How to Watch The Walking Dead for Free

To some, cord-cutting means avoiding cable subscriptions and taking in entertainment strictly through VOD streaming services like Netflix, Disney+, and Amazon Prime. To others, it means eschewing paying for any entertainment services all together. Netflix? Disney? Amazon? Comcast? They’re all the man, man. Well, that latter group just received a powerful tool in its war against paying for things.

AMC has cut a deal with ViacomCBS to bring early seasons of many of their shows to the free streaming service Pluto TV, according to Variety. Under the deal, The Walking Dead’s first five seasons will be available to stream on the Pluto TV platform. 

The Walking Dead has pretty much always been available to stream online. Those with cable subscriptions are able to stream the latest season of The Walking Dead on AMC.com. Those with Netflix subscriptions have been able to stream seasons 1 through 9. Those without either have been out of luck…until now. Not only are the first five seasons of The Walking Dead available on Pluto TV – they’re available in Spanish as well. 

The Walking Dead’s first five seasons contain some really good stuff. The first season was an abbreviated six episodes but had a killer premiere and finale. Then Glen Mazzara took over for ousted showrunner Frank Darabont midway through season 2 and started delving into some treasured Walking Dead comic arcs. Seasons 3 and 4 spend some time in the group’s fabled prison home and pitted them against the Governor. Then season 5 put Rick Grimes and company on the road for what might be the show’s best-ever season. 

The first five seasons of The Walking Dead are available on Pluto TV through the dedicated “Stories by AMC” channel. This channel also contains the full series of Halt and Catch Fire, Hap and Leonard, and Into the Badlands. Select seasons of Fear the Walking Dead, Preacher, and Comic Book Men are expected to join this channel in the near future as well. As part of the deal, Pluto TV gets three other AMC-branded channels including the intriguing “Slightly Off by IFC.” That could present a good opportunity to catch up on some other Den of Geek favorites like Documentary Now! and Brockmire.

Pluto TV was founded in 2013 and is an advertiser-supported free video streaming service. It was acquired by ViacomCBS in January of 2019 for $340 million. Since then ViacomCBS has consolidated many of its properties onto Pluto TV and cut deals with some outside content providers. As of last month, Pluto TV claims 250 channels worth of programming and 20 million active monthly users.