AMC's Walking Dead franchise is no stranger to the highs and lows of TV. After all, the original series just celebrated the 15th anniversary of its debut on the cable channel, with fans taking to social media to honor the incredible legacy that it has amassed over the years. And in 2025 that goes beyond the original show - it includes the spinoffs as well, particularly the newer ones as they serve as a continuation of the show's storylines.
But there is no disputing that The Walking Dead was a ratings titan back in the day, growing its audience consistently throughout its run - peaking at 17 million viewers for its season 7 premiere. It also encountered some lows, dipping into the 1 millions throughout its final season as less people tuned in on the night and the hold that streaming had taken on TV had tightened its grip.
That being said, one of its most popular spinoffs has unfortunately fallen to even lower territories - which has completely taken fans off-guard.
Daryl Dixon season 3 features the least-watched episodes of the whole Walking Dead franchise
Fans were genuinely stunned to see that the ratings for The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon season 3 were significantly lower than anyone as expecting. Just 241,000 people watched the premiere on the night, which is just over half the amount of people who watched the season 2 finale the year before. Granted, the show is an AMC+ original and it obtains much of its audience from the streaming service (which releases the episodes a day in advance) but that has always been the case, raising some eyebrows as to why season 3's initial episodes were so much lower. Unfortunately, they continued to get lower.
The fourth installment of the season, "La Justicia Fronteriza", was watched by just 198,000 viewers. It's not an ideal number by any stretch of the imagination, but it also sets a record as the least-watched episode of any Walking Dead hour-long spinoff. And that's troubling considering that there is no specific reason as to why this happened.
Fellow TWD spinoff Dead City also had suffered a large drop in ratings when it returned for its second season earlier this year, but it had the excuse of that extremely long two-year gap between its two seasons - as well as hefty competition on Sunday nights from The Last of Us - to explain at least part of why that was the case.
Daryl Dixon doesn't have that luxury as it has become the only annual release left in the franchise, constantly releasing new seasons in September. Season 2 held steady, mostly matching the ratings of the last few episodes of season 1. That was unfortunately not the case for season 3.
Daryl Dixon's unexpectedly lower S3 ratings say more about the TV landscape than the show
While all episodes of Daryl Dixon's third season now rank among the lowest-watched episodes of the TWD Universe franchise, fans will understandably be surprised to learn how low the fourth installment went. But the truth is that this is less reflective of the show itself (which maintained an extremely high standard throughout season 3) and more about the shifting TV landscape, which has continued to experience rapid evolution in recent years.
Previous spinoffs such as The Walking Dead: World Beyond or the final few seasons of Fear The Walking Dead were nowhere near as popular as the likes of Daryl Dixon and they still managed to pull in nearly four times the viewers. Why? Well, because they didn't have to contend with streaming in the same way that Daryl Dixon has had to. Sure, streaming was around and popular while both of those shows were on (and it certainly somewhat explains why all of the TWD shows' ratings declined so rapidly) but with so much on these days - including Daryl Dixon's own early release on AMC+ - less people are inclined to watch on the night.
That doesn't meant that they won't stream on AMC+ the day after that or even record it when it's on and watch it later. It also doesn't mean that they won't buy the DVD or Blu-Ray when it comes out, purchase the show on digital, or wait for the complete series boxset after season 4 comes out. And, perhaps most importantly of all, it certainly doesn't mean that AMC won't make a lot of money selling the show to international markets for years to come.
Granted, the Walking Dead franchise has built up some signs of age over the years and it isn't the titan that it once was, but it's still incredibly popular and insanely marketable. These shorter, cinematic spinoffs allow the productions to save money on 16-22-episode seasons and larger casts while also allowing the incredibly popular TWD stories to carry on for many more years to come. Just because as many people aren't watching on the night doesn't mean they aren't watching.