Viral Monsters: Reimagining the Zombie after COVID-19.

This article examines the contemporary zombie as a "viral monster" that reflects and reconfigures cultural anxieties surrounding COVID-19 and global pandemics through outbreak narratives, focusing primarily on the television franchise *The Walking Dead*. It argues that the series' depiction of zombies, or "walkers," embodies ongoing crises of infection, risk, politicization, and social disruption, moving beyond traditional hopes for containment or restoration of order. The article highlights how *The Walking Dead*'s narrative and production, especially during its final season filmed amid COVID-19 protocols, allegorize pandemic experiences such as uncertainty, communal suspicion, and grief, while also tracing the evolution of the zombie figure into faster, more adaptive forms in contemporary streaming media. By situating the zombie within the culture of COVID-19, the article reveals how this archetype serves as a speculative lens on vulnerability, social fragmentation, and the contested politics of survival in a pandemic-altered world.