No matter whether you adore or roll your eyes at AMC’s The Walking Dead universe (and its unifying helicopter timeline), you gotta admire its ability to keep resurrecting itself. This franchise is the Law & Order of zombie shows. And Dick Wolf’s stream of criminals-of-the-week ain’t got nothing on the survivors who are frequently even more lethal than the walkers themselves. Soon, there will be a handful of new spinoffs led by characters from the flagship series (and I’m especially curious about how Daryl Dixon handles being Daryl In Paris), yet since 2015, the franchise’s longest-existing spinoff (although not the only one so far), Fear The Walking Dead, has been hobbling along.
I should pause here and discuss how I might be coming at this spinoff in a different way than you did. With The Walking Dead, I kept up from season to season, even if that happened in 3-4 episode bursts that were slightly behind the masses. With Fear, I fully procrastinated and only knew the show (along with crossovers including Morgan and Dwight) via Dustin Rowles’ faithful recaps and analysis. Then earlier this year, I binged seven seasons in less than a month. It was perhaps a mind-melting exercise.
Watching it all at once made the sluggish parts of the show feel like an exercise in treading quicksand. For several seasons (after the novelty of the show’s regular changes in scenery wore off), it wasn’t a good time. Jack sh*t happened for multi-episode blocks. I wanted to punch Nick in the face. I’m not sure what the Filthy Woman was supposed to accomplish other than inventing the world’s first Antifreeze Villain. She helped guide this spinoff into such a void that Dwight’s Season 5 move from The Walking Dead seemed like a worse punishment than being exiled by Daryl.
Other than Madison, most of Fear The Walking Dead‘s characters didn’t grab me (and she “died” in Season 4), but I hung on because Dustin had promised that the show grew much better in Season 6. And I agreed. Morgan’s entry and the John Dorie warmup helped, but Virginia made for a chilling villain. She was pivotal, and after her death, the show maintained momentum even while jumping over shark after shark. A nuclear apocalypse on top of a zombie apocalypse? Too much, but the show learned to embrace its trappings.
Now, we’re at the eighth and final season, which appears to be — from the episodes that I’ve seen thus far — a way to send this show spiraling down the most nonsensical hill ever and crashing into the ocean so that the new spinoffs can start things fresh. From what I’ve seen so far, it’s attempting to do so in a spectacularly pants-sh*tting way, and I suspect that existing fans will be fine with where this is going. It’s a mess, yes, but Madison is back. And even though there have been many downsides to this spinoff, the upsides have been largely illustrated by her relationships with various characters, including Daniel Salazar, who makes a hell of a re-entrance, too.
As such, there is some payoff for viewers who have kept tuning in each week despite this admittedly being an inferior spinoff.
Fear The Walking Dead, as well, has been a series that has shifted gears so many times that it’s hard to keep track. The story has moved from the ocean to Baja and across the U.S. before eventually ending up in Texas, where Strand set up his little luxury tower, which happened to be the one place where radioactive fallout didn’t dare to tread. It’s been a lot. The most recent season finale bid farewell to Alicia, and Madison suddenly reappeared on the beach after being assumed dead for multiple seasons.
In Season 8, the show reinvents itself one final time, and my only hope was that it continued to maintain momentum. I dared not hope for quality. There’s a new lead villain, and we get to finally find out what all of that mythical “P.A.D.R.E.” talk was about — and I won’t spoil what P.A.D.R.E. actually is, but I think most of us can guess how a promise of a utopian society in this universe (just think back to Terminus days of The Walking Dead ) ends up going. The show picks up where the last season finale left off — Morgan’s daughter being kidnapped with he and Madison setting off while blindfolded in a boat — and then takes a seven-year time jump.
AMC released three new episodes to critics, and let’s just say that the spinoff has included some of the more f*cked-up moments I’ve ever seen in this franchise. Seven years after they found P.A.D.R.E., we get to see how it’s treated June, Dwight, Sherry, Morgan, and Madison. In particular, June is barely hanging onto her sanity by a thread. Morgan is uncharacteristically “with the program,” mainly because of his daughter, Mo. We are supposed to see a reinvented Strand at some point. I haven’t seen it happen yet, but I suspect that will be pivotal to how the season is fully received.
This final season, sadly, sits in an odd place because I suspect that AMC wanted to formally close put a knife through the heart of this beast and start fresh. This is kind-of like Shazam! Fury Of The Gods ahead of James Gunn’s DCU relaunch. It’s a placeholder and good enough. Again, though, the show brings back a beloved character in Madison, so that’s a plus. It’s wild to remember that she and Morgan have never met until now, since they seem to be natural companions, if not always friends. I quite enjoy watching them bounce off each other, even if they are both less true to themselves due to P.A.D.R.E.’s rule. And if there’s a soul to Fear The Walking Dead, it’s found in the hopes that, eventually, these characters will come full circle in some way. For Morgan, that will mean going back to where he began.
Let’s be clear, though: The Walking Dead franchise has never aspired to be prestige TV. It’s many things for many people, and for me, it’s a guilty pleasure and comfort food. As messed up as it might sound, I feel like this is a world where, yes, the whole “reanimated bodies” thing is both inevitable and disconcerting, but at least there’s a concrete threat that can be vanquished with a spear and tangibly and swiftly halted. To me, this feels like a less anxiety-prolonging scenario rather than worrying about the at-times invisible and often nebulous, uncontrollable forces that we worry about in 2023.
So, The Walking Dead universe must live on as escapism. And Fear The Walking Dead appears to be setting itself up to pass the baton so that the other spinoffs can rise unimpeded. After all, Negan and Maggie will soon return in The Walking Dead: Dead City, which will head into the Big Apple. This spinoff will say goodbye and hope that, just maybe, we’ll see Rick Grimes resurface in Fear The Walking Dead‘s series finale. That would be the most fan-pleasing transition to make. We’ll see if the franchise can pull it off.
AMC’s ‘Fear The Walking Dead’ returns on May 14.
