretty cozy.
The settlement feels rather undramatic and the zombies are barely treated as a threat, with little of the creeping tension permeating the original show. The arrival of the ambiguous, black-clad Civic Republic Military, an organization familiar to longtime deadheads, is somewhat exciting. But it's not exactly exciting, even when Hope and Iris set off into meandering set pieces beyond the security of the city walls.
In each of the first two episodes AMC shared with the press, there's at least one deliciously dark image that zombie fans are sure to crave. But the plot is otherwise curtailed by the irresistibly inventive and notoriously evil Göriness of the main show and the previous spin-off from Fear The Walking Dead.
Of course, it doesn't have to be the end of the world. It might not be the Splatterfest that hardcore horror fans want, but it does invite a wider audience. World Beyond is basically a young adult's attitude towards the Walking Dead, and that's fine.
This YA version of Walking Dead centers on a gang of teenage outsiders, each with their own backstory and portrayed in decent appearances by the young cast. Hope and Iris are two sisters at school who couldn't be more different. The student president and the tough rebel, but both look to a future beyond their sun-drenched, all-American small town.
Familiarity is the bigger problem, and not just the scene where a teen turning to school tears up their speech to speak from the heart instead. When we call it "World Beyond" we see a new perspective on the universe of the walking dead. Perhaps we will introduce ourselves to fascinating surroundings that we have never seen before or investigate how the zompocalypse affected another part of society, like Fear the Walking Dead did on a boat trip to Mexico. At least we could expect World Beyond to look a little different than the previous shows. But no: it's just another road trip through the dusty roads and green forests of rural America.
Again, these are only the first two episodes. Our band of misfits may make it into new territory and the drama and horror may build on, but you'd expect the premier to at least hint at something fresh.
World Beyond has something for long-time viewers: a closer look at the Civic Republic, the mysterious black-clad army that delighted the protagonist of the original show, Rick Grimes, in season 9 with a helicopter
. Whether that's enough to entice fans into a relatively bloodless version of the Walking Dead universe remains to be seen.
