Spoilers below
Andrew Chambliss and Ian Goldberg, who come over from Once Upon a Time, will take over as showrunners in season four of Fear the Walking Dead outgoing showrunner Dave Erickson has given them the best possible gift: the ability to pick and choose the characters they want to move ahead with. Of all the characters remaining on Fear the Walking Dead, there’s only one who we know will make it to season four: Kim Dickens’ Madison Clark.
It’s an incredibly gutsy call for the AMC series, Negan’s baseball bat writ large. At the end of season six of The Walking Dead, we knew that at least one character would die. At the end of season three of Fear the Walking Dead, we only know that one character will survive. Should Chambliss and Goldberg choose to do so, they could essentially reset the series and, with the exception of Madison, reboot the entire cast. Or they could pick and choose among the characters whose fates have been left in limbo: Strand, Alicia, Nick, and Daniel (Taqa and Crazy Dog are also still alive, but they have ventured north). The series could (and hopefully will) also keep Ray McKinnon’s new villainous character Proctor John around, too. Nü-Michonne, with her broken leg, could be added back in, as well as the doctor, Eddie (played by the outstanding character actor James LeGros). The only characters that we know are dead are Lola and Troy (RIP Troy), the last of the Ottos.
It was a hell of a finale.
Those of us who know outgoing showrunner Dave Erickson from his Sons of Anarchy days will also probably recognize a lot of Sons in this week’s finale. It’s not just in the casting of Ray McKinnon (who was also in Erickson’s final Sons episode), but in Proctor John’s organization, which is essentially a post-apocalyptic SAMCRO. Erickson even managed to bring Dayton Callie back for a cameo in the finale.
I’m sure it was a bittersweet episode for the showrunner. The finale proved to be the destruction of much of the show that Erickson had created. He’d slowly been picking off characters all season long (Travis, Jake, Jeremiah, Ofelia, and Troy) and destroying all the communities he’d created (the Ranch, the Nation, and the small community at the Tijuana dam), so that the survivors would be left with no choice but to find a new community next season. In the end, he also brought the surviving core characters back together in the finale only to leave their fates in limbo. With the exception of Madison, they may all be dead. Or, they may all still be alive. We simply have no idea, and my guess is that those decisions will be made by the new showrunners in the coming weeks and months.
Briefly, here’s how the finale went down: Back at the trading post, Troy and Nick learn that Proctor John and his men plan to attack the Tijuana dam. The two race to the dam to warn Madison only to learn from Strand that he had orchestrated Proctor John’s takeover (he did so with the understanding that Proctor John would spare Nick and Madison’s lives). Daniel and Lola are nevertheless tipped off, so they prepare for a battle, which includes setting up a Plan B: If Proctor John and his men take over the dam, they’ll blow it up and release the water to the citizens of Tijuana. While setting up the C4 explosives, Madison kills Troy with a hammer after Troy says some more racist stuff and then admits that he amassed the zombie horde that destroyed Broken Jaw Ranch.
Meanwhile, back in the city, Alicia and Nü-Michonne get into a scuffle with some randos and Nü-Michonne breaks her leg. Alicia takes her to Eddie (LeGros) for medical treatment, and Alicia is quickly enrolled as Eddie’s nurse in the removal of a tumor in… Proctor John’s leg. Proctor John quickly takes a liking to Alicia, and invites her as his good luck charm in his takeover of the dam. Once they arrive, Alicia is reunited with Madison and Nick.
However, in the battle between Proctor John and the dam community, Lola and Efrain are killed. Daniel is also shot in the face by Strand (but survives). Because Daniel was tipped off, the deal between Strand and Proctor John also falls apart, and John decides to kill everyone: Strand, Madison, Nick, and Alicia. However, Nick ends up with detonator of last resort. He tells John that he’ll blow up the dam unless Madison, Strand, and Alicia are allowed to leave. John agrees, but Nick ends up blowing up the dam before Strand, Madison, and Alicia can get far enough away in their boat to avoid pulled under by the flood.
In the episode’s final scenes, Daniel picks off a few of Proctor John’s men, and both Daniel, Nick and Proctor John are left on top of the dam as it crumbles beneath them. Crazy Dog and Taqa — after using a rifle from a long distance away to kill a few of Proctor John’s men — take their things and head north. Meanwhile, the boat that Alicia, Madison and Strand are on is pulled into the flood. The only character we know who survives is Madison, who narrowly avoids death and swims to shore before the credits roll.
That’s it. We have no idea who else survives, nor any idea who will return in season four. It’s the sort of season finale that could have easily acted as a series finale (strange here considering that AMC renewed Fear for both its third and fourth seasons simultaneously).
Who is most likely to survive? Unless Chambliss and Golberg plan to start all over from scratch, it’s safe to assume that the series’ two most popular characters, Alicia and Nick, will return next season. If Alicia survives along with Madison, it’s likely that Strand, too, will survive. Daniel can survive, but it’s hard to imagine he’d be around much longer given that he has been shot in the face. My hope is that Proctor John also survives, not only because he’s the most compelling villain the series has ever introduced, but because Ray McKinnon is one of my all-time favorite character actors. If Alicia survives, I’d like to believe that she’ll bring newbies Eddie and Nü-Michonne back into the fold, as well. My gut tells me that Taq and Crazy Dog — who left the group to search for family — are likely gone for good. Meanwhile, there’s also Luciana — we have no idea where she is, but she did appear in Madison’s fantasy sequence, if only to remind viewers that she’s still out there somewhere.
It should be an interesting offseason, and heading into the fourth season — and the crossover with The Walking Dead — there hasn’t been this much interest in Fear since it debuted.
