The Walking Dead universe is one of the most successful TV franchises of all time, and it’s still running nearly 15 years after the series premiere. There are officially seven Walking Dead shows, the original series plus six spinoffs, with even more shows in the works.
Those seven Walking Dead shows vary quite a bit in their Rotten Tomatoes score. We put together the list of all seven of The Walking Dead shows ranked by their Rotten Tomatoes score for fans to take a look. And, honestly, I think some fans will be very surprised by the ranking. It is definitely not my personal ranking of The Walking Dead shows.
The Walking Dead shows and spinoffs
- The Walking Dead
- Fear the Walking Dead
- World Beyond
- Tales of the Walking Dead
- Dead City
- Daryl Dixon
- The Ones Who Live
We shared the list in descending order. Let’s get it started with the lowest-rated Walking Dead series so far!
World Beyond
- Critical approval: 46%
- Audience approval: 31%
World Beyond is the second spinoff of The Walking Dead, but unfortunately, the two-season series is the lowest-rated of the franchise on Rotten Tomatoes. Sadly, the series didn’t even break a 50% critical approval score, and the audience approval is hovering around 30%. That’s not good.
Honestly, I don’t know if World Beyond is that bad! I definitely enjoyed parts of this series as much as any of the spinoffs so far. It’s just quite different from everything else set in this world. Pulling off a good coming-of-age or teen/college series is hard enough as it is! There are so many bad teen shows. Even the most beloved teen shows don’t score that well on Rotten Tomatoes. And, it appears that pulling off a teen show set during the zombie apocalypse is even more challenging!
World Beyond tells the story of the survivors of the outbreak living in and around a college in Nebraska. The cast, including Pollyanna McIntosh, Aliyah Royale, Alexa Mansour, and more, is really good, but this show was just plagued by a lot of issues. To me, it just wasn’t that fun, and it suffered from bad timing, in my opinion. That’s probably why it ranks pretty low on the list.
Daryl Dixon
- Critical approval: 69%
- Audience approval: 48%
Daryl Dixon is one of the two current The Walking Dead shows, and it's coming back soon! As mentioned, Daryl Dixon season 3 premieres on Sept. 7, and we're super excited for the upcoming season.
Anyway, somehow this great series has the second-lowest Rotten Tomatoes rating, and I don't really understand it. Norman Reedus and Melissa McBride are two of the biggest stars of The Walking Dead, and this show just feels so fresh. I love the international flavor. It's just a different show than what we're used to, and I think some people agree with that. Clearly, based on those ratings, others don't.
Daryl Dixon has two more season left. It was recently revealed that the fourth season will be the final season, and it will air in 2026.
Hopefully, the Rotten Tomatoes scores on those two final seasons are able to move this great show higher up the list.
Dead City
- Critical approval: 71%
- Audience approval: 52%
Dead City is the other current Walking Dead show! We've seen two seasons of the series so far, and The Walking Dead spinoff has a new season coming soon. In fact, it was just renewed for season 3 last month.
Again, I'm a little surprised to see Dead City this low on the list. To me, it's definitely on par with Fear the Walking Dead and Daryl Dixon, so it's probably not way lower than it probably should be. Overall, though, fans do not seem to like this series as much as critics, with the audience approval right around 50%.
Dead City definitely isn't my favorite Walking Dead spinoff, but Jeffrey Dean Morgan as Negan and Lauren Cohan as Maggie are still such a pull for me!
Fear the Walking Dead
- Critical approval: 73%
- Audience approval: 57%
Fear the Walking Dead was the first spinoff of The Walking Dead universe, and it was the first show to actually chronicle the start of the outbreak and the societal collapse.
The series has an awesome cast with Colman Domingo, Alycia Debnam-Carey, Lennie James, Kim Dickens, Frank Dillane, and more. The series is set in Southern California, and as mentioned, it follows a small group of survivors during the beginning of the outbreak that changed everything.
Honestly, I’m a little bit surprised Fear the Walking Dead is this low on the list. I know every season wasn’t a hit, but it has an incredible cast, and it told an interesting story. The critics definitely respect Fear the Walking Dead more than the audience, based on this metric. I really enjoyed the series, though, and I value its place in the franchise. And, let’s be real: it’s better than Tales of the Walking Dead.
Tales of the Walking Dead
- Critical approval: 74%
- Audience approval: 51%
Tales of the Walking Dead is officially the third-highest-rated series of the franchise, and it's definitely one of the most ambitious. Tales of the Walking Dead is exactly that. It's an anthology series that tells individual stories from this world about new characters trying to survive the apocalypse.
Tales of the Walking Dead premiered in 2022, and it's only one season, so I don't know how fair it is to compare it to long-running shows like The Walking Dead and Fear the Walking Dead, but it has a higher critical approval than Fear the Walking Dead somehow. It's clear that fans did not feel the same, though, with just a smidge over 50% of the audience recommending Tales of the Walking Dead.
As a premise, I really like this idea, and that's good because More Tales of the Walking Dead is officially in the works!
The Walking Dead
- Critical approval: 79%
- Audience approval: 78%
It’s definitely surprising to me that The Walking Dead, the flagship series and the show that single-handedly created so much zombie buzz during the 2010s, is not the highest-rated show in The Walking Dead universe, according to Rotten Tomatoes.
It’s a close second behind the top show, so don’t worry. It’s also understandable when you really think about why the top show has better ratings than The Walking Dead. While this is the show that started it all, it’s the show that introduced so many great characters and told so many great stories.
On the other hand, it’s a show that ran for 11 seasons. Not all of them were great! And those great characters? Like, almost none of them survived. I can’t imagine all fans and critics seeing their favorites get killed by walkers or, as you know, fellow living humans.
The first season opened with an 87% critical rating and 93% audience rating. That’s tops for, I think, every season of The Walking Dead and any spinoff seasons, too. So, the quality of the story slipped as the show went on, plagued by a few lower-rated seasons. To me, though, The Walking Dead is easily the best series of this universe.
The Ones Who Live
- Critical approval: 88%
- Audience approval: 76%
The Ones Who Live is the highest-rated show of The Walking Dead universe on Rotten Tomatoes. It just beats the original series by a few percentage points. At first, I was shocked to learn that this is the highest-rated series of the franchise, but after thinking about it a bit, it’s easy to see why.
First of all, this is the return of Rick (Andrew Lincoln) and Michonne (Danai Gurira). It’s arguably the biggest spinoff in franchise history because it brought back two of the biggest stars of the franchise. On top of that, it’s just an excellent continuation of the story, and it arrived at the perfect time. Unfortunately, it will not be back for season 2.
As I mentioned before, The Walking Dead is the best series of the franchise, and it’s not even close, but it does speak volumes about how good this one-season show that follows Rick and Michonne after the events of The Walking Dead series finale.
So, that's the list! I know fans will have a lot of thoughts about this ranking. It's definitely interesting to see how the fanbase and critics judge these great shows. The good news is there's more from The Walking Dead universe coming soon with the return of Daryl Dixon this fall!