With the arrival of summer comes the return of Fear the Walking Dead, the sister series to AMC's The Walking Dead. With a story that straddles the border between the United States and Mexico, Fear couldn't be any more relevant in 2017 America -- and the show realizes it.
IGN joined a small group of reporters in venturing to Mexico's Baja California to visit the set of Fear the Walking Dead. While the cast and showrunner Dave Erickson were tight-lipped when it came to revealing too many spoilers, as is customary when dealing with the universe of The Walking Dead, they were very open about what fans should expect in the new season.
The importance of the ranch the group will be moving onto cannot be overstated enough. Visiting the actual set of the ranch -- built in a Baja valley -- feels like you've stepped into the actual apocalypse. With a giant ranch house at the front that looks over what is essentially a tent city, it's immediately clear that AMC has spared no expense when it comes to the enormity of this particular set.
It's there that the group will meet Jeremiah Otto (Dayton Callie) and his sons. The doomsday preppers have been waiting for the world to end in one way or another and, as such, have built a community of followers and a militia who rely on them for survival -- which can be a powerful force in this world.
The location itself serves a dual meaning, though. While filmed in Mexico, the ranch is meant to be located on the U.S. side of the border -- an idea that will come into play heavily in the new season.
"There's a lot of going back and forth and there's a lot of distrust, I think. That's something that, as it turns out, was already in the script and now is playing out on the broader national canvas," executive producer Gale Anne Hurd says. "All of these things, both The Walking Dead and Fear the Walking Dead, these ideas are written long before the election. The fact that we have our first Muslim character on The Walking Dead was before these things came to national attention."
"We're talking about a world, and you've seen it in The Walking Dead and to a degree in our show, where the idea of staking claim, the idea of finding place, the idea of territory and controlling territory is fundamental," Erickson adds "The difference is we have a group, in this militia group, these are guys that used to patrol the border. These are guys that I personally, politically abhor. But these are people who felt [they] were protecting our country and there are illegal immigrants coming across the border. That's who they were before."
He continues, "When the apocalypse came to pass I don't think they anticipated the rise of the dead, but they did anticipate apocalypse, they did anticipate a time when they would have to create their own nation state again and try to do it over. In their minds do it right. So I think [it's] a very American concept."
When it was revealed late in Season 2 that Chris (Lorenzo James Henrie) had been killed off-camera, many fans believed that it left the door open for the show to reveal he was actually alive later in the series. That's not the case, according to Erickson.
"He's dead," the EP says. "I liked Chris. I understood him. He was not a happy camper. He was already very alienated and very disillusioned before it all started. He was very sweet and I think the way Lorenzo played him, there was a kindness to him and a vulnerability. He was also very angry."
That loss will hit the characters hard but impact nobody more than his father Travis (Cliff Curtis). "He is the one character who struggled, and struggled, and struggled to remain the moral compass of the show. He frankly is a character who took a lot of shit for it," Erickson explains. "There was something to me about the reason he didn't personally see Chris die. The reason we did that, not off camera for the audience but we added the information be delivered to him by two people who he felt were reprehensible. Because that to me is actually worse."
With that knowledge stewing in his head, Fear the Walking Dead returns with a Travis that may no longer be that moral compass. "I do think it drove him a little bit crazy. I think Travis when we meet him again, is in a much darker apocalyptic place," he says. "It's not easy to rebound from that. I also think he's in a place where his, whether he would articulate it this way or not, the thing that is important to him is he feels definitely that he failed Chris."
When Alicia (Alycia Debnam-Carey) killed a living person in Season 2, it marked an extreme departure for one of the more pure and innocent characters on the series. With that innocence fading, it will mark a new chapter for Alicia.
"Alicia in the first couple of episodes alone has a lot of time by herself, having to lead and also to grapple with some pretty devastating stuff. She has to do it on her own," Debnam-Carey says. "Not only at the end of Season 2, she's committed this sin that's really changed her. It just keeps going. And it's almost like we're on this wild ride of her trying to fall into this abyss of death and destruction and really seeing the world as this wasteland."
This change in Alicia may also bring her in direct conflict her her mom when it comes to their new home on the ranch. "I think when they get to the ranch, it is a sanctuary and a place of rest where they can rebuild," the actress explains. "But for her, so much has changed that she doesn't necessarily believe that you can just rebuild anything anymore."
As Erickson explains though, it's all leading to the strong character Alicia continues to become. "I think that Alicia never expected she would do anything like that, so she's traumatized," he says. "I think we'll see in the first couple of episodes, she's trying to process what she did and she's trying to find some rationalization. What I don't want to do, I think it's important, we talked before about the idea of the kids rising up and coming of age and becoming individuals rather than mom's children. She's not going to be in a fragile, weepy state."
At the end of Season 2, Madison (Kim Dickens) and her family left the hotel and Strand (Colman Domingo) chose not to join them. While they will hopefully meet up again at some point down the road, in the meantime Strand is on his own journey.
"I think he's going to start the season off with an agenda and with a plan. I think he didn't leave with Madison and Travis last season because he was still on the mend," Erickson explains. "He's going to really get the shit kicked out of him in the first few. What Strand wants is empire. He wants to have, he's always worked toward building a construct that becomes his identity to a certain degree."
And while he may not harbor any jealousy toward Travis after Madison decided to leave with him at the end of Season 2, he's not necessarily over being abandoned. As Erickson remembers, "He speaks to it in the last season, it's like, 'I broke you out of that place. I got you here. I've been with you and now Travis walked away and now he's back so you're just going to forget all that and walk off into the wasteland with him?'"
the strong force keeping her family together. After both Travis and Alicia went over their personal edges in Season 2, it's now fallen on her to be the one true leader of her clan -- and the shoulder for her family to lean on.
With the every-present threat of zombies, Madison also is forced to remain focused on being the strong force keeping her family together. After both Travis and Alicia went over their personal edges in Season 2, it's now fallen on her to be the one true leader of her clan -- and the shoulder for her family to lean on.
"Madison is trying to help Travis forgive himself, saying this is what I've done too. I think Travis doesn't think he'll ever be reachable again," Dickens says. "Madison knows they'll never be the same but nothing is the same anyway. She still loves him."
In the aftermath of Alicia killing a person at the end of Season 2, Madison takes an different stance when it comes to her daughter. "I don't think she likes seeing it at all. This is a kid she wanted to see go to college and we're only like six weeks into the apocalypse, at that point," the actress explains. "Her daughter has just killed the living ... we had to come to grips with just killing the infected."
Who could have imagined that her son with a drug addiction that wandered off to walk among the zombies for large parts of Season 2 would become the member of her family she would have to worry about least?
Fear the Walking Dead premieres Sunday, June 4, at 9 p.m. on AMC.
Chris E. Hayner is a freelance writer who watches too much TV and simply cannot stop. Follow him on Twitter at @ChrisHayner.
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