Review – The Walking Dead: Dead City Season 3 a Bold New Vision for the Franchise

The Walking Dead: Dead City season 3 offers a bold new vision for the show’s future. With a new showrunner in place and a new path to follow, Lauren Cohan and Jeffrey Dean Morgan are at their best in Dead City’s third season, offering a bright future for the franchise. Here’s my full review.

I watched all eight episodes offered to journalists ahead of the premiere. My immediate thought was that this season, under the guidance of new showrunner Seth Hoffman, isn’t so much of a soft reboot as it is the next step in the show’s evolution. It builds upon the foundation established by creator Eli Jorne but clearly casts off the parts of the past it wants to leave behind. There’s a clear departure from certain elements in the first two seasons as the show plots a new course.

In season 3, Maggie (Cohan) seizes upon the opportunity to transform Manhattan into a true community. With new friends and new opportunities comes stability, but true survival means building something bigger and better. Negan isn’t so sure. Given the way history has unfolded, he thinks they’re better off keeping Manhattan to themselves.

Cohan and Morgan have a lot to work with this season as they confront their past, the challenging present and what the future could hold. The show also gives fans a look at what could have happened in one of the trippiest episodes of The Walking Dead history. There’s a lot of deep introspection between Maggie and Negan and it’s no surprise that Cohan and Morgan nail each and every scene. Hoffman and his team stay away from rehashing old wounds, which has been done at length, and make the season more about the recent past. I think this was a good decision, because the recent past ties into the present more than ever, and the decisions Maggie and Negan make now will be tied into New York City’s future. And ultimately, whether they like it or not, Maggie and Negan are stronger individually when they’re working together.

The addition of new cast members Aimee Garcia (Renata), Raúl Castillo (Luis) and Jimmi Simpson (Dillard) injects new life into the series. Garcia’s Renata is strong and independent, and a great companion for Maggie. She has a cautious optimism that is needed in this dark world. As Luis, Castillo offers a levelheaded balance to the chaos. Simpson’s Dillard fits right into The Walking Dead Universe and makes me wish he’d been here all along. Logan Kim, who has been promoted to a series regular, has a much more interesting story this season. The young actor is now on his own hero’s journey and it will be fun to see him continue to grow in future seasons now that he has a role to play in the community.

Dead City season 3 makes fantastic use of New York streets and buildings, and this will always be a refreshing improvement after years spent in forests. One of the reasons I enjoy Dead City so much has to do with the setting and finally seeing what survival looks like in a big city environment. Ironically, it doesn’t seem to matter whether you’re holed up in a skyscraper or a prison or a cabin in the woods, in the apocalypse everything seems to go wrong eventually.

The weakest element of the season is pacing, not from a writing standpoint but from a number of episodes standpoint. These short seasons just don’t work to tell sweeping narratives. They’re planting crops in one episode and then worrying about frost in the next. We need more than 8 episodes to really give the show the space to grow and develop properly. Going back to the original series’ 16-episode model, split between the fall and spring, would give shows like Dead City and Daryl Dixon (and the Anne Rice Immortal Universe shows) an opportunity to flourish.

As of this writing we don’t know whether Dead City will be renewed for a fourth season. The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon is wrapping up after four seasons so there’s reason to believe that Dead City could follow. Then again, as Manhattan becomes a beacon in the apocalyptic darkness, there’s an argument to be made that familiar faces from TWD’s past could call the Big Apple their home.

The Walking Dead: Dead City season 3 premieres Sunday, July 26, on AMC. Episodes will be available to stream the same day on AMC+.