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The Walking Dead season 11 finale spoilers follow.

After 177 episodes and countless zombie casualties, The Walking Dead is no more. Well, the main show, at least. Beyond the final episode, titled 'Rest In Peace', some of your favourite survivors are going to do what they do best still, and that's survive.

But why did The Walking Dead shuffle off our screens in the first place? And when is Dog going to get his own spinoff show? Here's everything you need to know about life after death where The Walking Dead franchise is concerned.

The Walking Dead won't be getting a twelfth season, but we've known that for quite some time now. Way back in September 2020, AMC announced that the end was nigh, although they did add extra episodes to the final season, bumping the final chapter up to an unprecedented twenty-four episodes.

The Walking Dead chief content officer Scott Gimple explained in a statement that the flagship show will end to make way for new stories:

"We have a lot of thrilling story left to tell on TWD, and then, this end will be a beginning of more Walking Dead — brand-new stories and characters, familiar faces and places, new voices, and new mythologies. This will be a grand finale that will lead to new premieres. Evolution is upon us. The Walking Dead lives."

It sounds like AMC and the crew came to an amicable agreement, deciding together that this was now the perfect time to end the show. That makes a lot of sense given how long The Walking Dead has been on the air. Very few scripted shows have carried on beyond 177 episodes, so it's better to go out when there's still some demand rather than wait until everyone's given up on the series.

This also wouldn't be the first time that a show has ended to help set up brand-new spinoffs. Power did the exact same thing just recently by commissioning four extra shows that expand the original Power universe.

Ratings probably weren't a huge factor here, because they alone weren't bad enough to warrant the cancellation, despite a drop in recent years.

The Walking Dead premiered to 5.35 million viewers in 2012 with one of the largest debuts in cable history, and at its peak, 17 million people watched the show live. Halfway through season three, The Walking Dead enjoyed a run of 75 consecutive episodes with more than 10 million same-day viewers, which was practically unheard of back then, and especially now.

Since then, season ten ended up with the show's lowest ratings ever, drawing in just three to four million people watching live. But when you combine that with global audiences and catch-up TV, The Walking Dead has still been performing at a high level, and this kind of erosion is natural in the age of streaming anyhow.

That's why we wondered if there might be more to the story behind this cancellation than we first realised, and it now looks like that could be the case...

During a recent chat with Collider, Jeffrey Dean Morgan (Negan), suggested that Gimple and showrunner Angela Kang were actually quite taken aback by the announcement:

"The news, when we got it in the middle of the pandemic, was a complete surprise, not only to me and the rest of the actors, but to everybody involved in the show from production. Scott Gimple and Angela Kang had no idea either."

"It came from nowhere and there was such a huge pivot," adds Morgan. "I think they had Season 11 all mapped out, where they were going to go, and suddenly it became, 'We also have to close the story, in a way.' It took everybody by surprise, so it was a massive pivot. And then, they threw in the six tacked-on episodes to season 10, and instead of doing 16, we’re going to do 24 more. There was a lot of stuff to wrap our heads around."

Whether Gimple and Kang ultimately agreed with this decision isn't clear, but it doesn't seem like the show ended entirely on their terms, which essentially means The Walking Dead didn't just end. It was in fact cancelled, after all.

Morgan was of course surprised by the cancellation too, and in this same interview, he mentions how surreal it is to not go back and film a season 12:

"It’s fucking surreal as hell to think that this will be the last bit of it. It’s become such a part of my life, and a part of everyone’s life that’s in the show, that it’s hard to reconcile the fact this will be over in a year from now. Well, in fact, I will still be here a year from now, but you know what I mean. There’s not a season 12. It’s very weird… So, in a nutshell, I’m not thinking about the end yet, although it’s back there. We still have a lot of story to tell."

But have no fear, because Morgan is right. There is "a lot of story to tell" still.

First up is The Walking Dead: Dead City, formerly known as the Maggie and Negan spinoff.

This six-episode series will take place 12 years after the apocalypse, and a few years after The Walking Dead finale as well. Due in April 2023, the show will follow Maggie and Negan in a post-apocalyptic Manhattan, which has long been cut off from the rest of the mainland.

Showrunner Scott M Gimple has teased that, "It's a madhouse... There's a lot of conflict. There's a lot of action. There are zip lines, the walkers are insane."

Lauren Cohan and Jeffrey Dean Morgan will be joined by the following cast members:

• Gaius Charles as Perlie Armstrong• Željko Ivanek as The Croat• Jonathan Higginbotham as Tommaso• Mahina Napoleon as Ginny•Trey Santiago-Hudson as Jano• Karine Ortiz as Amaia

And that's not the only spinoff shuffling our way either.

Daryl's story will continue in a new show too, as hinted at in The Walking Dead's final scenes when he drove off in search of Rick Grimes. Originally, Carol was supposed to be joining him, but Melissa McBride pulled out of the project not long after it was announced.

An official statement explained that: "Melissa McBride has given life to one of the most interesting, real, human and popular characters in The Walking Dead Universe. Unfortunately, she is no longer able to participate in the previously announced spin-off focused on the Daryl Dixon and Carol Peletier characters, which will be set and filmed in Europe this summer and premiere next year."

"Relocating to Europe became logistically untenable for Melissa at this time," it continues. "We know fans will be disappointed by this news, but, The Walking Dead Universe continues to grow and expand in interesting ways and we very much hope to see Carol again in the near future."

That sucks for Daryl, because he's going to need all the help he can get. It turns out that Dixon will end up in France where he will encounter the fast, smart zombies previously teased at the end of The Walking Dead: World Beyond.

Chief content officer Scott M Gimple teased how this will play out while speaking to Talking Dead: The Walking Dead Universe Preview 2022 (via ComicBook):

"Daryl is a fish out of water to start with. If Daryl finds himself with new people, he's a fish out of water. In France, in a country that's going through the apocalypse, an entirely different thing. He finds himself having to reinvent himself again, having to find himself again, and also, not being with – probably – the only people in the world he's comfortable with."

It doesn't look like Daryl will end up finding Rick and Michonne though, because they're too busy starring in their own six-part series that will replace the movie trilogy previously announced a few years back.

Andrew Lincoln and Danai Gurira's reunion onscreen will be an "epic love story", as teased already by their surprise return in The Walking Dead finale. In that cameo, they're not actually together in person yet, but that will soon change when the show airs some time in 2023.

As if that wasn't enough, both Fear The Walking Dead and Tales of the Walking Dead are available to watch too, as well as the YA miniseries The Walking Dead: World Beyond. And no, Dog doesn't have his own spinoff yet, despite our constant emails to the AMC office. Give him a whole movie, damnit.