As the second half of the tenth season of The Walking Dead is nearing its end, and with the finale confirmed to center around the Whisperer war, we have enough to know what to expect by the conclusion of this season.
This also leaves us enough to anticipate what might be in store for Season 11. Rather than make predictions, we’ve come up with a wish list that, if seen on the show, will ensure that the next season will be a hit among the fans. So, read on further and see if your expectations are aligned with ours for the show’s future.
10 The Commonwealth Storyline (With A Twist)
Having brought this point up several times before, we might sound like a broken record, but it really is high time the Commonwealth community comes into play. The faction has been teased as far back as Season 7, so the wait really has been brought to its peak.
Rather than have the exact storyline as in the comics, though, we’d like to see a flipped situation, in that the leader of the Commonwealth shouldn’t turn out to be the next villain. Rather, the story should have a mysterious member of the community causing mayhem at frequent points in order to implicate the heroes as the guilty party.
9 Love Story For Eugene
Eugene has been going stale ever since Season 9, having a subdued role where he usually comments on stuff or needlessly pines after Rosita. With a hint of a romance with Stephanie, the unknown person on the radio, Eugene might be in for a real story going forward.
What we’d like here would be to see Eugene find an actual love interest rather than it being a cop out, with this love interest truly turning him into a brave person who’s happy to be part of the fight. Along with that, this new romance should have Eugene undergo significant character development, namely with the way he behaves.
8 A Dynamic Between Carol And Negan
A strange fact that has gone unnoticed has been that Carol and Negan have never interacted, despite this being the fifth season and counting since they’ve been on the show together. While they might just come face-to-face soon enough, we want a deeper connection for Season 11.
Carol is already the scariest character on the show, but Negan is the one person who wouldn’t be afraid of her; he’d just find it an attractive quality. These two would make for a fierce duo, and we’d like a begrudging partnership going on between them in the future.
7 Focus Away From Communities
Season 10 is now the fifth straight season where we’re seeing a fight between communities, and it has honestly run its course. With the Whisperer war set to continue till the end of the current season, it’s the best time to have the community battles come to a close.
For Season 11, it's better to shift toward individual storylines rather than those concerning the communities at large. A perfect way to do so would be by separating major characters away from singular locations, and have them confront their personal problems. This way, we can be in to see characterization be the main focus in the next season.
6 Maggie's Time With Georgie
Maggie’s return is in the cards, and it’s for certain that an insightful look into her happenings over the last two years will be seen in Season 11. We don’t want this to be narrated, though, as these events deserve to be seen by the audience.
It shouldn’t be restricted to a single episode either, since that would just mess with the season’s pacing and would feel like a filler story. Instead, the season’s storyline should directly parallel whatever Maggie went through with Georgie, and within these scenes, we find out what exactly happened back then.
5 A Flash-Forward Near The Series Finale
The show has been locked in for Season 12 for a while now, but the future after that is murky for the time being. Plus, the storylines also dry up after the Commonwealth angle, which is where the comics ended.
For this reason, the show should employ the technique used in Season 9, where we saw flash-forwards over to the end of the season in short bursts. In Season 11, these sequences should point toward the far future, thereby setting the events up for them to play out chronologically.
4 A Crossover With The Spin-Offs
There are two spin-offs of the show at present, with talks of more coming our way in the future. However, there still hasn’t been a true crossover, save for a couple of characters transitioning over to Fear the Walking Dead.
In order to drive home the fact that all these shows take place within the same continuity, the next season should have at least one episode where characters of the main series and a spin-off interact in a major way. This would also bridge the gaps in timelines for each series, setting them within the same time span.
3 The Zombies Having A Greater Role
Don’t be fooled by Alpha’s use of the zombie horde to be The Walking Dead making these monsters important again, because the walkers are simply a tool for Alpha’s own machinations. What we’re looking for in the next season is for the zombies to have the role of the main antagonists.
This would involve the walkers being the direct threat, preferably a repeat of the scenarios the show had in the first three seasons and the first half of the sixth season, where survival was the main theme.
2 A Bottled Episode With A Minimal Cast
This technique has been applied in various other shows before, and The Walking Dead itself has presented similar offerings, such as the one featuring Daryl and Beth in Season 4. However, what we’d like to see here would be an episode set in a confined space.
Ideally, the characters in question would be looking to escape walkers in this scenario, but the challenge would be the limited resources and the race against time. Not only would this be a unique episode, it would feature the heart-pounding entertainment The Walking Dead became famous for in the first place.
1 A Horror-Based Season
Instead of picking out one thing for the season, this point has to do with the entire season as a whole. Season 9 had gone some way in returning the horror aspects to The Walking Dead, but it didn’t dive into it completely; Season 10 has hardly had any scary moments.
Since we’d also like zombies to be the main villains, the show can dedicate the whole season into making them believable antagonists once more by having genuine scares in store. On the other hand, bringing in a group like Terminus would also do the trick. Simply put, anything that has viewers feeling a catch in the throat out of fright would make Season 11 a return to form where horror is concerned.