Black Summer has returned with its second season on Netflix. And it does five things much better than The Walking Dead.

Black Summer made its debut back in 2019 on the popular streaming platform. The series depicts the earlier days of a zombie apocalypse and takes a more realistic approach to the survival-horror genre. We thought that it was related to Z Nation at first, there were no official comments regarding the two series. Although the studio behind them are the same, Black Summer offers something that no other zombie series or movie managed to offer.

With the return of its second season, Black Summer once again invites viewers to a post-apocalyptic world filled with zombies, crazy people, and mysteries waiting to be unraveled. The series somehow manages to make you feel more scared thanks to its unique and unsettling tone. Although the zombie genre feels like it has lost its magic years ago, Black Summer still comes with a chaotic depiction full of terror, thriller, and zombies. And it does this better than The Walking Dead. Here’s why?

You often find yourself watching Black Summer without blinking your eyes while your heart is beating like crazy. Because Black Summer does not only offer the usual equation of “die and turn into a zombie“. The show draws a brilliant line between life and death. One character might turn into a zombie in a second. The handheld cameras follow the character even though the character is infected. The black liquid coming from their mouth, the unending growls and the hateful frenzy are all over the place. And the process of seeing the character you have watched for three episodes turn into a monster and start running like a freak is brilliant. With the pursuit, you find yourself believing that it is all real and if there was a zombie outbreak; it would probably be like this.

Black Summer does not allow the viewer to create a solid bond with its characters. This has a couple of reasons. Unlike The Walking Dead and other survival-horrors, the lives of Black Summer’s characters are much more fragile. They are at danger in every second and in the brink of turning into a zombie. In such a setting, you find yourself watching different sequences of various characters that can die at any moment.

But Black Summer has three to four characters that come forward. The series simply follow them but does not necessarily focus on them. The characters you see all through the season might vanish in an episode. You just see a few sequences of a group that tries to survive in an outbreak. They are not the sole survivors and they are also not glorified as we see in The Walking Dead. They are simply people who try to survive and we witness their struggle in the process.

Black Summer has a unique way of telling its apocalypse story. From human relationships to zombie chasings, the series managed to create a formula that we have not seen for a while. You expect to see chaos everywhere you look when an outbreak like this happens. But in a gunfight where the dead turn into zombies, you start to feel like this is the true level of chaos. Black Summer, especially with its second season, delivers the ultimate chaos. People who belong to different groups shoot at each other and also witness that their companions turn into zombies. Then the fight evolves into a different type of battle between the living and the dead.

And when that chaos is on your screen, you say to yourself “yes, this is probably how it would go during the zombie apocalypse.”

Although The Walking Dead has created a solid foundation for the zombie genre, Black Summer has come with something more refreshing and more mature. Instead of “our favourite band of survivors vs. the bad guys” the show tells you that there are who manage to survive and there are who fail.

Well here’s what we think about Black Summer than The Walking Dead differences. What do you think about these two series?