‘Walking Dead’ Will Stumble For a Third Season

By  · Published on October 25th, 2011

With massive ratings numbers, AMC has made the call to renew The Walking Dead for a third season. According to the press release, AMC President Charlie Collier was proud of the viewership records being set internationally by the show.

That number includes more than 10m that watched the second season’s premiere around the world. Clearly, the zombie invasion is still going strong.

This news comes as absolutely no surprise, but it does come with a challenge for showrunner Glen Mazzara to raise the stakes and improve on an already-strong formula for success. There were obvious storytelling differences between the first season and the start of the second, and Mazzara has to find a less ambling direction to drive the story. Not that walking around in the woods for two hours without development isn’t fun.

With a third season in the bag, now is the time for them to start tightening up their scripts significantly in order to maintain the level of unease and drama that fans deserve. Taking a television show into a third season is always tricky, so hopefully they’ll get out of their own way, find some ripe stories, and deliver them without resorting to Sheriff Grimes waterskiing over a shark.

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