‘The Walking Dead’ Season 10 Finale Premiere Date Revealed, Season 11 Delayed Due to Coronavirus

The Walking Dead has announced when the long-awaited Season 10 finale will air. On Friday, the show’s official Twitter account dropped the big news that the episode will air on Sunday, October 4 on AMC, after being delayed for several months.

That same night will also see the debut of the show’s second spinoff series, The Walking Dead: World Beyond. While it’s welcome news for viewers, it ended up being a little bittersweet. Given the widespread production shutdowns as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, Season 11 of the long-running zombie soap opera has been officially pushed back until sometime in 2021. The Season 10 finale had initially been postponed by the network back in March.

The delay of Season 10’s closing episode was especially disappointing after producer Greg Nicotero had hyped it up quite a bit. “The last two minutes of the finale are going to just… People’s jaws are going to drop,” he told Fandom back in June.

TWD showrunner Angela Kang told ComicBook back in April that they were “continuing to work on the future season remotely” amid the shutdown. “Writing, I think, is the easiest process to do remotely, and even that is a little… it’s tricky. We’re not quite able to work at the same exact pace as we would when we’re in the office, but we were very close to finishing 16 [episodes]. We usually deliver the episodes for a big effects-heavy episode about two weeks before we air. We were about a week and a half out at the point which California shut down.”

With their flagship series’ finale delayed, as well as the initial premiere date of World Beyond, the cable network announced its “We’re With You” campaign back in April, which put several of its programming online for free. Along with the first half of TWD Season 10, there were several BBC America nature documentaries, along with IFC programming including full seasons of The Baroness von Sketch Show, Birthday Boys, and Spoils of Babylon. Other networks, including HBO, announced similar measures as a means to encourage people to stay inside to help slow the spread of coronavirus.