‘Dead City’ Is Doing A ‘What If The Walking Dead Never Happened’ Episode

InnovationGaming‘Dead City’ Is Doing A ‘What If The Walking Dead Never Happened’ EpisodeByPaul Tassi,Senior Contributor.Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. News and opinion about video games, television, movies and the internet.Follow AuthorAug 24, 2026, 02:37pm EDT--:-- / --:--This voice experience is generated by AI. Learn more.This voice experience is generated by AI. Learn more.The Walking Dead: Dead CityCourtesy of AMCIf you want to know the current state of The Walking Dead universe, one of the two shows it has been reduced to, the Maggie-Negan team-up series Dead City, is about to do an alternate universe episode that looks as ridiculous as that concept sounds.Next week, Dead City will imagine a world in which The Walking Dead never happened. As in, no zombies, no destruction of the world and society. The idea is that we get to see what Negan and Maggie are up to in this alternate timeline in which somehow, they end up meeting anyway, with fans once again fearful that this will result in some sort of romantic entanglement now that this is set in a time where Negan didn’t beat her husband to death with a bat. Though from the short preview, it’s not entirely clear if Maggie is aware she is in an alternate reality or not.The show is also using this as an excuse to bring back Maggie’s sister Beth, played by Emily Kinney. Beth died 12 years ago in season 5 of The Walking Dead when she was accidentally shot in the head, a prime candidate for the “unnecessary death list” in The Walking Dead that amassed over the years.It looks, frankly, ridiculous, but some fans are noting that many, many series do this. I would counter this by saying this is almost always a terrible concept for an episode, as it essentially never has any ramifications for the main show, and always feels like bad fan fiction. This happened briefly at other points in The Walking Dead with Michonne hallucinating a normal life, a scene with Glenn with a child, a peacef...