Last year, AMC’s The Walking Dead sparked an outrage. The gory season 7 premiere left beloved characters behind in favor of archvillain Negan, and audiences followed suit: by the time the midseason finale rolled around, ratings had dropped 40 percent. Now the show has returned for the second half of the season. It’s an opportunity to chart a new course, to correct the mistakes it’s made, and convince viewers that the story of Rick Grimes is still worth following. The only question is whether the series can pull it off.
Welcome to The Walking Dead Redemption Club.
Nick Statt: So last week’s midseason premiere wasn’t exactly a blockbuster showing. But it was a still a strong example of how The Walking Dead may be on its way to course-correcting after an abysmal ratings slump and a nihilistic and depressing first half. And really, ratings are one of the most defining factors for the show at this point. AMC’s Sunday star is among the best performing TV shows on air today. That simple fact is what’s kept showrunner Scott Gimple in charge and those 16-episode seasons on the table.
Yet viewership for the midseason premiere was still down 17 percent from last year’s, with 15.9 million people tuning in compared with an eye-popping 19.1 million viewers in 2016. These numbers are important because they’ll prove — more than any critic’s column or any torrent of angry tweets — that TWD’s structure and format are no longer resonating with hardcore fans. Of course, it’s worth noting that this season’s 16 episodes we’re likely filmed all in one batch, so there’s little AMC can do now to try and influence how the second half plays out. But if the ratings continue to drop, we could see TWD wrapping up the Negan timeline — arguably the high point and most explosive period of the comic books — much faster than expected.
Bryan Bishop: I’d actually push back on that a little bit: despite production schedules, there’s quite a bit they can do to soften the tone or massage a storyline, particularly with the gap between the two halves of the season. (I wonder how the season 7 opener would have played if they’d excised just a few frames of gore, for example.) I think we saw some of those tweaks last week, in the (admittedly odd) pseudo-comedic tone of the scenes with Gregory.