With a large portion of television shows wrapping up their seasons with their finales airing in May, it might be time for TV lovers to relive moments of the undead this summer with The Walking Dead Season 5 on Netflix. Heck, AMC already ended an era on us with the Mad Men series finale, so I need Rick Grimes kicking zombie butt to get me through this hard time. But for those planning a summer of staying indoors watching Grimes and crew, you're going to need a change of plans since Season 5 of The Walking Dead is projected to be on Netflix around Sept. 2015.
In 2011, when AMC and Netflix struck up their streaming deal for The Walking Dead, The Hollywood Reporter wrote, "Under the new arrangement, additional seasons of The Walking Dead and certain future AMC and Sundance Channel programming will be streaming instantly to Netflix members just prior to the premiere of subsequent seasons, the companies said."
AMC's new show, Breaking Bad spinoff Better Call Saul, is also following this pattern of being released on Netflix shortly before the next season premieres. According to their Senior Vice President of Corporate Communications, Jim Maiella, Better Call Saul will be on Netflix two weeks before the Season 2 premiere. The formula makes sense for AMC in hyping up the season premiere of their shows, and so far, both Netflix and AMC have stayed true to releasing The Walking Dead on Netflix just two weeks prior to the new seasons airing on AMC. (Just like how Rick always stays true to his word...mostly.)
Although AMC hasn't released the premiere date for Season 6 yet, all signs point to new episodes of the show airing in October, which would coincide with Season 5 hitting Netflix in late September. And a bunch of other The Walking Dead fanatics on the Internet agree. iDigitalTimes theorized that Season 6 will premiere on Oct. 11, 2015 and that Season 5 would be on Netflix around Sept. 27. FanSided's Netflix Life also guessed that Season 5 would be on Netflix in September.
With no official word from AMC or Netflix yet, the reason these other sites feel confident in assuming that the latest season of everyone's favorite show about zombies (sorry, iZombie) will be on the streaming service in September is based on history. Season 4 was put up on Netflix on Sept. 28, 2014 — two weeks before the Season 5 premiere of Oct. 12 that year. And Season 3 was on Netflix on Sept. 30, 2013 — also two weeks before the Season 4 premiere date of Oct. 13.
Although people may want to re-watch Season 5 right now, I'm just grateful that The Walking Dead is on Netflix at all. It would be a dark time if we couldn't watch our favorite episodes over and over — perhaps even darker than the zombie apocalypse.
Juuuuust kidding, Rick.
Images: Gene Page/AMC; macheteandpython/Tumblr (2)
