The Walking Dead is no stranger to filling its episodes with easter eggs. The show is well-known for being heavy-handed with its foreshadowing of upcoming characters, locations and events, and it’s even gone so far as to call into question whether it shares a universe with AMC’s Breaking Bad, as evidenced by one character’s possession of blue meth in an early season.
You may have missed one clever yearly update to the show’s credits, though. Prior to season 9, The Walking Dead‘s logo decayed slightly more each season to signify the continued decay of its post-apocalyptic world. Year after year, the once prominent and bold lettering became more and more cracked and yellowed until it was hardly recognizable from its original version.
This continued until season 9’s departure of Rick Grimes and the resulting significant time jump that picked back up with our favorite characters 6 years later. With the new animated opening credits sequence that clearly drew inspiration from the source comics, The Walking Dead‘s logo once again changed – this time to a green hue that showrunner Angela Kang has described as “solid stone letters overgrown with greenery.” The current logo is meant to signify growth for our characters and civilization as everyone begins to rebuild the world they’ve fought so hard to reclaim.
The Walking Dead is now on its tenth season and as its characters engage in the aforementioned rebuilding of their world, the show has managed to equally rebuild much of its fanbase that was lost during seasons 6-8 due to poor writing and slow pacing. Indeed, it’s once again become one of television’s best dramas just in time to possibly go out on a high note.
You can catch The Walking Dead‘s penultimate season 10 episode on Sunday at 9pm, but you’ll have to wait until later this year to see how things wrap up.
