THE WALKING DEAD - What happens when a virus takes over the world?

Series Review

Written by Yasir Arafat

Why is it relevant?

For the last decade or so, it has been stated many times that robots or AI will take the place of humans if our dependency on them keeps increasing exponentially. But what happens when mankind loses to an incurable disease? What happens when human beings cannot defeat a virus? What are the odds that a virus like COVID-19 will not rise again with immunity to our antibodies? The American horror drama television series “The Walking Dead” deals with this kind of post-apocalyptic world where a virus has infected billions of people and human civilization is on the brink of extinction.

About “The Walking Dead

In “The Walking Dead” world, everybody gets infected by a virus which only starts to work when the infected body is dead. After the death of a human body, the virus takes over the mind and the dead body starts to walk, earning the name “Walkers” rather than zombies. The walkers then only think about biting an undead person so that the virus can populate. It should be mentioned that the walker does not remember anything from its past life, it’s just a dead body walking and biting any living creature it can bite. The show delves into the lives of its characters surviving the post-apocalyptic world running from walkers as well as dealing with other survivors. 

The show is based on the comic book series of the same name by Robert Kirkman, Tony Moore, and Charlie Adlard. Andrew Lincoln played the lead character Rick Grimes. Other cast members include Norman Reedus, Steven Yeun, Chandler Riggs, Melissa McBride, Lauren Cohan, Danai Gurira, Josh McDermitt, Christian Serratos, Seth Gilliam, Ross Marquand, and Jeffrey Dean Morgan. It consists of 11 seasons with 177 episodes, each episode runtime within 40-60 minutes. The show later spin-offed a couple of spin-offs as of 2023 but the main story remained intact in this one. It is rated TV-MA meaning it’s targeted at mature audiences aged above 18 for violence. Beginning with the third season, the show attracted the most 18 to 49-year-old viewers of any cable or broadcast television series. The series also won two Primetime Emmys and several other prominent awards and nominations.

Is it only about the walkers?

The theme of the series is not just zombies. The series mainly focuses on the survivors who have formed groups or communities with their own set of rules and morals which leads to conflict even among themselves. The civilization of this world has collapsed, the human population is on the brink of extinction and there are no laws, no law enforcers to tell them to maintain the rules and regulations of modern civilization. People, as expected, will try to take the law into their own hands and try to live their life however they want. They will loot, they will kill, and they will take whatever they can because there is no one to stop them. But even by doing these, can you still survive the rest of the days? There will be other people who will want what you want, thinking about only survival as you do, protecting family as you do. This will create problems among themselves which will eventually kill them if they do not resolve the issue, not to mention if they are not bitten by the walkers in the first place. So, we can see, even if the world is at the end, people will still have to live by universal moral rules, they have to trust each other, and help each other if they want to survive and live. They will need doctors, they will need food, they will need everything but they have to start civilization from the beginning. So, zombies aren’t the only focus of this show. The show even states in a later season that the title “The Walking Dead” does not refer to the zombies rather it refers to the human beings because they are walking or practically living with the dead.

Worth watching?

To put it briefly, The Walking Dead does not only deal with zombies but also deals with human beings surviving the post-apocalyptic world and rebuilding civilization. In the meantime, it also provokes the audience to think about what they would have done in a world like this. These thoughts and ideas gave me a new view of the world, it showed me how human beings have thrived over the centuries and can thrive even if the world almost comes to an end. The show isn't perfect. Its lengthy storyline could be annoying in the later seasons. But I hope readers who haven’t watched this show will give it a watch and get the answer why this show is one of the most watched shows in America, why its fanbase still root for it and realize what we have realized about human nature while watching this show.