The Walking Dead: Dead City: Trailer, Release Date, Cast, Storyline, and Everything Else to Know

We're just a few weeks away from arriving in zombie-ridden New York City. That's right — The Walking Dead: Dead City is almost here.

AMC's long-running flagship series The Walking Dead ended in late 2022 after 11 seasons, but the franchise is still alive and kicking thanks to its many spin-offs. Two new ones are coming this year, both featuring fan-favorite characters from the original show: In the second half of 2023, we'll see Daryl Dixon (Norman Reedus) traveling to France in The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon, but before that, The Walking Dead is headed to the city that never sleeps.

The Walking Dead: Dead City, coming in June, will follow unlikely buds Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) and Maggie (Lauren Cohan) as they head to New York City years after the conclusion of The Walking Dead. He split open her husband's head with a baseball bat, now they're vacationing together! What would Glenn think? Glenn would want to know when Dead City premieres, who's in it, and what it's about. We'll explain all that to him below.  

The Walking Dead: Dead City trailer

AMC dropped the trailer for The Walking Dead: Dead City on May 11. In the video, sworn enemies Maggie and Negan arrive in desolated Manhattan. Maggie reveals that she's there to search for her kidnapped son, Hershel. It turns out that the man who took him — the Croat (Željko Ivanek) — has his own history with Negan, giving Negan and Maggie even more of a reason to team up.

Previously, the premiere date was announced on March 25 with the help of a new teaser video, which shows Maggie screaming for her son while Negan grumbles, "Seriously? Walkers are falling from the sky now?" Someone's having a great time in New York.

The Walking Dead: Dead City release date

The Walking Dead: Dead City premieres Sunday, June 18 at 10/9c on AMC and AMC+. The following episodes in the six-episode season will air Sundays at 9/8c.

The Walking Dead: Dead City storyline

Sometimes you just have to bite the bullet and team up with your greatest enemy to save your son, at least in the Walking Dead universe. In The Walking Dead: Dead City, Maggie is on the hunt for her missing son, and she's forced to work with the infamous bat-wielding, husband-killing Negan to track down Hershel on the mean streets of post-apocalyptic New York City. This is not the Walking Dead we know, even if there are a few familiar faces. 

Dead City will show us how the zombie apocalypse affected New York, which is apparently very different from how it hit more Southern, rural areas in Georgia and Virginia. Manhattan was long ago cut off from the mainland, and the city is crumbling. Walking Dead boss Scott M. Gimple revealed during the TV Critics Association winter press tour that where The Walking Dead started with "a fusion of classic stuff like John Ford and Romero," Dead City is more John Carpenter (Escape INTO New York, perhaps?), and they're really leaning into the urban setting. Showrunner Eli Jorné even claims that some of the "magic" of two people going to New York for the first time will still be present, in spite of all the zombies. Hey, you gotta find all the joy you can in the apocalypse.

How Dead City is different from The Walking Dead

Gimple explained that while The Walking Dead was an ensemble show, "a cast of thousands," Dead City will be very focused on Maggie, Negan, and just a few new friends/foes. "There aren't a ton of other characters, so we get to tell their stories deeply," Gimple said. "Beyond that, we're in New York City... the tone of the story is a little different, the visuals are different." 

Maggie and Negan are out of the woods after many, many years, and they're about to find out just how claustrophobic a city like New York can be. There are walkers falling from the sky, and things are very much not pleasant. "It's unwelcoming," Cohan said. "We have something we have to do, but there's nothing too welcoming about it, and you feel that in the show. It felt like a really different excursion." 

The show catches up with Maggie and Negan "a few years on" from where we saw them last, and Cohan says the show gets to "explore these notions of forgiveness and getting on with your life and facing your own demons." 

While Morgan and Cohan agreed that it might help to have watched every season of The Walking Dead before heading into Dead City, Jorné promised that you can also come in as a brand new TWD fan. "You'll get to know these characters and their history very quickly," he said. "It's a new world." 

The Walking Dead: Dead City cast 

Cohan and Morgan will be joined by a new cast featuring Emmy winner Željko Ivanek, Jonathan Higginbotham, Mahina Napoleon, and Karina Ortiz. 

Gaius Charles (Friday Night Lights) will also face off against Negan. He plays Marshal Perlie Armstrong, a devoted family man who "clings to law and order as a way to make sense of this apocalypse," according to Charles. His version of law enforcement is something we haven't yet seen in the Walking Dead universe, and Gimple says that it's as if Armstrong has stumbled out of a different genre, and he has his own very different inner conflicts. 

Cohan and Morgan also serve as executive producers, and Cohan said that they were determined to "honor" the shows that have come before, while also giving themselves something "uncomfortable and surprising" to do in the new series. 

Main cast:

• Lauren Cohan as Maggie Greene
• Jeffrey Dean Morgan as Negan
• Gaius Charles as Perlie Armstrong
• Željko Ivanek as "The Croat"
• Jonathan Higginbotham as Tommaso
• Mahina Napoleon as Ginny
• Trey Santiago-Hudson as Jano
• Charlie Solis as "The Bartender"
• Michael Anthony as Luther

Other Walking Dead spin-offs  

Maggie and Negan aren't the only Walking Dead characters continuing their adventures. Fear the Walking Dead will debut its eighth and final season beginning Sunday, May 14, and The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon, starring Norman Reedus, will premiere later in 2023. Rick (Andrew Lincoln) and Michonne (Danai Gurira) will also star in their own spin-off, coming in 2024. 

Daryl Dixon will find Daryl washed ashore in France, and if you're immediately wondering how he got to France, that's the question the show (and Daryl) will be asking as he treks across the country looking for a way back home. Here's what we know about Daryl Dixon.

Rick and Michonne's spin-off is still unnamed, but it has a heck of a logline. Per AMC, "This series presents an epic love story of two characters changed by a changed world. Kept apart by distance. By an unstoppable power. By the ghosts of who they were. Rick and Michonne are thrown into another world, built on a war against the dead... And ultimately, a war against the living. Can they find each other and who they were in a place and situation unlike any they've ever known before? Are they enemies? Lovers? Victims? Victors? Without each other, are they even alive — or will they find that they, too, are the Walking Dead?"

Where to watch

The Walking Dead: Dead City will air on AMC and AMC+ beginning Sunday, June 18 at 10/9c, with subsequent episodes airing Sundays at 9/8c. 

All 11 seasons of The Walking Dead are streaming on Netflix.