AMC

Live ratings for The Walking Dead may have taken a slight tumble in Season 7, but that isn’t stopping AMC from envisioning decades of story ahead. Creator Robert Kirkman too maintains the endless nature of the comics, though new comments suggest AMC might be gaining on the comics’ lead by the time Season 12 rolls around.

The Walking Dead isn’t generally known for post-credits scenes (few shows place them literally after the credits anyway), so you’d be forgiven to have missed the midseason finale “Hearts Still Beating” stinger. Come, join our wild speculation about those mysterious boots with a closer look at AMC’s official debut of the scene online.

The simple answer is ALMOST EVERYWHERE AT 7PM ON THURSDAY! The details behind that answer are slightly more complicated.

Even as The Walking Dead keeps Carl alive as a symbol of hope for the future, it stands to reason Chandler Riggs will eventually leave the series behind. That prospect got more immediate with word Riggs would soon be attending college, for which the Walking Dead star says of the balancing act “It wouldn’t be easy but I think that could be possible.”

It’s no secret that Seasons 6 and 7 of The Walking Dead have proven more divisive than usual, between the buildup to Negan’s arrival, the months-long wait to identify his victim(s), and subsequent brutality. Season 7 hasn’t felt the same since, and according to ratings data, enough viewers have subsequently tuned out to reach a multi-season low.

The Walking Dead finally returned us to the Hilltop with Sunday’s “Go Getters,” in the process mounting one of the more inventive action scenes of zombie carnage in several seasons. The staging itself left more than a few fans scratching their heads by the end, for which star Tom Payne now reveals that several sequences were missing from the final cut.

The Walking Dead isn’t known for elaborate fan-sleuthing (save a dumpster-dive or two), thought it seemed impossibly coincidental that placement of a Morse Code chart and an unusual Rick-Daryl interaction weren’t intentional this past week. Well, sorry to burst your Reddit bubble, but showrunner Scott Gimple says it might just have been a sunny day.

It’s been some time since Better Call Saul closed out Season 2 with what seemed to be explicit reference to the biggest Breaking Bad-die, and Season 3 hasn’t started slippin’ teases of Jimmy’s return just yet. That said, creators Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould are all but confirming that Breaking Bad fans will have “several” familiar reasons to check out next season.

We live in an age of fan-theories, where Westworld twists might be unlocked on Reddit after one episode, though as The Walking Dead proved with #DumpsterGate last year, it isn’t always worth the wait. Some clever fans have observed at least one background detail that might put this past Sunday’s “Service” into perspective, however, and tease Rick’s plan to strike back.

AMC isn’t one to look a rotting gift horse like The Walking Dead in the mouth, extending its highest-rated series so long as creator Robert Kirkman provides comic source material. That relationship doesn’t necessarily extend both ways, however, as Kirkman acknowledges AMC has zero input or foreknowledge of any potential story shakeups.