AMC
Tonight is the midseason finale of The Walking Dead. Season 10 has been phenomenal, so it’s going to be tough to take a break from the series until it returns sometime in February 2020. If you’re watching tonight, you might notice that tonight’s episode is going on longer than you might expect. Just how long is the episode tonight? It’s long enough that you’ll want to make sure your DVR is set for extra time so you don’t miss anything.
Tonight’s Episode Is an Extra 20 Minutes in Length
Tonight’s episode begins at 9 p.m. Eastern and is scheduled to end at 10:20 p.m. Eastern. So you’ll get an extra 20 minutes of airtime tonight. Of course, that will be significantly shorter overall if you count all the commercials that will air tonight. But you’ll still get an extra-long episode of The Walking Dead before the series says goodbye until February.
Also tonight, Talking Dead will start a little later than normal since The Walking Dead is running a little long. Talking Dead will begin at 10:20 p.m. Eastern and end at 11:20 p.m. Eastern.
So that means tonight’s episode is 80 minutes long total, making it close in length to some of the longer episodes in The Walking Dead‘s history. The penultimate episode of Season 9, Episode 15, was a little bit longer. It was called “The Calm Before” and was 87 minutes long. And the Season 9 premiere was a full 86 minutes long, ending at 10:26 p.m. Eastern. So both of those episodes were longer. But few episodes in The Walking Dead have clocked in at these lengths.
You’ll want to check your DVR if you’re recording the show, to make sure that the timing is set right and you don’t miss anything. DirecTV customers and other DVR customers missed the last 30 minutes of Season 9 Episode 15 last season because the DVRs stopped recording at exactly 10 p.m. Eastern. You definitely don’t want to deal with that again. Talking Dead said this had to do with the information AMC sent to cable companies and it wasn’t the cable companies’ fault. Still, if you’re reading this before The Walking Dead airs, you’ll want to add some extra time to the recording just in case.
Tonight’s episode is called “The World Before.” The description reads: “A fight causes tensions in Oceanside while the Alexandrians set out on a high-stakes mission.” The episode is directed by John Dahl and written by Julia Ruchman. So far this season, episodes have had somewhere between 3 and 3.5 million viewers live, except for the premiere which clocked in with 4 million viewers. These numbers may partially be down because some subscribers have the option of watching the episodes early.
If you are a subscriber to AMC Premiere, then you actually have had access to this episode a full two days before it premiered on AMC for regular cable customers.
After tonight, The Walking Dead will likely return for the second half of its season in February, like the show does every year.