The Walking Dead: Dead City promises "higher stakes" season 2, as AMC reveals opening two minutes and release date

Lauren Cohan as Maggie and Jeffrey Dean Morgan as Negan in The Walking Dead: Dead City season 2
(Image credit: AMC)

AMC has confirmed when The Walking Dead: Dead City will return, and it's super soon. The horror spin-off, led by Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Lauren Cohan, is set to start rolling out its eagerly anticipated second season on May 4 – and to ramp up our excitement, the network has unveiled the new chapter's opening two minutes.

In the promo, which you can watch below, two members of The Croat's Burazi are seen bulldozing their way through the streets of the Big Apple before they come across a suited-and-booted walker wandering around. They exit the vehicle, deliver a fatal blow to its head, and load it up in their truck, before taking it (and other zombie corpses) to their bunker base in Madison Square Garden.

There, a bunch of workers prepare the dead and dump them in tanks of liquid, which breaks down the bodies and turns them into glowing green fuel. The camera then follows said substance through the pipe system, before the alternative, gross-out energy source is shown powering up the Radio City Music Hall and beyond above ground. Quite the game-changing development within the world of The Walking Dead...

"There's unfinished business and the stakes are higher than ever," AMC's accompanying tweet reads. You can say that again...

While Negan (Morgan) and Maggie (Cohan) aren't present in the clip, we already know we'll be reuniting with the apocalypse survivors in season 2. Last time we saw them, The Croat (Željko Ivanek) had delivered the former to the Dama (Lisa Emery), who explained to Negan that she wants to use him to unite Manhattan's various communities in a fight against the New Babylon Federation. Elsewhere, Maggie discovered that the Dama cut off her son Hershel's toe and continues to threaten him as a means to convince Negan to align with her campaign.

The Walking Dead: Dead City season 2 premieres on May 4 on AMC and AMC+. Franchise fans across the pond will have to wait a little longer, however, with Sky revealing that they'll kick off the new installment with a two-episode premiere sometime in June.

We'll be sure to keep you posted as to the official date nearer the time but for now, check out our our guide on how to watch The Walking Dead in order.

Amy West

I am an Entertainment Writer here at 12DOVE, covering all things TV and film across our Total Film and SFX sections. Elsewhere, my words have been published by the likes of Digital Spy, SciFiNow, PinkNews, FANDOM, Radio Times, and Total Film magazine.