Ten seasons and a lifetime later has seen The Walking Dead come from being a comic book to a live-action show to a phenomenon that a lot of people are ready to see end for good. Others are already lamenting what’s been lost and what was never seen as well as what they feel should have happened. But if years of watching TV and movies have taught us anything, and thankfully it has in a way, very few ideas are ever going to reach the small screen in their original form. This has been made pretty clear over the years as TWD fans have pointed out one inaccuracy after another and have even taken to calling out the show and the creator for the supposed lack of commitment that’s gone on during certain seasons. Season 11 though was already bound to shape up as something that would open the world of TWD up even further than it had been to date, since throughout the series it’s been seen that the main group, of which few are left, has had to endure one trial after another, racking up losses as they’ve gone along, and are only now going to understand that their own experience has been just a small part of the apocalypse that gripped the world.
The arrival of Mercer, chief officer of the Commonwealth, is already setting a lot of fans into a frenzy since they want to share in detail how much they know about this character and how much his presence is going to change things. Played by Michael James Shaw, Mercer will open the survivors up to the idea of the existing colonies that have managed to survive the zombie apocalypse by working together and utilizing methods that might be kind of harsh but are still effective to keep the people safe. Amazingly this revelation is coming at the end of the show that kicked off a couple of spinoffs and has entertained and inspired a legion of fans that have been here for every episode and every heart-wrenching moment that has transpired. How this is going to play out is kind of teased by the soundtrack that’s heard in the background, and the appearance of the major players still left after the Whisperer’s War.
The fallout of that conflict is still going to be fresh in the minds of the survivors no doubt, but the possible new threat that Mercer and his people will be seen as, or the salvation, already appears as an uncertain thing. Trust has never been easy to come by in TWD, not even in the first season when things were just getting started. Back then the trust issues were massive, as the only way to trust anyone was to make certain that certain values aligned and that there was an understanding that the group was stronger than the individual, at least in most cases. That held true in a lot of cases moving forward, but there were always those that proved to talk a great game but were out for something else since the survival of a small to medium-sized group wasn’t as difficult, but keeping a larger community afloat while they remained cognizant of the rules that they all agreed upon was exceedingly hard.
Despite all the kills that have occurred over the years, it’s been made clear that there are still plenty of zombies around and that there’s still plenty of danger. Season 11 will run for 22 episodes and will premiere this coming August, as many fans are likely glad to hear. Whatever delays happened due to the pandemic are no longer an issue since people have been staying safe and doing whatever is required to maintain their distance when possible and stay healthy. It’s fair to say that 2020 left a lot of people wondering if fiction was about to become reality in some way, but as a lot of people had already been arguing over, 2020 came and went, and humanity survived. The Walking Dead has been one of the best stories to come around in the last couple of decades, and despite the lackluster showing over the last few seasons, it’s still been highly anticipated with every season as fans return to see what will happen next.
To think that the emergence of the Commonwealth into the story is going to bust it all wide open just in time for the story to end is kind of tragic in a way, but at the same time, it might make people wonder if there are other spinoffs being planned, or if the movie that’s supposedly still coming will be the epilogue that people are hoping to see. While Fear The Walking Dead kept going strong for a while, The Walking Dead: World Beyond felt like a non-starter from the first episode. We’ll have to wait and see though.
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