Despite its main series concluding in 2022, The Walking Dead is continuing to produce content in its zombie-plagued world. What started as a cultural phenomenon in 2010 has blossomed into one of the biggest television universes. Recently, The Walking Dead Universe just capped off another stellar spinoff with The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live, which brought back Rick Grimes for the first time since around the midway point of the main show’s ninth season.

TOWL’s six-episode run is some of the highest quality The Walking Dead television content in a long while, which has continued a trend set by The Walking Dead: Dead City and The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon. Yet despite favorable views from dedicated fans, it hasn’t been enough to reignite the viewer engagement of the early seasons of the main show. It’s time for AMC to break the “in case of emergency” glass and produce a show that can bring back lost viewers. It’s time to introduce Clementine to The Walking Dead Universe by adapting Telltale’s The Walking Dead.

Who Is Clementine?

Telltale Game
Year
Metacritic Score

Season 1
2012
89

400 Days DLC
2013
78

Season 2
2013
80

A New Frontier
2016
69

Michonne
2016
67

The Final Season
2018
77

The Definitive Series
2019
82

Clementine (Melissa Hutchison) is the central character of the Telltale series but isn’t the first main character introduced. Players are first brought to The Walking Dead’s world through the perspective of Lee Everett (Dave Fennoy), a man who is on his way to prison for murder, at the very beginning of the zombie apocalypse. The police cruiser he’s in crashes, leaving Lee to fend for himself. Lee makes his way to a suburb and holds up a house for safety. A voice begins chatting with him on a walkie-talkie, warning him about a babysitter, who has turned. On the other end of the walkie-talkie is a young eight-year-old girl named Clementine, who is safely in her treehouse.

Clementine’s parents are out of town and she has no idea where they are. Lee, with a new lease on life, decides to help her find them. This kickstarts a coming-of-age journey that would last four seasons in the episodic series. Throughout, Clementine grows up in this zombie-infested world. Making friends and losing them. Making incredibly tough choices. Fending off intimidating villains. Clementine is just trying to survive and find her place in the world.

Players quickly got attached to Clementine in the first season not just because she’s adorable, but because she represents a clean slate of innocence. In a dark world, Clementine was a continued inspiration. A driving force to conquer anyone and anything that stood in the player’s way. As the seasons continued, players were invested in developing their vision of who Clementine should grow up to become. The player became just as much of a caretaker for Clementine as Lee.

Clementine’s story extends four seasons worth of games, totaling 19 episodes, as well as short stories and a three-part graphic novel series The Walking Dead: Clementine – the third part set to release in 2024. Clementine’s story is full of content that is well worth adapting to television.

Why Now Is The Right Time To Adapt Telltale’s The Walking Dead

Show
Season(s)
Finished?
IMDb Rating

The Walking Dead
11
Yes
8.1

Fear the Walking Dead
8
Yes
6.8

World Beyond
2
Yes
4.5

Tales of The Walking Dead
1
Yes
5.9

Dead City
1
No
7.2

Daryl Dixon
1
No
7.6

The Ones Who Live
1

HBO’s The Last of Us
1
No
8.7

Despite recent strong outings for the franchise, ratings and discourse still pale compared to the peak of the franchise. None of The Walking Dead spinoffs thus far have managed to bring back fans who departed for one reason or another. With chatter of a potential “endgame” series that ties everything together, it makes sense to properly set that up by rebuilding the viewer base while still giving viewers the time to catch up on what they missed.

What makes Telltale’s The Walking Dead appealing is that it can act as a standalone series. Viewers won’t need to watch other series to learn what things like the Civic Republic Military (CRM) are. It can act just as much as a reboot as it would a part of a universe that has become more and more daunting to catch up on with an 11-season main show, an eight-season spinoff, a two-season spinoff, and three other spinoffs with two of them producing a second season. It brings viewers back to the beginning, much like Fear the Walking Dead did. Something consistent with viewers is that viewers enjoy seeing the first few years of the apocalypse. The early seasons of the main show and FTWD are both remembered fondly. Adapting Telltale’s The Walking Dead is an opportunity to do that again.

In addition, HBO’s The Last of Us is proof that a story-heavy video game can be adapted in a near one-to-one recreation and still be award-winning. It’s proof that great stories can be enough to draw in viewers whether they’ve played the game or not. Liberties don’t have to be taken to expand appeal, and what liberties are taken can make a great story better. Clementine’s story can remain mostly the same, which is great because it has the added benefit of being an established story. A story that is beloved by The Walking Dead fans whether they keep up with the current happenings or not. Press coverage of adapting a highly-regarded video game can generate plenty of buzz, too, as not only is there a curiosity factor, but the fact that it will be made clear that it’s a great The Walking Dead story that’s being adapted. This can help draw former fans back in whether it’s because they love the game or just long for good The Walking Dead content and haven’t kept up with the recent spinoffs.

An Adaptation Can Lean Into Nostalgia

Notable characters and references in the Telltale series:

The state of Georgia
Glenn Rhee
Paul “Jesus” Monroe
Hershel and Shawn Greene
The Greene Farm
Michonne via a spinoff season along with Pete (whose closest TV counterpart is Virgil) and Saddiq
The Whisperers

One of the key elements that can make Clementine’s story so appealing is that it can lean heavily into nostalgia. Clementine’s story begins in Georgia at the start of the apocalypse – the same general location as Rick Grimes’ story begins in the main series. Telltale’s The Walking Dead is canon within the comic universe and contains numerous crossovers within the comic series. This is something that a show can exploit as the early seasons of the main show are the most nostalgic era of the franchise.

In the first episode of the Telltale series alone, players encounter Glenn and even make a stop at the Greene farm. Glenn has long been a fan-favorite character, so an excuse to bring back Steven Yeun as the TV Glenn would be fantastic and alone could generate just as much hype as Rick Grimes returning in TOWL. While Herschel Greene’s actor, Scott Wilson, passed away in 2018, a visit to the Greene farm could reunite Maggie and Beth Greene or bring back other members of the Greene farm such as Otis and Patricia.

Later on, Clementine also meets Paul “Jesus” Monroe, whose last name is Rovia in the TV series, and was himself a fan favorite during his tenure. On top of that, there was a spinoff Telltale season called The Walking Dead: Michonne that could be integrated into a Clementine series as well, even if Michonne and Clementine never crossed paths. There are already plenty of opportunities to include nostalgic crossovers from the games alone, and that can be expanded on. Whether it’s giving Glenn more than just a cameo or finding an excuse to bring in another long-departed character or location without complicating canon or disrespecting legacies. Seeing those faces, hearing those voices, and seeing those memorable locations will go a long way to encourage past viewers to come back.

What Will Clementine Remember?

Other Telltale The Walking Dead Stories
Year
Media Type

“The Night the World Ended”
2019
Short Story

“How I Protekted Clem”
2019
Short Story

Clementine Lives
2021
One-shot Graphic Novel Chapter

Clementine: Book One
2022
Graphic Novel

Clementine: Book Two
2023
Graphic Novel

Clementine: Book Three
2024
Graphic Novel

Telltale’s The Walking Dead is an adventure game that’s all about choices. Players can lead Clementine in a variety of different directions whether is someone full of compassion, a jerk, or someone who doesn’t talk much thanks to the “…” dialog option. Just about every choice will produce a disclaimer at the top of the screen that will say something along the lines of, “Clementine will remember that.” This, in its way, creates tension as players don’t know how these choices will play out. This does make adapting it complicated because there are so many directions the story could go. Should it be interactive like the game? Should it take the most popular choices and adapt those? Should it be a complete surprise? Should multiple scenes be filmed with the decision of which version to air being based on fan response? Or should it simply go with the flow and present the most logical story path?

There’s a mystery of how Clementine’s story will play out. Each game is full of tough choices that The Walking Dead fanbase still debate to this day. Adapting Telltale’s The Walking Dead would likely be faced with the task of not only making the choices for the viewers but also finding the best way to present it. Not only to make it satisfying but also to encourage similar debates.

An adaptation also has the opportunity to fix flaws from the Telltale series. Not every choice or character decision landed with players. Some characters were quickly killed off to usher in a new cast, Clementine doesn’t have a major presence in the third season A New Frontier, and the development of The Final Season was tumultuous. It’s an opportunity to iron out wrinkles, clean up flaws, and take past criticism into account to make this the definitive telling of Clementine’s life. Will Telltale’s The Walking Dead ever be adapted? That remains to be seen. However, if AMC is looking for a grand slam instead of a home run, then bringing Clementine into The Walking Dead Universe should be a high priority if possible.