WTF is going on with The Walking Dead?

It's time to lop this zombie head off for good.

I can’t remember when I stopped watching The Walking Dead, but I can remember why.

It’s probably the same reason everyone else stopped watching: it got boring, and after seven or so seasons, it seemed to have turned into the kind of lumbering, brain-dead monster it depicted on screen. This zombie didn’t seem like it wanted to die.

For a while there, all that zombie carnage was quite good. Season one was a stunner. Helmed by Frank Darabont, AMC’s The Walking Dead crafted a grim real world version of Robert Kirkman’s popular comic book series that was full of potential. It had solid heroes, brilliant villains, and plenty of raw material to work from.

It’s been more than 10 years but I still remember the best scenes from that first season: a character chained to a rooftop lopping his own hand off, the show’s hero Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) guiding a horse down a deserted motorway, and the brilliantly tense season finale involving a tank. I was all in.

Darabont got fired for season two. The show’s budget got cut too. So those episodes were spent with characters indulging in endlessly boring chitchat on a farm that just plain sucked. There wasn’t much to love about that season, but when the zombies showed up, they were brilliant, so I kept watching.

What can I say? Sometimes I like seeing zombies get massacred. It’s cathartic.

By season seven, I’d given about 100 hours of my life to The Walking Dead, and I’d decided that was enough. There was no hint of a rescue, no hope of a cure, and it had become desperately, depressingly violent thanks to the introduction of the baseball-bat-wielding Negan. That thing with Glenn was the final straw.

I just assumed the show would keep going for another season or so and get canned. Ratings for what was once the highest-rating show on cable TV in America had dwindled. It seemed like The Walking Dead had run its course.

I honestly haven’t thought about this show in years. So you can imagine my surprise when I learned yesterday that not only is it still going, but it’s thriving. Yes, AMC has confirmed the main series is coming to an end in 2022 after seasons 10 and 11 finish airing. That’s another 31 episodes. Thirty-one! Many shows don’t last that long.

But there are spin-offs coming. Daryl and Carol are getting their own series, inking a two-season deal. After bowing out at the end of season nine, Lincoln’s Rick Grimes is returning for a trilogy of movies. There’s also Tales of The Walking Dead, a new series telling one-off stories based in zombieland. Fear the Walking Dead, the original spin-off that had Cliff Curtis in its first three seasons, returns for season six next month.

Am I the only one thinking this is too much Walking Dead? Because it is! Stop this madness! No one wants this! Does anyone know anyone who still cares? AMC, spend all this money on something, anything else! Give it to Dennis Kelly, and make a third season of Utopia! Give it to Michaela Coel to do anything she wants to! Give it to Damon Lindelof to make whatever he wants!

Right now the only thing I want to see in the world of The Walking Dead is Rick Grimes riding in on horseback, brandishing a machete and lopping the head off of this dead-eyed, aimless, multi-tentacled zombie. Because The Walking Dead needs to be put out of its misery for good.