The Walking Dead: Dead City Showrunner Shares His Concept for a Dillard Spinoff

The following contains spoilers for The Walking Dead: Dead City Season 3, Episode 8, “Tenebrae,” which premiered Sunday, Sept. 13, on AMC and AMC+.

Aimee Garcia isn’t the only Dead City Season 3 newcomer to leave The Walking Dead spinoff after only one season. In the season finale, Jimmi Simpson said goodbye to the zombie apocalypse franchise — at least for the time being.

Alongside Garcia, Simpson was first introduced in the Season 3 premiere as Dillard, a lonely survivor living in a bar with two walkers he claimed he could talk to. While he initially became one of Negan’s closest new allies, Dillard eventually turned against him and wreaked havoc on Maggie’s community, including killing Renata.

But Dillard’s campaign of destruction comes to an end when Maggie mortally wounds him, leaving him to eventually turn into a walker. With his time on Dead City officially over, showrunner Seth Hoffman opened up to CBR’s Katie Doll in an exclusive interview about why the character only lasted one season.

“We constructed it as a one-season character. Sort of to peek behind the curtain, that’s the reason we were able to cast Jimmi. Since it was only a three-month commitment, he could come into our schedule and shoot the show.”

But that’s not all he had to say about Dillard’s legacy in The Walking Dead franchise. Hoffman also revealed a potential idea he’s already constructed for a Dillard-focused miniseries.

“That being said, if we’re sort of going into fantasy land, right? Is there a six-episode series about Dillard before he meets Negan? Is there a little miniseries there that I already have a concept for and would love to do if given the opportunity?

“Jimmi’s an amazing actor. We love the character.”

At the very least, Hoffman was able to bring an idea to life with Dillard that he’d wanted to explore since working on The Walking Dead as a writer and producer.

“I think everyone was sad that Dillard had to die at the end of the season. But from the time I was working on the mothership show, I always wanted to tell a story about a character who turns into a walker at the end and, to some extent, have it feel like a happy ending. I’m really happy with that ending for Dillard.”

Jimmi Simpson as Dillard with walkers in a bar on The Walking Dead: Dead City

Hoffman certainly breaks the mold of what a traditional Walking Dead episode looks like in Season 3, with an alternate-reality episode that shows what could’ve happened to Maggie and Negan if the apocalypse had never happened. But Dead City goes even further by taking a look inside Dillard’s fractured mind in the Season 3 finale.

The beginning of the episode shows Dillard in a sitcom-like setting, complete with a laugh track, where he’s playing a game with his walkers, Titicaca and Cockenspiel. The sequence shows viewers how Dillard experiences his conversations with the walkers, who talk back to him in his mind.

Later, though, Dillard looks at himself in the mirror, only for his face to disappear right in front of him.

Hoffman expanded on what these two scenes are meant to represent, building on the idea that Dillard has lost his sense of identity and on previous Season 3 moments that foreshadowed his emotional breakdown.

“We always loved this idea of Dillard as a man whose identity was kinda lost even to him. There are small moments within the season. There’s the boobies painting in Episode 2 that has the faceless man on it. There’s a moment in Episode 5 where we see Dillard in a mirror, but his face is sorta scratched out because of an imperfection in the mirror, so everything else is clear, but his face is not.

“We were always subtly laying in the undercover cop aspect of it as well, that he’s this person whose identity has been so warped. In terms of that opening scene in Episode 8, I really love it. I’m really proud of that scene.

“At the top of the episode, we really wanted to remind the audience, A, this is the Dillard that you fell in love with, and B, this is why he is on such a rampage. This is why he’s so intent on killing Negan: These walkers were his friends, whom he’d been playing with for so long.

“We really wanted to get inside Dillard’s head more. The end of Episode 3 does that when we hear the walker talking to him, but in a sort of scary, disturbing way. At the top of Episode 8, we wanted you to see that this was a life that he was really happy living. In its own way, it had meaning and brought him joy.”

As someone who wrote for and produced The Walking Dead, Hoffman is well aware of the show’s storytelling conventions. He wasn’t afraid to embrace one of them for Dillard’s final episode.

“The Walking Dead is sort of famous for, right before characters die, opening them up a little bit more, giving you a deeper glimpse into who they were. To some extent, this was our attempt at that.”

The Walking Dead: Dead City Season 3 is now streaming on AMC+. Seasons 1–2 are available to stream on Netflix.