The Walking Dead: World Beyond season 1 finished filming before coronavirus, and season 2 is now being written. With the upcoming first season of World Beyond, the Walking Dead universe will indeed expand beyond where it’s gone before, introducing a new community and a whole new set of characters.

Of course, the existence of these other communities in the TWD universe have already been thoroughly teased via the “helicopter mystery” introduced on the flagship show. Indeed, more secrets about this mysterious group are set to be revealed on World Beyond – though fans should definitely not count on any resolutions to questions about what happened to Rick Grimes after he was taken by the helicopter. Primarily though, the new show will focus on a group of young survivors who’ve spent their whole lives within a sheltered community and now find themselves leaving the safety of their home to embark on an adventure among the zombie hordes.

Appearing as a member of AMC’s The Walking Dead: World Beyond panel during Comic-Con@Home 2020, showrunner Matt Negrete talked not only about the show’s upcoming first season but also gave a progress update about season 2 – and the news appears to be good all around. He said (via Comic-Con International):


Obviously, the Covid situation struck The Walking Dead hard as it forced the delay of the season 10 finale episode, which was not finished with post-production before California was hit with coronavirus shutdown orders (the episode will now air on October 4). But it sounds like World Beyond barely dodged a bullet by getting its own ten episode first season in the can before things went into lockdown mode.

Of course, World Beyond is set to be unique in the Walking Dead universe in that it will not be an open-ended story, but will instead wrap up a full narrative after season 2. This is an important point about the show as it guarantees fans will get a satisfying wrap-up to the story rather than being strung along season after season, becoming increasingly frustrated with certain repetitive narrative tricks (indeed the original TWD has often been guilty of feeling like a drawn-out affair with no sense of narrative direction).

Though it’s yet to be seen if World Beyond will truly represent the refreshing boost the TWD franchise so sorely needs a decade into its run (and with a Rick Grimes movie still in the offing), at the very least Negrete and company can be credited with trying new things in terms of closed-ended narrative, setting and character variety (the show being about younger characters instead of adults). The Walking Dead: World Beyond is set to hit AMC on October 4, 2020.