The Walking Dead: World Beyond Season 2 Goes to “Crazy Different Places” Visited by Rick Grimes

The Walking Dead: World Beyond goes to “crazy different places” unlike any seen before on The Walking Dead when the spin-off returns for Season 2, teases series co-creator and executive producer Scott Gimple. The upcoming second and final season of the limited event series, which pits its split-up group of young survivors against the Civic Republic Military on their turf, might even visit never-before-seen places once visited by the missing Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) after his fateful helicopter flight away from The Walking Dead.

“These are some places that World Beyond will be taking place in. Two very different locations and there’s a number of worlds this season on World Beyond,” the Walking Dead chief content officer teased during a recent appearance on Twitch’s TWDUniverse. “Very, very different locales that the story takes place in. It’s two very different places, and there’s a couple more crazy different places on top of that.”

When showing glimpses of two new locations, including one with a metallic globe, Gimple said viewers “haven’t seen places like this on the shows yet.” Speculation that these mysterious locations are tied to the CRM is a “very good guess,” Gimple said.

The black-suited soldiers are a military force for the Civic Republic — the home of 200,000 survivors living in an advanced civilization approximately located somewhere in the Southwestern United States — and the CRM links the three shows of the Walking Dead Universe. Operational helicopters marked with the three-circle symbol appear in the flagship series and spin-off Fear the Walking Dead, and the first season of World Beyond confirms the CRM is conducting walker experiments from a high-tech facility in New York State.

“It feels scary sometimes because the show has lived in certain aesthetics. It’s been that way a long time and to do this new stuff can be a little scary because you worry about people getting the bends from it,” Gimple said about the CRM. “It also is really exciting. It’s challenging in a different way. You want to make it different, and these people have a very different society and civilization, but you want to make it connected to the world, consistent to the world, possible within the world that we’ve seen.”

Gimple previously told ComicBook.com that audiences anticipating Rick’s return in World Beyond should instead be on the lookout for places he’s visited in the six-plus years he’s been away from The Walking Dead.

“I think people could watch this show and learn a lot about the mythology that Rick Grimes is caught up in. And they might even see places where Rick Grimes has been,” Gimple said about ties to the Walking Dead movie trilogy expected to film this year. “But yeah, he’s not swinging around the corner. And I don’t even know if I’m making people upset saying that, but I just don’t like people watching it, sort of expecting Rick.”

Follow the author @CameronBonomolo on Twitter for all things TWD. The Walking Dead: World Beyond Season 2 premieres later this year on AMC.