When it comes to long-running television shows like The Walking Dead, not every episode will be the best episode of television you have ever seen. Sometimes there will be a dud in the bunch when a show is producing 20 episodes or more per season. Maybe it's not even about the quality of the production or writing and fans just don't like the direction the story has taken.
Throughout the show's 11 incredible seasons, fans have taken a particular liking to certain seasons over others (mostly the earlier seasons), and having produced a whopping 177 episodes, every episode isn't perfect or beloved. But this isn't a list of episodes that are my personal least favorites or that I deem the worst (though there's some overlap), these are episodes reviewed by fans.
If you have ever wondered which episodes of The Walking Dead are popularly deemed the "worst" episodes of the entire series, I've taken a look at the five lowest-rated episodes on IMDb and compiled them in a list. There will be some that fans unanimously agree belong on worst episodes list, though others might have some outspoken fans. Let's dive into these supposed stinkers!
1. "Diverged" (season 10 episode 21)
Coming as a shock to absolutely no one, "Diverged" takes the top spot as the worst-rated episode on IMDb with a rating of 4.1 stars (out of 10!) based on 12K reviews. Along with the other three season 10 episodes featured on this list, "Diverged" was one of the six episodes added onto the 16-episode season to round it out with 22 episodes during the pandemic. Instead of continuing on with the overarching story, these episodes further dragged out season 10 and set up season 11 without moving the story forward in any significant capacity.
Although the masses pine for "filler" episodes in the streaming era, these filler episodes left much to be desired and made fans feel as though The Walking Dead was living up to its title. In "Diverged," fan-favorite character Daryl and Carol were at odds and went their separate ways. They make no progress. Carol spends the episode at home trying to fix solar panels, cooking, and trying track down a rat in her house. The rat eventually just leaves on its own. Fans hate this episode because nothing really happens. It's no wonder it's the lowest-rated episode of the entire series.
2. "Splinter" (season 10 episode 20)
The season 10 bonus episode that led into "Diverged," "Splinter" dives into the past of new character Princess, but it does so as she and some of the other characters are trapped in a traincar by the Commonwealth. Not much can be revealed about the potential season 11 villains in this episode, but Princess, Eugene, Ezekiel, and Yumiko are interrogated one by one on the way to a mystery location. See, the episode seems like it's going somewhere, but it's ultimately a let down.
By the end of the episode, when it looks like they are going to escape, they are captured and knocked out... for the second time in the episode. So again, like in "Diverged," nothing really happens or amounts to anything. However, there's one redeeming quality in "Splinter." The study of Princess' traumatic past is interesting and fans do like the character, but as a whole, the episode wasn't a fan favorite because it added very little to the overall story in season 10.
3. "Swear" (season 7 episode 6)
Strangely enough, the lowest-rated episode aren't all from The Walking Dead season 10. There's a dark horse in the mix from season 7, and it's the earliest episode of the series to be rated this low. "Swear" takes place shortly after we've made Negan's bloody acquaintance, which was obviously a major moment for the series. In this episode, some of the group is separated, giving the series an opportunity to focus on single characters as they all found their way back to each other. The series used this device in previous seasons to produce great episodes, but this wasn't one of them.
"Swear" focused on Tara, who was a secondary character and honestly felt like an afterthought most of the time. In hindsight, this episode is deceptively important because Tara finds a new community who turn out to be key in the long-term fight back against Negan. But Tara just wasn't a character fans connected with and the episode was quite slow. Also, focusing on a secondary character weeks after two main characters were killed by Negan isn't a recipe for a crowd pleaser.
4. "Find Me" (season 10 episode 18)
The last of the season 10 bonus episodes in the top five lowest-rated episodes on IMDb, "Find Me" focuses on Daryl and Carol and struggles in some of the same ways as the other episodes that were tacked onto the penultimate season. In the episode, Daryl reveals to Carol that he met a woman in a cabin named Leah there years ago. She owned a dog, which was named Dog and eventually became Daryl's dog. He and Leah periodically met up and eventually found love. Daryl returns one day after an argument to find her missing.
Back in the present, he and Carol argue about Daryl blaming Carol for endangering their friend Connie in a revenge-driven mission earlier in the season, and they think that they've reached the end of the road. This is where their relationship really begins to crumble, though it was already on thin ice before the main season ended, so doubling down in the bonus episodes accomplished nothing. At least the episode established a bond between Daryl and Leah, which became useful in season 11 when she returned as a member of the Reapers.
5. "The King, the Widow and Rick" (season 8 episode 6)
Finally, the highest lowest-rated episode of The Walking Dead on IMDb right now is "The King, the Widow and Rick," which holds a 6.5 star rating based on 11K reviews. Maybe that comes as a surprise to some fans, but then again, maybe not. There are two layers as to why this episode is poorly-received. For one, it tries to pack in far too much, focusing on four of the settlements in the show, and over-stuffing the episode with too many characters, an overall struggle that dragged down the success of the season as a whole.
"The King, the Widow and Rick" also became regarded as one of the show's worst episodes because it's the one where Rick's son Carl gets bit by a walker and starts the journey towards his death. This episode doesn't reveal the death itself, but it's the culprit behind the show's most infamous decision. Carl was the future and everything Rick was fighting for, so the decision to kill him off was understandably reviled. It's hard for an episode to come back from a series-defining choice like that, especially in retrospect!