Though AMC’s The Walking Dead will soon be ending after eleven seasons, its upcoming spinoff starring Daryl Dixon and Carol Peletier has been in pre-production long before the show’s cancelation was announced.

“There’s been talk for a long time about a Daryl/Carol spin-off,” Walking Dead showrunner Angela Kang explained in a conversation with EW. “And so that was something that we were working on well in advance of the news about the ending of the series.”

Compared to The Walking Dead‘s established locations and an ensemble of villainous groups living in those areas, the untitled spin-off will be going for a more open road-style experience.

“They’re going to be off on a different journey,” Kang further explained about Daryl and Carol’s future. “And that show’s going to feel hopefully a little tonally fresh. They’re just in a different stage of their lives and it’s more of a road show, which I think will be really fun.”

Though actors Norman Reedus and Melissa McBride remain The Walking Dead‘s longest-lasting cast members, their characters’ transition into lead protagonists, let alone a spin-off duo, still remains ironic. Daryl, introduced as the crossbow-wielding brother of Merle Dixon, famously never existed in the comic books. Yet, he evolved across the AMC show into Rick Grimes’ right-hand man and a strong leader in his own right. Carol, meanwhile, exceeded her comic counterpart’s fate in the Prison storyline to become one of the show’s most complex characters, regularly getting her hands dirty in situations that not even other post-apocalyptic survivors would dare take on.

When the spinoff arrives in 2023, it will be one of many stories taking place in The Walking Dead universe outside the main comic storyline. Fear The Walking Dead is currently in its sixth season and the latest spinoff, The Walking Dead: World Beyond, will debut on Oct. 4, focusing on a group of teenagers who grew up knowing only the post-Walker world. An upcoming anthology series, titled Tales of the Walking Dead, was also recently announced in September.