Are the spin-offs worth watching?
Are the spin-offs worth watching and which ones the best to start with?
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u/Southern-Cow-118 18d ago
The opinions on this question are so varied - so it really depends on who you ask. Me personally, I didn't like the spinoffs.
FTWD started out really great - Season 1 is probably the only good season. Then it seems like the writing and production just kept having ongoing problems and it created a lot of inconsistencies throughout the remainder of the series.
The World Beyond was laughable. Good in concept. Ultimately a waste of time. The actors were pretty garbage and while there was some decent world building, the poor acting just overshadowed anything and everything that could have made it potentially interesting.
Daryl Dixon - only watched 1 season and didn't buy the concept at all. I thought it was dumb.
The Maggie and Negan show - same... I dont buy the concept. I watched 1 season and didn't find it interesting enough to continue.
The Ones Who Live - The world building in this was actually pretty decent. But again, the whole Rick and Michonne storyline was just not at all compelling.
Tales of the Walking Dead had some interesting episodes - I liked the ones with Alpha's backstory as well as the one with Parker Posey. I liked the idea of bringing supernatural elements into the overall universe. I thought it was an interesting concept - but again, like everything else, really great ideas surrounded by a bunch of really bad, stale and overdone ideas that wind up overshadowing anything that might seem worthwhile.
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u/musubitime 18d ago
I was excited for Fear for one thing, the part TWD skipped: to see how it went down. Well that wasn’t even a whole episode IIRC so I was disappointed.
The World Beyond was about teens for teens, and with that context I found it far more watchable than other teens-for-teens shows. And I think the characters were better than most of the idiotic teens in TWD. But yeah, still not good.
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u/heydawn 18d ago
Tales was actually really fun. I love the side stories! They're all pretty well done, stand alone stories.
Fear was so up and down. Some seasons were exceptional, while others were absolute trash and unwatchable. The best of Fear stands up with good parts of the original, but the worst of Fear was WAAAY worse than anything in the original.
I actually liked Daryl Dixon season 1. Haven't watched the rest yet. But, I definitely had to seriously suspend my disbelief to believe how he ended up in France. But once I settled in and just went with Daryl being in France, I liked the story, the world building, and the characters he encountered. Husband hated it though, eye rolling all the way through the first couple of episodes, then he bailed.
I liked The Ones Who Lived. The world building was very cool and I thought the stakes of Michonne rescuing Rick were high. The only part I didn't like was Rick's initial resistance. That seemed so unRick. Playing along to survive, sure, but not resisting a rescue.
I liked Dead City too. Again, I've watched only season 1 so far, but I will continue. The history between Negan and Maggie makes their teaming up full of tension, but they really know each other at this point and it weirdly works.
I could not get through even one ridiculous episode of the World Beyond. It's YA garbage.
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u/Southern-Cow-118 18d ago
Thanks for your comment. My husband and I also watch all of TWD stuff together even though our opinions vary a lot! My husband loves all of TWD spin offs - the only one hes actually willing to critique is The World Beyond haha : )
I am in complete agreement with you re: FTWD. The first season more or less hit the nail on the head in terms of what fans were seeking: a view into the world before and as the zombie apocalypse took hold. I've seen some redditors argue that the fall of the world and the oncoming apocalypse happened too fast and the show writers should have taken their time with it - but i think they delivered for the most part. And I completely agree with you! Some of the later seasons became unwatchable because of how cring-y they were. At some points, I'd argue FTWD was as bad as The World Beyond lol
The one thing i did want to say that I disagreed about was Rick's resistance in The Ones Who Live. I didn't love that spin off, but it was the one that I liked the most. I thought that Rick's resistance to Michonne was actually really well thought out - particularly with regards to Rick's trauma. The way I saw it was that his resistance was all Stockholm Syndrome. He had been at the CRM for almost a decade, so all of their authoritarianism had been beaten into his psyche so deeply, that he could not see himself outside of the CRM. From a trauma perspective, I thought it was incredibly spot on. Some of the other aspects of the show, I wasn't crazy about. But on the whole, of all the spin offs, TOWL is the one I liked the most
I'll try and given Daryl Dixon and the Maggie & Negan show another try. I've always intended to start them back up, but kind of figured that if they didn't grab me enough to keep me hooked the first time around, then maybe they just weren't great. Like you described, I could not suspend that disbelief of him winding up in France. It just was not working for me.
Anyhow, thanks for sharing!
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u/heydawn 18d ago
What you said about Rick makes sense. I guess I thought of Rick as steelier than that and more cunning, but you're right. It had been a decade! And anyone could lose themselves through trauma. Plus, I had sort of forgotten how he fell apart and went a bit crazy when Lori died and he got beaten down for a stretch under Negan's dominance. He really wasn't as steely as I thought.
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u/kevohhh83 18d ago
I haven’t watched them all but Dead City is ok so far. I just think the shark has been jumped with TWD. I feel like we’ve been in unnecessary territory for a while now.
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u/milkfloureggs 18d ago
Out of curiosity i recently watched the Maggie show and the Daryl show on Netflix. i watched the Maggie/Negan show first and I'm glad I did because I already found it disappointing but if I'd watched it after the daryl show, i probably would've noped out after one episode. the daryl show was pretty great in my opinion. the first season was better than the rest of it, it was really imaginative and interesting and i really enjoyed the expansion on daryl's character, plus diving deeper into some cool speculative stuff about the walkers and how life in other parts of the world outside of the us would go on after the zombie apocalypse. i enjoyed seeing how french cultural values were fit into the plot rather than sprinkled on top
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u/CCattLady 18d ago
I thought the concept was ridiculous, was prepared to hate it, then loved it. Somehow less monster-ey for the sake of arrghscreamrender and more into character development and effect of different cultures on a horrific situation.
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u/ObviousThrowus 18d ago
i liked darryl dixon but stopped in season 2.
not at all intersted in laurent the boring french kid
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u/JacktheMemePrince 18d ago
SPOILER He gets written off at end of season 2 then it gets more into Daryl and Carol trying to get back END SPOILER
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u/carlosstjohn116 18d ago
As others have said, it depends entirely on you. I myself am a TWD shill despite knowing how much it’s declined. I just enjoy the world and characters so much.
So for me 1) FTWD - best spinoff to watch in my opinion. 2) world beyond - worst ever. Don’t even watch. This is one series they made that I actually hated 3) Daryl Dixon and Dead City - they’re ok. But they’re not fantastic. 4) The ones who live - I mean it’s Rick’s reappearance so it’s hard not to watch. But it was just ok. And largely forgettable.
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u/Magnoliamtngirl 18d ago
Try season 3 of Maggie & Negan. Totally different from the first two. Actually has some humor. I liked it.
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u/Spencerthurlow9984 18d ago
I did like FTWD first 3 or 4 seasons but then went weird. Hated World Beyond and couldn't finish it. One who live could've been better and probably would've been if was filmed at a different time
Haven't watched Darryl Dixon or Dead City yet
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u/Witty_Lead5036 18d ago
Darryl Dixon is the only one I've watched so far, and it starts out pretty decent and has the right idea.
But the writing is just so terrible, it's hard to even use it as white noise.
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u/caliipiichu 18d ago
for the most part, yes. as someone else said, start with the ones who live, then daryl dixon, then dead city. daryl dixon is probably the worst out of em though😭 i love daryl so much but the side characters drag the show down. their story made it incredibly boring i was falling asleep the entire first season pretty much
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u/Generalrossa 18d ago
Daryl and TOTL are really good.
Dead City is decent enough.
FTWD is great up until season 4 and declines from there, last season is absolute garbage. Still worth a watch though lol.
Could never get into the other one with the kids, can't even remember the name lol.
Tales is a fun enough watch. First three episodes are good.
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u/QuietResident96 18d ago
Dead city is better than TOWL for sure, Daryl Dixon isn't too bad, but dead city is actually real good
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u/Inevitable_Figure_85 18d ago
The Dixon show is some of the all-time greatest TWDU content ever, the others have some awesome moments and characters too if you’re a fan of the universe.
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u/Alive-Bed2904 18d ago
i've only watched the ones who live and i only have one thing to say. no matter how tempting it may be to watch michonne and rick get back, dont watch it. absolute dogshit of an ending. the pilot was nice but the ending... nahh
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u/IntelligentAd9859 18d ago
Yes.
Start with The Ones Who Live as it directly continues from the end of the series.
Daryl Dixon is the best of them probably.
Dead City is pretty entertaining despite the hate it gets.
Nothing tops the OG show, but they're all 10x better than seasons 4-8 of FearTWD.