Zombie fatigue was real. After years of watching survivors trudge through moral debates, villain monologues, and endless back-and-forth wars in The Walking Dead, a lot of us thought we had seen it all. We’d experienced the prison, Terminus, Alexandria, Negan, The Whisperers, etc. The Walking Dead franchise had reshaped television and defined an era. It set the standard for modern zombie storytelling.
So when Black Summer quietly dropped on Netflix in 2019 with little fanfare, most of us assumed we knew exactly what we were getting. Surely, we’d be getting another attempt to recapture lightning in a bottle. Another grim, gray-toned apocalypse filled with familiar beats. Another group of strangers arguing about trust while the undead shuffled in the background. Instead, what we got was one of the most intense zombie experiences in years.
Black Summer doesn’t ease you into its world. From the very first episode, the zombie series drops you straight into chaos and refuses to slow down. The outbreak feels fresh and unstable, not like a world that’s already adapted to the rules of survival. The infected are fast, aggressive, and terrifying in a way that immediately resets your expectations. The characters have no time to form careful strategies or deliver dramatic speeches either. When danger appears, it explodes.
That urgency is what makes the show stand out. For The Walking Dead, the apocalypse eventually became about rebuilding society, forming communities, power structures, and long-term survival. Black Summer focuses on something much more immediate: getting through the next moment alive. It strips the genre back to its most primal instinct. Run. Hide. React. It's all about pure fight-or-flight mode.
The storytelling mirrors that instability as well. Episodes are structured in fragmented chapters that jump between characters, sometimes cutting away at the most stressful point. There's not much dialogue either, which forces the tension to build through action rather than explanation. You aren’t told what to feel. You feel it because the pacing never lets you breathe.
What makes Black Summer particularly impressive is how immersive the action is. Long, uninterrupted takes put you in the middle of the chase, and the speed of the infected keeps you at the edge of your seat. Unlike other zombie series where the undead can almost feel like background scenery, here every encounter is life or death. It recaptures the tension and terror of the early seasons of The Walking Dead but pushes it further.
Most of us fell in love with zombie stories because they tapped into our most basic fears: isolation, chaos, and the fragility of society. Over time, long-running franchises naturally evolve. Of course, we've seen this with The Walking Dead franchise. But sometimes, all you want is to feel that pure, unfiltered panic again. Black Summer gives us exactly that. It strips away the comfort of long explanations, moral debates, and drawn-out backstories, leaving only the raw, immediate fight for survival.
Sadly, the tragedy is that the show never became the cultural juggernaut it arguably deserved to be. Netflix canceled Black Summer before its true potential could be fully realized, and that's something that still frustrates fans to this day. However, that doesn’t take away from what the show accomplished.
For anyone craving a zombie series that feels immediate, raw, and unrelentingly tense, Black Summer remains a hidden gem that even die-hard Walking Dead fans couldn’t have predicted would hit so hard. You'll just need to make your way to Netflix if you want to stream both seasons!