The Walking Dead is one of the longest-running TV shows of the last two decades. After the AMC series premiered in 2010, the series ran for 11 seasons before wrapping up with the series finale in 2022.
For a show that lasted more than a decade, The Walking Dead holds up incredibly well. Sure, there were some rougher moments during that run, but the show's quality never really dipped much the whole time it was on the air. It's a testament to how much work and care went into the hit zombie series.
With that said, there were three seasons that are rated considerably lower than the rest of the series. I highlighted the three lowest-rated Walking Dead seasons, according to Rotten Tomatoes, and shared some of my thoughts about what could have been done to improve those seasons.
The Walking Dead season 6
Tomatometer: 76%
The Walking Dead season 6 was definitely a turning point for the series. After five great seasons to start the series, the sixth season of the series was, to me, when things started to falter. We'd seen storytelling issues with this show, poor pacing, and cheap fakeouts or cliffhangers in the first five seasons, but there's no doubt in my mind that season 6 is the most egregious example of this.
It feels like all the ups and downs were supposed to lead to something, but when season 6 started to stall, the creative team started to make bold swings to keep themselves relevant in the headlines and create buzz without really earning it. Instead of diving into more of the character development and drama that we saw in the show's first five seasons that worked so well, we got the dreaded cliffhangers.
Of course, none was bigger than the season 6 finale when they chose to make fans wait and wait and wait to learn just who was killed by Negan. We'll talk more about Glenn's death, but when a show defaults to cheap deaths for shock value, it's very challenging to come back from that.
How season 6 could have improved: This is always tough because what was true then isn't necessarily true now. Looking back, though, season 6 needed to avoid the cheap thrills and continue to develop the characters. We needed less shocking deaths, more deaths that felt earned, and fewer moments that felt like they were stringing us along.
Throwing in a cliffhanger every once in a while is a great lever to pull for a TV show. Doing it multiple times in a season when it's not necessary, it just feels like we're being led on. No one likes that.
The Walking Dead was never perfect. It made some seriously bad decisions early in the series, too, but it always found a way to come back with something bigger and better. To me, if season 6 slowed down, the show should have embraced that change of pace for a longer period to find out where it was headed instead of taking such a big swing, even if it felt like the right thing to do at the time.
The Walking Dead season 7
Tomatometer: 66%
If season 6 was the beginning of the end for me as a fan, The Walking Dead season 7 was the season that nearly pushed me away from the series altogether. I did stop watching the show for a short time after the season 7 premiere because of what happened in the season premiere. And, I wasn't alone either. According to reports, five million viewers stopped watching the series after that episode, too.
The Walking Dead betrayed fans' trust with how they handled killing off Abraham and Glenn. Their deaths felt cheap, and it annoyed a lot of people, myself included.
Aside from all the Glenn stuff, though, The Walking Dead season 7 felt like the first season where the show felt like it completely lost its way. They tried to bring in this big bad, Negan, to reenergize the show, but that changing dynamic really tweaked everything. I don't know if the show felt the same for a lot of fans after Glenn died and the power dynamic shifted.
The Walking Dead started as this novelty that became the biggest show in the world for a time, and then it had to reinvent itself. Season 6 was the start of that transformation, and then season 7 was that transformation realized.
How season 7 could be improved: Well, for starters, they could have kept Glenn alive and doubled down on the relationships that fans loved.
Obviously, the show didn't realize just how much fans wanted to see Glenn alive. In some ways, I think Stranger Things had the right recipe. You need deaths to keep the stakes high, but you can't kill all your beloved characters because the show just loses its way after that.
Looking back, The Walking Dead had the characters it needed to leg this whole series out and win the race, but they got a little too caught up in introducing other key characters, like Negan. Eventually, the show righted the ship in season 9, but for a while, the rocky road continued.
The Walking Dead season 8
Tomatometer: 65%
The Walking Dead season 8 is officially the lowest-rated season on Rotten Tomatoes, and it makes sense why. The show completely lost everything that made it so good. The characters were still there, but what made them feel like something was worth fighting for was long gone.
And, it's a shame because you had this interesting story. I think everyone, if you described what happens with the war between Rick and Negan's groups, would have been excited to watch that, but it just felt like the soul of this show, which maybe was Glenn, was gone by this point in the run.
To me, it just came down to a string of questionable decisions by the creative team and the characters that really shot this show in the foot. Killing off Carl was an absolutely terrible decision. Rick's decisions during the battles with Negan just didn't ever feel right. And, I think the hard part is that those decisions seemingly come out of nowhere. That's just not good storytelling.
Viewers need some breadcrumbs to follow. We need to feel like we guessed the payoff or at least expected something to happen. By betraying the very fans who loved this show and making huge changes to the source material, the show's choices eventually caught up with them in this lackluster season.
How season 8 could have improved: After making such strong choices about who died, when, and how those key deaths were presented, The Walking Dead never finished the payoffs that it set up. Why keep Negan alive after what he did to Glenn and all the things he did in the battle between the groups? It just made no sense to me, and I love Jeffrey Dean Morgan.
There's just no doubt in my mind that this season and its story were probably stretched way too thin.
With all three of these seasons, a shorter episode count probably makes a big difference. If you cut these 16-episode seasons to 10 or 12 episodes, I really feel like each season improves dramatically, as well.
Luckily, after a streak of three bad seasons in a row, The Walking Dead reinvented itself again, but this time, it worked! Season 9 is considered one of the best seasons in the show's history.