Warning: This article contains spoilers for Fear the Walking Dead .
While Fear the Walking Dead is new enough that the premiere episode is still a month away, the available teasers and spoilers may have some, particularly fans of The Walking Dead primary series, thinking they know just what can be expected from this Walking Dead companion series . On the contrary, Fear the Walking Dead showrunner Dave Erickson warns that it will be anything but business as usual on the companion series to The Walking Dead .
To begin with, the two major characters on Fear the Walking Dead , Madison Bennett (Kim Dickens) and Travis Manawa (Cliff Curtis) are already romantically involved, when Fear the Walking Dead opens, warns Erickson.
“What I love about that is that it’s taking this very fundamentally sound relationship and then seeing how the apocalypse changes that. Seeing how our personalities begin to evolve as time passes in the face of this. I think they’re very understanding of each other’s flaws, and what’s interesting is to take the normal complications that exist in a good relationship and then put them under intense strain and see how each of the characters react.”
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The Fear the Walking Dead showrunner warns that fans of the original series and the comic books will encounter much more tension in this companion series, primarly coming from the characters struggling to accept the mere fact that zombies do exist.
“And that’s one of the challenges: ‘Why are you behaving this way?’ When push comes to shove, people have seen enough—I mean, we’re looking at the apocalypse through the filter of this family drama, so they’ll witness this, they’ll be confronted with people who have turned, they will be forced to contend with this. And in many ways Madison and Travis, Nick and Alicia — our core family — are slightly ahead of the game. And what’s interesting is as they come to realize more of what’s going on, there will still be neighbors, there will still be people in their lives who haven’t quite caught on yet. It’s a strange disconnect at times where, why are people not recognizing what’s going on?”
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Fear the Walking Dead will also be able to suggest how certain characters from the primary Walking Dead series grew into the behaviors and beliefs that they possess in that primary series.
“It’s always an interesting scene when you’re trying to explain to a person that the world is over, and that people have come back from the dead. It’s an interesting little story navigation that Robert brilliantly ellipsed over in the comic, and I think that the download Lennie James’ character gives to Rick in the pilot of The Walking Dead is perfect. Basically, Rick has come out of his coma and Morgan’s able to say, ‘Hey, look, here’s what’s happened. Here’s what these things are.’ We get to explore the process really by which Morgan’s character came to learn that, which I think is interesting.”
Fear the Walking Dead will premiere in August on AMC.
[Featured image courtesy of AMC/ Fear the Walking Dead ]