The Walking Dead: Dead City is not very innovative in its first episode. Still, the fun protagonists and the exciting moments make it pleasant to watch. The channel AMC still sees a lot of profit in their showpiece The Walking Dead. Otherwise, they wouldn't have ordered a whole bunch of spin-off series. The Walking Dead: Dead City is the latest, and the first in a series of spin-offs starring characters from the parent series. This is in contrast to previous spin-offs, such as Fear The Walking Dead and The Walking Dead: World Beyond, which follow new characters and only introduce old acquaintances later. But are people actually waiting for another The Walking Dead series? AMC apparently thinks so, but I highly doubt it myself. Still, I can say that Dead City is off to a pretty good start.
In The Walking Dead: Dead City we follow Maggie (Lauren Cohan, Supernatural) and Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan, aka Supernatural) several years after the end of The Walking Dead. After Maggie's son Hershel (Logan Kim) is kidnapped by a former accomplice of Negan, the two must team up and venture into devastated Manhattan to rescue him. Negan appears to have made the necessary enemies here over the years and they want nothing more than retribution for Negan's alleged crimes.
The collaboration between Maggie and Negan is a highlight
One of the more interesting parts of the final season of The Walking Dead was the difficult alliance between Maggie and Negan. Negan did horrible things to Maggie and Maggie never forgave him for that. At the same time, Negan tries to show that he has really changed over the years and is looking for forgiveness. Yet they have had to trust each other in life-threatening situations. It is no different here either. The two actors are well attuned to each other and their interplay is certainly not boring. I do feel that their relationship has taken a few steps back. In The Walking Dead, they began to reluctantly tolerate each other, but here it seems as if the feud is back at square one.
Furthermore, an interesting world is being created in New York, which is a lot more lawless than Alexandria or the Hilltop Colony from the later seasons of The Walking Dead. The villain who kidnapped Maggie's son, a man known only as the Croat (Željko Ivanek, Madam Secretary), fits well into the chaotic community the series tries to portray. Furthermore, Gaius Charles (Roswell, New Mexico) is also an interesting new addition to the cast.
The storyline is not very innovative so far
The Walking Dead has been far from innovative in recent years, and The Walking Dead: Dead City does not seem to be able to bring that innovation. For years we have seen the same themes being worked out in the same way. The only difference is that the characters facing the same moral dilemmas are slightly different. Despite that, Dead City starts quite entertaining with enough exciting moments.
The Walking Dead: Dead City will not bring innovation to The Walking Dead universe, and you could certainly see this as exploitation. But despite that, the first episode was quite fun to watch. Dead City seems to be a series that does exactly what you can expect it to do, and if that doesn't put you off, this will be great viewing.
About the writer, Karzal
Mike (1995) has been a member of MySeries since 2016 and is mainly active on the English version of the site. Since 2018, he has been actively translating news articles, columns, reviews and basically everything that ends up on the Dutch site. The original articles, columns and reviews were actually written by others. During the week Mike can be found at IKEA, where he is a national systems specialist and occasionally also in the classroom to teach an English lesson. In addition, Mike logically enjoys watching series and has actually been spoon-fed this from an early age. The genre doesn't matter, there is a place for everything in the otherwise busy life.
