‘The Walking Dead’ Universe was once a hulking juggernaut and ratings reaper, but those days seem long ago now. Right now, the universe has 2 active series, ‘Dead City’ and Daryl Dixon’. The ‘Dead City’ finale aired this past week and many fans have yet to even watch a single episode from it’s second season.
The season premiered to a viewership of only 378,000, which is the lowest of any TWD series period…and there have been some questionable ones. While hardcore fans may chalk this up to franchise fatigue, which TWD helped create, others point to a markedly obvious drop in quality. While season 1 has a respectable 80% RT score, season 2 has dropped as low as 48% but currently (article updated 07.22.25) has clawed it’s way back up to a mediocre 63%. Warning, beyond this point there are spoilers for “The Walking Dead: Dead City” season 2 and the TWD-U as a whole.
The season premiered to a viewership of only 378,000, which is the lowest of any TWD series period…and there have been some questionable ones.”
The season has had it’s high points, with multiple big budget battles, but the finale was surprisingly slow paced with Beverly little action. There was a lot of deep psychological delving into our main characters and the revel of a major character death, but it just didn’t feel like your typical TWD finale, which in all fairness was usually directed by Zombie genre Godfather Greg Nicotero.
Perhaps the biggest moment in the finale was when Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) reemerged as his classic version, even giving us an ‘eeny meeny miney moe’ moment with a traumatized Maggie (Lauren Cohan) watching in the shadows. This lineup for some reason only had 2 people, which made it a strange choice due to the fact that classic Negan admittedly put on these shows to effectively control people, but who would he control out of his 2 person lineup? Even if the message was for his own people, there were only a couple of Negan loyal redshirts there so again, where’s the logic?
Maggie turns the tables on Negan, which is rewarding, but she can’t bring herself to finish the job and end this 90 year old storyline…which she knows will cost her the love and trust of her only son. This turn of events is at least more believable, due to the fact that Negan and Maggie find Ginny’s zombified corpse in the moment when Maggie is about to end it, which just changes everyone’s mind. Would Maggie really give up her son for Negan? It seems that way for now.
The New Babylon storyline is given a sloppy attempt at closure, but it also makes little sense how an army can just March right in when they were struggling to gain any recruits in the first few episodes of the season. Hershel (Logan Kim) goes away with the Dama (Lisa Emery), but her kingdom is gone, so how long can the two survive this way? The finale doesn’t do a good job of acting as a series finale if the show isn’t picked up, which seems like a trend these days.
Across the pond, ‘Daryl Dixon’ was finally given a release date for it’s third season – September 10th of this year. We also know that Daryl has already been renewed for season 4. ‘Daryl Dixon’ season 2 ratings saw a drop from season 1, but had a significantly higher percentage than Dead City, which may be attributed to the overseas factor, which many be drawing a more worldwide audience than the NYC-centric ‘Dead City’. The season will allegedly be taking place in Spain, but we have to wonder what the end game there is.
TWD went off the air almost 3 years ago and by the time ‘Daryl Dixon’ season 3 airs, we’ll have been given 38 episodes of new TWD content. It seems that the fans cared more about the entire community and not just their favorite characters. Will Scott Gimple and AMC learn from these revelations? How many more seasons of these low rated shows can AMC withstand before they pull the plug on the universe for good? As longtime TWD fans, the Binge Rampage team hopes for the best, but we also realize that we may be close to the end of the TWD Universe. Would AMC just reboot at that point father waiting a few years? As networks are notions for playing money-ball or following the stats, there’s a good chance that is the case, but for now let’s hope ‘Daryl Dixon’ can figure out a way to claw back at least a small percentage of all the fans the universe has lost in the last 5 years.
What do you think? Is ‘Dead City’ done for after a lackluster second season? Do people care enough about Daryl and Carol for the duo to carry the franchise? How can AMC coax Andrew Lincoln (who hasn’t been busy) back to kill more Walkers?
Let us know what you think in the comments below!
