The Walking Dead (2010)
The Walking Dead is a 2010 action & adventure series created by Frank Darabont and Bear McCreary. It stars Norman Reedus, Melissa McBride and Lauren Cohan.
A sheriff's deputy wakes from a coma into a world already ended. Rick Grimes stumbles through empty hospital corridors and abandoned streets into an America overrun by the walking dead, then sets out to find the family he lost. Developed by Frank Darabont from Robert Kirkman's comic, the series follows a shifting band of survivors, among them Daryl, Michonne, Maggie, and the Governor, as they scavenge, fortify, and clash. The undead are a constant threat, but the show's real subject is what living people do to one another when law and mercy collapse. Grim, patient, and often brutal.
Quick answers
What is The Walking Dead about?
A sheriff's deputy wakes from a coma into a world already ended. Rick Grimes stumbles through empty hospital corridors and abandoned streets into an America overrun by the walking dead, then sets out to find the family he lost. Developed by Frank Darabont from Robert Kirkman's comic, the series follows a shifting band of survivors, among them Daryl, Michonne, Maggie, and the Governor, as they scavenge, fortify, and clash. The undead are a constant threat, but the show's real subject is what living people do to one another when law and mercy collapse. Grim, patient, and often brutal.
When was The Walking Dead released?
The Walking Dead was released on 31 October 2010.
How many episodes does The Walking Dead have?
The Walking Dead has 177 episodes across 11 seasons.
Who made The Walking Dead?
The Walking Dead was created by Frank Darabont, Bear McCreary and Robert Kirkman.
Where can I watch The Walking Dead?
The Walking Dead is available on AMC+, Netflix, Philo, YouTube TV, Pluto TV and Amazon.
Where to watch The Walking Dead
Stream: AMC+, Netflix, Philo, YouTube TV
Watch free: Pluto TV
Buy: Amazon, AppleTV, Fandango at Home
Official site
Cast
- Norman Reedus as Daryl Dixon
- Melissa McBride as Carol Peletier
- Lauren Cohan as Maggie Greene
- Danai Gurira as Michonne Hawthorne
- Andrew Lincoln as Rick Grimes
- Christian Serratos as Rosita Espinosa
- Josh McDermitt as Eugene Porter
- Chandler Riggs as Carl Grimes
- Seth Gilliam as Gabriel Stokes
- Ross Marquand as Aaron
- Jeffrey Dean Morgan as Negan Smith
- Steven Yeun as Glenn Rhee
Similar series
Explore The Walking Dead guides
The Walking Dead in our writing
- Companion guide: After the End
- Companion guide: Zombies
A few thoughts on The Walking Dead
The show's truest horror is human, and that is where its best cross-media cousins live. The Last of Us tells nearly the same story with a controller in hand, trading walkers for the infected and building unbearable tension around one fragile bond. Attack on Titan pushes the walled-survivor nightmare to operatic scale, while Lord of the Flies strips the premise to children and watches the same rot set in.
Spin-offs that keep expanding the Walking Dead universe
The Walking Dead spent eleven seasons on one shifting group of survivors, and the universe kept expanding after the flagship ended. Fear the Walking Dead follows a separate cast through the outbreak's earliest days, Daryl Dixon and Dead City send familiar faces to France and Manhattan, and World Beyond and Tales carry the timeline forward and sideways into new corners of the same collapse.
Post-apocalyptic survival stories, zombies optional
The Walking Dead is ultimately about what desperate people do to each other once law disappears, and these lean into the same collapse. The Last of Us puts a fungal outbreak through the same grinding survival, Z Nation and Black Summer keep the undead chaos scrappy and immediate, and Fallout trades zombies for a nuclear wasteland while the threat, and the moral rot, stay identical.
Survivor societies rebuilding once the old order collapses
The Walking Dead cares less about the dead than about what the living do once law and mercy disappear, and these push the same question without a zombie in sight. Lord of the Flies strands boys who invent their own order from scratch, Revolution and Y: The Last Man watch whole civilizations reorganize after one catastrophic loss, and Silo and Earth 2 test what a group will accept to survive.