In 2010, AMC’s The Walking Dead changed TV horror history, as a zombie apocalypse led not only a genre but a pop culture takeover. Alas, the series ran way too long and lost many of its fans along the way, but it was still popular enough to result in several spinoffs. Perhaps the most well known is The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon, which eventually reunites end of the world besties Daryl Dixon (Norman Reedus) and Carol Peletier (Melissa McBride). While seeing our two favorite characters together is exciting, the series has been an up-and-down one, with the third season especially stripping away all the horror and walker action. If you miss zombie mayhem on TV, your best bet is to go back in time and check out a series you may have missed the first time around, Syfy’s Z Nation.

‘Z Nation’ Aimed to Be Fun Rather Than Dark and Serious

Z Nation came out in the middle of the zombie craze in the fall of 2014, which meant that for a lot of people, it was just one more in a long line of similar shows. However, this one was much different from what came before it in both plot and tone. Created by Karl Schaefer (Eerie, Indiana) and Craig Engler, Z Nation begins three whole years after the fall of humanity from a virus that turned so many into zombies. One of our main protagonists is Alvin Murphy (Keith Allan), a prison inmate who became a guinea pig for government vaccines as everything started to go down. Murphy survives the vaccine and is not only immune to the virus through zombie bites, but even becomes zombie-like with his peeling skin and ability to communicate and control some zombies, while still remaining human.

Z Nation has similarities to today’s biggest zombie series, <em>The Last of Us</em>, with Murphy now seen as someone whose DNA can help humanity. This leads to a group of survivors, fronted by National Guard Lieutenant Roberta Warren (Kelita Smith) taking Murphy on a cross-country trip from Maine to the CDC in California. Every episode is one more high-stakes adventure in America, hence the title.

Schaefer and Engler’s series aimed to be different though. Unlike The Walking Dead and its spinoffs, which can be very dark and serious, Z Nation wanted to be the opposite. In 2014, Karl Schaefer told Dread Central:

“I think the biggest difference between us and them is our series has a sense of hope and also a sense of humor. We’re kind of trying to put the fun back into zombies. Our heroes have a mission that they’re on, so we’re traveling every week. We’re going across the country. They’re not just sort of fighting for survival and hunkering down into one place. They really have somewhere to go and something to do…

“We try and have as much action in an episode as ‘The Walking Dead’ has in half a season. There’s a lot of black humor in our show, a lot of social satire, but primarily it’s that sense of hope and mission and that the characters are really taking it to the zombies as opposed to being afraid of them and hunkering down.”

‘Z Nation’ Lasted for Five Seasons on SyFy

Because this is a zombie series that travels across the country, it means many characters come and go. The first season had more notable names, such as Harold Perrineau and Tom Everett Scott, while other actors appeared throughout the seasons after, portraying a variety of heroes and villains. Included among them is a popular face from the 2000s, DJ Qualls, who plays a hacker named Simon Cruller, also known as Citizen Z.

Z Nation came out four years following The Walking Dead‘s debut, after zombie fatigue had already set in, resulting in its story and campy tone being dismissed by some critics. TV Guide, for example, bemoaned it for being too “slapdash and cheeseball”, but that’s exactly why it worked for five seasons. It’s understandable why the zombie genre is more serious; that style works in movies too. It doesn’t get any darker than George A. Romero‘s Night of the Living Dead, but there’s also room for zombie tales that understand the absurdity of the premise and have fun with it, such as The Return of the Living Dead and Shaun of the Dead.

Z Nation didn’t want to be slow and shamble in place in the same location. Its goal was to be fast-paced, always on the go with lots of action and zombie fun. Isn’t this exactly what fans of Daryl Dixon complain that the series is missing? In the end,Z Nation was a success in its own right. Not only did it result in a spin-off of its own, Netflix’s Black Summer, but a few of the characters actually had cameos in the Sharknado franchise. Daryl and Carol never did that!