The end is nigh for The Walking Dead. AMC announced today that the hit series will come to a close with its eleventh season. The good news is that this final run will be super-sized, lasting for a whopping 24 episodes instead of the usual 16. And it will be preceded by six additional episodes of season 10 in early 2021.
It didn’t take long after this news broke for us to get a moving teaser trailer for season 11, which promises an epic final chapter. Obviously, it doesn’t feature any new footage, but it does remind us of the long journey our survivors have been on across the show. Beginning with clips from season 1, the 47-second montage breezes through the past decade, showcasing all the major characters along the way. Maggie’s speech from the season 7 finale, meanwhile, is played over the top.
“We were all strangers, who would have just passed each other on the street before the world ended. Now we mean everything to each other,” Lauren Cohan’s character says. “From Atlanta, to my Daddy’s farm, to the prison, to here. To this moment now, not as strangers, as family.” Ok, who else has got something in their eye?
The trailer also confirms that season 11 will kick off in 2021. Presumably, the plan is for it to begin that fall, as per the show’s regular schedule. The run will then conclude in 2022. With 30 episodes – 31, if you include the season 10 finale – still to come, we essentially have two more seasons left to go, so it’s by no means the end just yet.
Plus, once the parent series concludes, there are various spinoffs set to follow it. Norman Reedus and Melissa McBride are definitely getting their own vehicle as Daryl Dixon and Carol Peletier, for one. With Angela Kang hopping over to oversee things, it looks like this currently-untitled series will essentially be the new central show of the TWD universe. There’s also Tales of the Walking Dead on the way, an anthology effort focusing on different characters each week.
The Walking Dead 10×16 “A Certain Doom” finally airs on AMC on October 4th.
