(Spoilers ahead)We don’t have any inside information or a crystal ball telling us The Walking Dead is on its way out. However, we only need to look at what’s in front us to see the future isn’t as bright as it once was for the series. Viewership of the zombie series has been steadily declining over the past few seasons with only a bump in ratings for particular episodes.

It was reported a few months ago everyone’s favorite worst leader ever, Rick Grimes, would be exiting the series. Andrew Lincoln told the crowd at this year’s SDCC why he wasn’t returning to the series that put his name on the acting map. Lauren Cohan will also be leaving the series sometime during season nine.

Both actors claim they’re not done with their characters. What this really means is anyone’s guess. It could even be a massive AMC stunt to keep viewers tuned into season nine. Remember when showrunners, producers, and AMC  let everyone believe Glenn Rhee was dead and even announced the character was dead until they finally killed off him for good?

Surviving Post Lincoln?

The series could easily survive without Cohan returning as Maggie. Maggie’s character was never full developed as anything more than Glenn’s wife. Last season saw her character come to the forefront, but she was almost MIA in the second half of the season. The series surviving without Andrew Lincoln is a different matter. Lincoln’s Grimes was the lynch pin that held the series together. Wherever we turned or whatever episode was airing, Grimes was in some form or fashion front and center.

The series will have a difficult time recovering and AMC will have a difficult time convincing its dwindling fan base to continue the journey into the zombie apocalypse with out Lincoln Grimes…uh…Andrew Lincoln. It remains to be seen if Norman Reedus can carrying the show on his shoulders. The outlook is not looking good for a once unstoppable juggernaut of basic cable television.

Now that The Walking Dead is on its last leg where can a self respecting zombie fan turn? Let us show you.

Freakish

Freakish is a Breakfast Club meets Degrassi High meets any movie where toxic gas turns humans into monsters mashup. Unlike the gang at Shermer High School these detention students are in fight for their lives.

Freakish starts when the local chemical plant blows up spreading a toxic cloud across the city. Anyone caught in its path is turned into a zombie. Fortunately, or unfortunately as the case may be, the detention school gang is caught between the relative safety of the high school and the toxic zombies outside trying to get into the high school.

To make matters worse, a quasi-military group may be at the center of the accident that caused the toxic cloud. They’ve got their sights set on the school and one student in particular, Grover Jones. Jones and his scientist father may be what breaks the whole mystery wide open.

The all teen cast seems a little far fetched and they are way more sophisticated than teenagers in real life have ever or will ever be. Violet, the obligatory badass of the group, can make bombs and sleeping gas with the basic tools found in a high school chem lab. Diesel, the tough guy with a heart gold, can read detailed blueprints. Barrett is a tech genius who also happens to be a multimillionaire.

Don’t let the fact that Freakish’s target audience is between the ages of 15-21 scare you away. The acting is solid. The plot rivals anything seen in other zombie series. There’s even a little Chad L. Coleman from The Walking Dead to round things out.

No word yet whether Hulu is renewing the series for  season three. It wold be a shame if the third season didn’t see the light of day. The final episode of season two will you leave you asking a lot of questions and wanting more.

Z Nation

Z Nation is produced by The Asylum, the company behind such classics as all six Sharnado movies, Atlantic Rim, The Terminators, and Alien Predator. The Asylum’s modus operandi is to take a successful movie or movie franchise change the script and title enough so it’s similar to the movie being copied, but not enough  to get sued (They have been sued in the past).

It wasn’t  long after The Walking Dead exploded into the pop culture stratosphere the Asylum and creators Karl Schaefer and Craif Engler turned their sights on zombie series. Schaefer and Engler stole everything they could from The Walking Dead for the first couple of episodes. However, the series has since found its own footing.

Z Nation works because it doesn’t take itself serious. For every serious moment in the series, like being trapped inside a casino on Indian land while a horde of zombies is heading their direction to a nuclear bomb being detonated, there’s a ball of zombies getting bigger as it rolls over more zombies. The Z Nation crew have had run in with drug dealers, a Mexican cartel, and even the Chinese Army. You never know what you may see in an episode of Z Nation.

Yes, Z Nation can be a bit corny at times. There’s only so many times in one episode you can hear “I grant you mercy”  before it starts to sound like fingernails dragging across a chalkboard. All that being said, Z Nation has become one of the best zombie genre series to air on television.

You can catch the new season on the SyFy network and past seasons on both Amazon Prime and Netflix.

iZombie

iZombie is about a wanna be surgeon, Liv Moore, scratched by a zombie during a crazy boat party fueled by drugs and energy drinks.What’s a wanna be surgeon turned zombie in need of a steady diet of brains to do? Become an assistant medical examiner for the Seattle police department.

iZombie is a basically a police procedural. Every episode somebody dies and it’s never too difficult to figure out who the murderer is in every episode. What separates iZombie from other police procedural is Moore’s unique zombie ability. After she eats a brain (the brain food prep rivals almost anything you’ll see on a cooking show) she gains the memories of the former owner and adopts their personality. Moore eats their brain, gains the most convenient parts of the deceased’s memories, and helps solve the murder.

The best thing about iZombie is Rose McIver. Not only does McIver play the already mentioned Liv Moore she also takes on the traits of the deceased. She bounces from being a hip hop rapper to a Jack Ass type prankster to a dominatrix with a comfortable ease. It’s the people Moore inhabits that make the common place procedural more tolerable and even entertaining. Later episodes have other actors trying to do the same thing, but not with the same success as McIver.

In season four the series takes a little darker tone. Fillmore Graves, a private military group, turns almost all of Seattle into zombies. It’s a departure from the silliness of the first three seasons. After three seasons of solving murders it takes some time to get use to the idea of a serious iZombie. It doesn’t work for the series, but newer viewers may like the struggle between the good zombies trying to save Seattle and the bad zombies trying to keep it closed off from the rest of the United States.

Alas, season five is iZombie’s last season.