The Walking Dead Franchise Has Many Spin-Offs, but This Is Hands Down the Best One

When The Walking Dead debuted on AMC in 2010, it quickly became one of the most talked-about shows on TV, but a series of mistakes and obstacles, like Frank Darabont

's exit, Glenn's (Steven Yeun) death, and way too much moping and walking around, led to the zombie-centric series shuffling to a dull end. Still, it was a big enough IP that spin-offs could work. Not counting the likes of 

Fear the Walking Dead, The Walking Dead: World Beyond, and Tales of the Walking Dead, there are three shows in the franchise that took our favorite characters from the original series and sent them out on their own. Between The Walking Dead: Dead City, The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon, and The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live, one is by far and away the best.

Negan and Maggie's 'The Walking Dead: Dead City' Started Off Strong

The Walking Dead: Dead City first debuted in June 2023, and it started off with an immediately strong premise: what if we took The Walking Dead's biggest enemies and forced them to work together

? Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) was the big bad villain of the original series from his debut when he turned Glenn's head to mush with his barbed wire baseball bat Lucille. (Justice for Abraham, because we seem to forget that he died in the same scene!) This obviously put him at extreme odds with Glenn's wife, Maggie (

Lauren Cohan), who had to find a way to make it through a world without her soulmate while also raising their young son. Things got even worse when she was forced to co-exist with Negan, but because she refused to be like the now-reformed heel, she could never bring herself to kill him.

Dead City took that tense relationship and made it the singular focus by having Maggie's son, Hershel, kidnapped, and having Negan help her. On top of that, like many tired horror franchises do (see Friday the 13th and Scream), the action was taken to New York City. The dilapidated setting was a nice change from years of forests, and 

seeing Maggie and Negan work together was interesting, but a Season 2 was unnecessary. Rather than letting it end, Dead City found a way to send Maggie back to New York, while neutering Negan and making him a depressed guy who lost all of his charisma. In one season, Dead City went from being a pretty good Walking Dead spin-off to the worst.

'The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon' Wastes Daryl and Carol

Debuting just three months after Dead City

 was The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon. This spin-off was highly anticipated for both the exact same and opposite reasons as the first. Rather than putting two fascinating enemies together, what if we got to see 

The Walking Dead's greatest friendship continue on with Daryl (Norman Reedus) and Carol (Melissa McBride) going on adventures together? Yes, please! Unfortunately, McBride wasn't available for the first season

, which meant Reedus would be on his own. However, instead of this being a disaster, it was a success because Daryl Dixon was forced to create new characters for us to care about, like Isabelle (Clémence Poésy) and Laurent (Louis Puech Scigliuzzi), and put Daryl in a must-watch setting within the ruins of Paris.

When Carol finally did show up, the series made the mistake of 

immediately killing off Isabelle and the series' two villains, as well as sending Laurent back to America without them. Now, it was just Daryl and Carol all alone, and despite moving the action to Spain in Season 3, Daryl Dixon suffered with the creation of the dullest new supporting characters imaginable, while making the unfathomable mistake of repeatedly separating Daryl and Carol. The spin-off should work so easily, with two badass friends killing walkers and bad guys, but instead, they mope around in a series where zombies barely exist, and are apart from each other far too much.

'The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live' Focused on 1 Solid Season With Rick and Michonne

The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live, which debuted in February 2024, is easily the best of the spin-offs because it didn't fall into any bad storytelling traps. 

The Ones Who Live is the story fans wanted to see the most. When Andrew Lincoln left The Walking Dead and Rick Grimes was gone as the leader, it left an absence that they couldn't come back from. With Lincoln wanting to come back, though, audiences were excited to see Rick again. This wasn't a character who we'd just seen all the way up to the series finale, but one who had left years before. We knew he was out there, we knew the mysterious circumstances of his disappearance, but we never got a resolution. The Ones Who Live

 offered not only that, but the return of Michonne (Dania Gurira) too, who would fight through hell to find her man and take him back to his children.

Even in the best of moments, Dead City and Daryl Dixon felt forced. What if Negan and Maggie were forced to work together again and again? What if Daryl was kidnapped and taken to Paris? It was a higher concept, whereas 

The Ones Who Live had the drama naturally built in from the original The Walking Dead, complete with an endgame. All we wanted was that embrace when Michonne found Rick, and then that scene of him coming home and holding Judith (Cailey Fleming) and R.J. (Anthony Azor). As long as The Ones Who Live did this, it could not fail.

And it delivered just that! The Rick and Michonne love story was intense (and quite sexy), there was plenty of action and walker deaths with Michonne and her katanas, and we had the drama of the Civic Republic Military. Heck, Rick even cut off his own freaking hand to survive. At its core, though, 

The Ones Who Live was a love story, and it kept its two leads together, reuniting them in the first episode rather than wasting episodes and drawing it out. Most importantly, the spin-off told its story and got out. There was one season of six episodes and that's it. The Ones Who Live didn't overstay its welcome with a second and third season of Rick and Michonne on more adventures with convoluted storylines. It told its story and came to a heartwarming resolution. Let's hope that there is never a Season 2. We don't need it!