The Walking Dead wrapped up the first half of its tenth season in typically dramatic fashion. The penultimate episode, “Open Your Eyes” saw Alexandria doctor Siddiq murdered by Dante, who was secretly a Whisperer spy. As is traditional for the show, it was a particularly brutal death and marked a new escalation in the conflict between our core cast and the Whisperers. That continued to develop in last night’s midseason finale, which concluded with Daryl and his group trapped in yet another dangerous situation, having been outsmarted by Alpha.
The tension will make the wait for the Season 10B premiere an excruciating one for hardcore fans of the show. But now at least they know exactly how long that wait will be, as the series will return on February 23rd, 2020.
This second half of the season will be the centerpiece of a bumper year for the franchise, with a new season of Fear the Walking Dead inbound as well as the new series The Walking Dead: World Beyond. This means that there’ll be a new installment of The Walking Dead airing every Sunday for 40 weeks in 2020. On top of that, there are The Walking Dead movies, the first of which is still scheduled to be released next year (though I think it’ll probably slip until 2021 at this point).
Is this going to be a case of franchise overload? It certainly sounds like it could go that way. But then again, with persistent rumors that the main show will conclude with its twelfth season, they may be willing to go out with a bang while audiences still care about zombies. Whatever the case, whenever the show does wrap up, it’ll go down in history as one of the most iconic pieces of media in the zombie genre in its long history, and also as one of the defining shows of the decade.
