Seeing into the future of THE WALKING DEAD

Such is the problem with a property, be it television series or movie, based upon a preexisting work, be it comic or novel or what have you. There are going to be people who know ahead of time what is going to happen. Fans who only watch the show, who have never read the books or comics that inspired it, are at risk of having the story “spoiled” for them by fans who know how things play out. A possible solution, and one most frequently employed by creators if such “adapted” shows and movies, is to deviate from the source material. This keeps EVERYONE guessing. THE WALKING DEAD does it, THE STRAIN does it, GAME OF THRONES does it. The series become something altogether different from the books/comics that birthed them.

THE WALKING DEAD has gone one step further, though. They’ve filmed eleven different versions of the same scenario, with eleven different characters getting killed off in the upcoming season premiere. Which one will become THE version, the official one, the canon? We won’t know until the episode airs. But wouldn’t each of those alternate deaths inspire its own alternate reality? Could TWD end up with ten possible spin-offs, each chronicling the aftereffects of a particular character’s demise? I doubt it, but if they DID create ten additional series, people would probably still watch them all. It’s all about the zombies, anyway.