How The Walking Dead's Newest Spin-Offs Will Affect The Timeline
Because "The Walking Dead" takes place across a whopping 11 Seasons (as well as several spin-off series), the franchise's overarching timeline can be a bit confusing -– especially when focusing on characters who left the show prior to its finale, like Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) and Michonne (Danai Gurira).
The main reason why this timeline has become so convoluted is because the spin-off series "Fear the Walking Dead" and "The Walking Dead: World Beyond" both take place concurrently to the events of the main series. As such, it can be hard to know the exact order of events across the three different series. Now, it seems like the upcoming spin-offs "Dead City," "Daryl Dixon," and the unnamed Rick and Michonne spin-off will complicate the timeline even further. The latter will allegedly take place shortly after Michonne's disappearance in Season 10, while "Daryl Dixon" and "Dead City" will leap ahead to the distant future.
Although we know the tentative timeline of the "Rick and Michonne" series (since it will allegedly cover Rick's imprisonment by the Civic Republic Military, which was teased in Season 10 when Michonne set off to track him), we don't have concrete times set for the other two spin-offs — and balancing the events of these three new series will make it nearly impossible to create a cohesive timeline across the entire franchise.
It might be impossible to establish a cohesive timeline with all these concurrent events and time skips
As of right now, it seems likely that the Rick and Michonne series will take place at the same time as (and possibly a bit after) the events of Season 11, though good luck figuring out where their journey fits into the overall timeline. The real confusion regarding these spin-offs stems from the uncertain futures of the "Daryl Dixon" and "Dead City" shows, since both appear to take place outside of the timeline we've grown accustomed to in "The Walking Dead" — which was already a mess to begin with.
The teaser for "Dead City" certainly makes it seem like several years have gone by since the end of "The Walking Dead," as Hershel Rhee appears to have aged significantly since the finale episode. Outside of that, it's rumored that Daryl Dixon's (Norman Reedus) spin-off will take place in France, which is no small journey, and points to another immense time skip for that series as well. These time skips could take the franchise further into the future than anything we've seen before.
With Rick and Michonne's show plugging into the already messy timeline of Season 11 (which will grow even messier when events from "Fear the Walking Dead" catch up to that season) and the other spin-offs skipping an indefinite amount of time into the future, fans will certainly have a tough time tracking the overall timeline of the franchise once these shows hit the screen.