The Walking Dead: World Beyond ended its first season last Sunday with a few twists that ultimately saved a season that started off slowly but picked up dramatically in the last few episodes. As it turns out, Annet Mahendru’s character, Huck, was a mole all along — in fact, her character’s real name is Jennifer, and she’s the daughter of the lieutenant colonel of the CRM, Elizabeth. The reveal, in addition to Hope’s decision to surrender herself to the CRM, sets up what is essentially another All-Out War between the CRM and the remnants of the Campus Colony, including Felix, Iris, Silas, and Elton.
With a limited two-season series, however, what’s the end game? How does that All Out War end?
Where it began, of course: with Rick Grimes, according to Annet Mahendru herself in an interview with ComicBook.com.
“We’re the lead-up to the movies, so we’re going there. All the questions fans have had for, I don’t know, inherently a decade, right? Our show is the answers to that. So we are very much heading to CRM. I mean, that’s the helicopter… We’re getting really close, you know?”
Still, despite the end of the series leading into the Rick Grimes movies, Scott Gimple — the architect of The Walking Dead universe — wants viewers to know now that Rick Grimes will not be making an appearance in The World Beyond. “That’s one, I don’t know if people are being cagey about that. But I feel that one’s important not to be cagey about,” Gimple told ComicBook.com. “I think people could watch this show and learn a lot about the mythology that Rick Grimes is caught up in. And they might even see places where Rick Grimes has been … I just don’t like people watching it, sort of expecting Rick.”
Gimple also added that he and others are very much still “cranking away” on the movies, and they’re excited about the prospect of theaters for screening the Rick Grimes movies returning in 2021. “As we move toward the spring,” he told The Hollywood Reporter, “we’re talking about things potentially getting better in a permanent way. I would hope that come the end of next summer, people are piling into movie theatres again and laughing until they’re screaming together, eating popcorn together, and that we are once more enjoying each other’s company in front of a huge screen with awesome things happening on it. We hope to be a part of it.”
Despite the pandemic, all the threads for those movies seem to be coming together, with The Walking Dead coming to an end in 2022, writing on the second season of The World Beyond continuing and writing on season seven of Fear the Walking Dead ramping up even as they are finishing shooting on season six. Season 10C of The Walking Dead — the six bonus episodes — have already been shot, and they will air in February. Fear, meanwhile, should return soon thereafter with season 6B.