'TWD' Season 7 Needs To Hit Netflix ASAP

With the Season 7 finale of The Walking Dead in our rearview mirror, fans are looking forward to both the premiere of Season 8 and to reliving the recently-concluded season during the too-long hiatus before new episodes return. Season 8 of the long-running zombie apocalypse drama is expected to return to AMC sometime in October, meaning that The Walking Dead fans are in for a whopping six-month wait for new episodes. So when will The Walking Dead Season 7 be on Netflix, available for viewers to relive the mixed bag of the show's most recent season?

Except in cases of shows on The CW — where the network has a contract with Netflix that allows its shows' recently-concluded full seasons to go up just eight days after their finales — or Netflix's own original series, the streaming channel doesn't tend to announce release dates very far in advance or let users know when to expect them. For the most part, Netflix will announce that a given show or season is set to be added only a few weeks before it shows up. But based on previous patterns, it's easy to guess when Season 7 of The Walking Dead should be available to stream.

According to FanSided, Netflix tends to release past seasons of shows within two weeks before the premiere of a new season. With an expected (but still unconfirmed) October premiere for Season 8, that puts the expected addition of Season 7 to Netflix at late September or early October. What's On Netflix echoed a similar estimation, putting the Season 8 Netflix release date at September 2017.

If you don't want to wait, there are a few other options. Currently, every episode except for the Season 7 premiere is available to stream directly from AMC's official website — assuming you have a participating cable provider — with older episodes expiring sooner than newer ones. If you're willing to pay for the convenience of watching the season in its entirety ASAP and on your own time, it's also available on Amazon Prime ($26.99 SD and $41.99 HD) and on iTunes ($30.99 SD and $42.99 HD).

With Rick's survivors and their allies on the brink of all-out war with Negan, his Saviors, and the traitorous Scavengers, Season 7 ended on an epic but largely uplifting note. Granted, somebody died (as usually happens on this show) and Rick and Carl very nearly met the pointing end of Negan's bat Lucille — but the visual of the Alexandria, Hilltop, and Kingdom groups joining together to fight off Negan and his men was undeniably impressive. Viewers will just have to (impatiently) wait and see whether Rick will keep his promise to kill Negan when the show returns later this year.