The Walking Dead: Dead City Season 3 Review

Of all the franchise’s post-finale spinoffs, The Walking Dead: Dead City has generally been considered the weakest, and not entirely without reason. In comparison to The Ones Who Live‘s cinematic scale and Daryl Dixon‘s European beauty, The Walking Dead: Dead City has struggled to forge its own path, with the relocation to New York not quite enough to justify the show’s existence.

Maggie and Negan haven’t been helped by the fact that The Walking Dead: Dead City is the spinoff most prone to forgetting what happened in the main show, muddling the franchise’s already-quite-muddled continuity, and replaying beats long-time viewers have already witnessed.

In Dead City‘s third season, The Walking Dead still isn’t recapturing the glory years of the mid-2010s, but it is Maggie and Negan’s best spinoff venture to date, learning from the mistakes of the first two seasons and evolving into what Dead City perhaps should have been from the start. After several slow-ish episodes tying up loose ends and setting the groundwork for what’s to come, The Walking Dead: Dead City season 3 quickly gathers momentum and gives loyal followers something juicy to sink their teeth into. Maggie and Negan aren’t exactly reinventing the undead wheel here, but for the first time in Dead City, this feels like a chapter that needed to be told.

The Walking Dead: Dead City Tells A Smaller Story In Season 3, And Is All The Better For It

AMC’s first two seasons of The Walking Dead: Dead City followed the standard format of the good guys overcoming the leader of a villainous community, first with the Dama and then with Bruegel. Both villains had their moments, but this is a song we’ve heard before in The Walking Dead, and, frankly, other shows did it better. The Walking Dead season 11 had the massive Commonwealth and zombie variants, The Ones Who Live featured the franchise’s biggest group yet in the Civic Republic Military, and in his spinoff, Daryl Dixon killed the actual King of Spain.

So, when The Walking Dead: Dead City season 2’s ending set up Maggie and Negan vs. the army of New Babylon, it looked like more of the same for season 3. Business as usual.

Keeping this review spoiler-free, suffice to say that Dead City‘s third season performs a soft reset, going in a completely different direction than season 2’s final scenes suggested. It’s a bold move that turns out to be 100% the right call.

Instead, The Walking Dead: Dead City season 3 focuses on Maggie and Negan building a new community in New York City, and explores the threats that come from within more than the threats posed by outside communities. It’s a smaller story, but in the best way, creating a more compelling narrative, a sharper sense of isolation, and more clarity of character development as the reduction in scale allows extra space for Maggie and Negan’s conflicting personalities to joust.

We’re So Glad Maggie & Negan Have Stopped Trying To Kill Each Other

Negan killed Maggie’s husband, in case you hadn’t picked up on that. During the final episodes of The Walking Dead, Maggie came to the realization that she would never forgive this crime, but found a way to move forward alongside the remorseful Negan regardless, thus ending three seasons of back-and-forth conflict between the pair.

It was, therefore, incredibly frustrating to watch the first two seasons of The Walking Dead: Dead City pick open the wound and have Maggie once again struggling to look beyond Glenn’s death, seeking revenge against the ever-apologetic Negan. Both characters were taking backwards steps, with Maggie plunged back into grief-inspired rage, and Negan letting his villain persona loose again in response.

Dead City finally gets the message in season 3. Maggie and Negan bicker, they clash, and they disagree, but the ghost of Glenn Rhee remains firmly at rest as the pair finally look to the future. Maggie and Negan being broadly on the same page opens up a much more interesting dynamic for the show’s two stars, somewhere between ‘frenemy’ and ‘the annoying family member you can’t get rid of.’ It’s hard not to wonder why the spinoff waited until season 3 to get to this point.

Dead City could do without the vague hints of romance that still haven’t gone away, despite backlash, but there’s no doubting that Maggie and Negan are more watchable than they’ve been in quite some time.

The Walking Dead: Dead City Deserves Praise For Taking More Risks In Season 3

Typically the safest of The Walking Dead‘s three modern spinoffs, Dead City‘s season 3 rejig finds it in the mood for risk-taking. New showrunner Seth Hoffman previously teased an “alternate reality episode,” and said episode ends up being arguably the highlight of Dead City‘s entire existence. It’s an ambitious and thought-provoking installment that, despite not making complete sense, is difficult to look away from.

And that isn’t the only surprise lurking in Dead City season 3. There’s a unexpected streak of offbeat humor, especially with the so-called Dead Squad. There’s a noticeable effort to avoid the franchise’s traditional clichés. There’s even an episode that feels suspiciously like HBO’s hit medical drama, The Pitt. With zombies, obviously.

Not every gambit pays off as handsomely as the alternate timeline episode, but in a franchise that has lasted more than 15 years and has occasionally grown stale, it is nice to see The Walking Dead trying new things. The effort can only be applauded.

The Walking Dead: Dead City Season 3’s Flaws Are The Old Classics

To the surprise of absolutely nobody, the biggest flaws to be found in Dead City season 3 are the ones that have been following The Walking Dead around for years. Zombies really do not feature heavily in this storyline, barely even registering as a threat, one tense set-piece sequence aside. It’s been said before, but this is as ‘humans vs. humans’ as The Walking Dead has ever been.

The continuity between Dead City and The Walking Dead‘s main series is still frustratingly thin. One line from Maggie effectively writes Daryl and the others out of existence, while her efforts to build a community in Manhattan conveniently forget the Commonwealth was ever a thing.

Pacing issues also continue to plague the zombie apocalypse, as Dead City season 3 takes some time to find its groove, then moves very quickly once things begin escalating. Still, these are relatively minor gripes considering the improvement The Walking Dead: Dead City makes in its third season. Maggie and Negan’s future now remains firmly up in the air, but if this represents the end of their road together, at least they go out on a high.

Release Date

July 26, 2026

Episodes

8