‘Fear The Walking Dead’ Gets New Characters And New Walker Characteristics

AMC’s Fear The Walking Dead, which will premiere this summer, has cast two new characters. Earlier, the Inquisitr reported on newcomer Elizabeth Rodriguez (Aleida Diaz in Netflix’s Orange Is The New Black) as joining the cast in an as-yet-undisclosed role.

Now, EW has reported that actress Mercedes Mason (also billed as Mercedes Masohn) has also been cast as a series regular for Fear The Walking Dead. Mason is better known as Louise Leonard in 666 Park Avenue and Amy Taylor Walsh in Californication. So far, little is known about the character she will play, although, according to EW, it is likely her character will appear at some point after the pilot, as this episode has already been filmed and completed. Likely, Mason and Rodriguez’s characters will be people the other series regulars, Cliff Curtis, Kim Dickens, Alycia Debnam Carey, and Frank Dillane come across in their travels across L.A. as the world is infected with the zombie-causing virus we know from Fear The Walking Dead‘s sister show, The Walking Dead. Deadline has also reported that Ruben Blades is in negotiations to play Mason’s character’s father.

Fear The Walking Dead will be set in L.A. before the virus outbreak. Greg Nicotero has now stated the virus will not be delved into with as greater detail as fans had first envisaged, but will start their new series from the angle of how the world copes with the outbreak and the advent of people beginning to consume people.

Considering Fear The Walking Dead will take place on the West Coast of the U.S., the creators have already started to develop the concept of how the weather might affect the deterioration — or lack of — of the zombies known in the series as “walkers,” due to the fact Robert Kirkman decided it was easier just to take the whole zombie genre out of the universe within The Walking Dead resides. With the weather, a stark contrast to the Southern heat ever-present in The Walking Dead, it will be interesting to see just how different the walkers will be and whether they really will be more preserved. There has also been the suggestion that characters in Fear The Walking Dead will find new characteristics in the walkers not yet seen in the sister program. This may or may not have anything to do with the different climates and how the walkers cope.

Greg Nicotero has also suggested Fear The Walking Dead will be based around news reports he has read about related to the bath salts drug and the recent ebola scares. It will also be interesting to see if any of these new characters eventually crossover into AMC’s original zombie program, The Walking Dead.

Fear The Walking Dead will premiere this summer on AMC as well as through Hulu’s online streaming service.

[Image credit: IMDb]