On The Walking Dead, we’ve seen everything from Rick’s point of view, so viewers have never gotten to see the initial zombie outbreak. According to Robert Kirkman, it looks like we never will.
In an interview with TV Guide (which we discovered through Digital Spy), Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman disclosed that we wouldn’t see the beginning of his zombie apocalypse.
“I don’t find that to be interesting at all,” Kirkman told TV Guide.
The Walking Dead is unlike any post-apocalyptic, zombie-infested world we’ve seen before. Kirkman found that sweet spot first with his comic series, and then with its AMC counterpart.
“In zombie fiction, you see the outbreak, you see the first days and the craziness in almost every other story told in this realm. I’m very proud of the fact that, for the most part, The Walking Dead has skipped over that part.”
We’ve seen outbreaks in other forms, such as World War Z and Dawn of the Dead, but nothing else has really skipped over the initial outbreak of the zombie plague and shown the real humanity of how people are surviving.
Honestly, we think that Kirkman’s way of showing the zombie apocalypse is one of the things that makes the world of The Walking Dead such a standout. The show (and the comics) have never really been about the horror of the zombies, but about how people react when something devastates the world we know.
The Walking Dead is about rebuilding a sense of civilization and finding our humanity in the face of monsters (both living and undead). How do people treat each other now that the familiar is gone?
These are the reasons why we love The Walking Dead so much. Don’t get us wrong – we enjoy the action, but the quiet moments of learning to live again are what really makes the show.