Why Walking Dead’s Zombies Have A Different Name In World Beyond

The Walking Dead: World Beyond showrunner Matt Negrete reveals why the new show calls walkers "empties" (and there's a Jesus connection).

The Walking Dead: World Beyond showrunner reveals why walkers have a different name on the new show. As the AMC flagship zombie series continues its epic run through (an unexpectedly drawn out) season 10, there’s about to be another new addition to the Walking Dead universe with World Beyond.

Set years after the onset of the zombie apocalypse, World Beyond concerns a sheltered community (with connections to the mysterious group that took Rick Grimes on TWD) where civilization has been largely rebuilt. The story then centers on a group of young people who’ve never faced the true dangers of the zombie infested world, who leave the safety of their relative paradise and come face-to-face with all the hazards outside the walls. As part of this year’s Comic-Con@Home 2020 festivities, the newest Walking Dead show released a new trailer giving fans a better glimpse than ever of what to expect as a very different set of survivors goes up against a very familiar threat.

Familiar as that threat may be however, there is something different about the zombies in World Beyond: their name. Zombies of course go by different names in different regions (“roamers,” “geeks,” “lurkers” and “biters” are just some of the names that have popped up), and on the new show they’re called “empties.” Speaking as part of a World Beyond panel for Comic-Con@Home 2020, showrunner Negrete reveals just how the walkers came to be called empties in this particular story (via Comic-Con International):

You know it’s funny. When Scott [Gimple] and I were working on this pilot and talking about the show in general, it’s always that question of, what do they call walkers in this corner of the universe? And I started thinking about something that Robert Kirkman had put in one of the comics. There was a character who also used this phrase from the show. And I just loved the term. And it was “empties.” So I’m basically straight up cribbing Robert Kirkman is the short answer to that.

Following up on Negrete’s comments, Scott Gimple himself recalled that it was Jesus who actually used the term empties on the show. Negrete then elaborated on his own remarks, saying he found the term thematically relevant to the new story. As he explained, the character of Iris in the pilot episode dreams she’s dead because she feels “empty” inside.

In fact, a different name for the zombies is not the only way World Beyond stands out from the original Walking Dead and its spinoff Fear the Walking Dead. For one thing, the show will be a single self-contained story that takes place over two seasons, a completely different approach than that of the other two series. For another thing, the show centers entirely around a group of young survivors, something that’s sure to give it a different dynamic than the other series which mainly follow adult characters. Of course, the big concern with this is that Walking Dead has not exactly done a great job handling younger characters in the past (Carl Grimes being the most glaring example of this). Hopefully, The Walking Dead: World Beyond has learned from the mistakes of the past and will do right by its cast of youthful survivors as they embark on their own adventures beginning on October 4, 2020 on AMC.