What’s beyond The Walking Dead: World Beyond? Created as a two-season limited event series by showrunner Matthew Negrete and TWD chief content officer Scott Gimple, the spinoff is expected to stick to its planned 20-episode total run as a “close-ended series.” But because it’s all connected in the Walking Dead Universe, the characters who survive World Beyond — and those who don’t — could return in Tales of the Walking Dead. Gimple created the episodic anthology now in development at AMC, where there are plans to bring back dead fan-favorites alongside existing and new characters in the series spanning the entire Walking Dead timeline.
“Right now, the plan is for a two-year season, so we’ve been writing towards an ending at the end of season 2, and that’s what we’re gonna keep doing,” Negrete told Collider. “If AMC’s plans change, there is a part of me that feels like I could write these characters for much longer than that. If not, then creatively, I think that the audience will feel satisfied with where things end at the end of season 2.”
On the possibility of future seasons or characters continuing onto Tales, Negrete added, “There is a possibility of these characters appearing on Tales of the Walking Dead, whether it’s a glimpse at their past, or an opportunity to see where they are in the future after the show ends. I think all of those things are definitely possibilities.”
Now midway through its first season, World Beyond has already made multiple trips to the past to take glimpses at its characters’ lives pre-apocalypse, including Hope (Alexa Mansour), Felix (Nico Tortorella), and Elton(Nicolas Cantu). There’s also the so-far little-seen Dr. Leopold Bennett (Joe Holt), who is shaping up to be a key figure in the wider Walking Dead Universe with his ties to the Civic Republic’s search for a cure to the zombie plague.
In September, Negrete said the pre-determined ending point for World Beyond allowed the writers’ room the benefit of “knowing what our ending is going to be and working towards that ending.”
“We’re really looking at these two seasons as two very different feeling chapters of hopefully a very satisfying book,” he told Entertainment Weekly, adding of its planned ending, “We have a pretty good idea of where we’re going to land. It’s all going to end in a big climactic way — I can’t really say anything — but it’s going to be big.”
Follow the author @CameronBonomolo on Twitter for all things TWD. New episodes of The Walking Dead: World Beyond premiere Sundays at 10/9c on AMC.