Fear the Walking Dead comes to an end in late November, concluding an 8-season run (alongside the main show’s 11.) Along the way, it morphed from a different look at the zombie apocalypse — in a different location with an entirely new cast — into an outright spinoff, with certain supporting characters drifting over from The Walking Dead to carry Fear themselves. All the while, though, it maintained a similar central theme with its parent series — how does mankind continue in the wake of ruin, and how are we changed?
Was Fear the Walking Dead successful in this regard? Like The Walking Dead, it certainly encountered its share of ups and downs in terms of quality, but it also managed to produce some standout episodes that let it rise above the reputation of simply being “more Walking Dead.” Here are 13 episodes that capture the highlights of a show that was desperate to make a name for itself amid a massive franchise.
“Pilot” (Season 1, Episode 1)
The most refreshing part of Fear the Walking Dead wasn’t the new location (though, aesthetically, it was nice to escape The Walking Dead’s deciduous southeast for the arid southwest.) Nor was it the new cast (though the mix of authority figures and teachers and young adults made for an interesting dynamic.) It was the fact that the show started amid the initial outbreak of the zombie pandemic. The Walking Dead began with Rick Grimes waking up in a world already flipped upside down, but Fear allowed us to watch the paranoia and violence inherent in its deterioration. Particularly haunting are the bits that occur in the high school, where an increasing amount of students aren’t showing up due to illness. The audience knows that those poor kids are getting zombified, but it’s an effectively horrific realization for the characters themselves.
“Not Fade Away” (Season 1, Episode 4)
How would the government respond to a zombie outbreak? The Walking Dead mostly let us know through hints at what leaders tried to do to quell the unrest and unstoppable tide of disease, but Fear shows us their futile efforts at control in the narrative itself. The National Guard is deployed and a victory is declared all too soon. It serves as little more than a bandage over a gaping wound, though, especially when we learn that it’s leading to a kind of draconian military rule and a slash/burn approach to stopping the spread of infection. Both the sick and the healthy are being killed in the name of quarantining, and it unsurprisingly falls apart thanks to civil unrest and, of course, the undead.
“The Good Man” (Season 1, Episode 6)
The Walking Dead’s first season concluded with a group of survivors falling apart, but Fear takes things in a grander direction. Here, all of Los Angeles has succumbed to the virus and nearly all efforts at beating it have failed. Now, the main cast has to flee from a guarded compound that the government is quick to abandon (along with its prisoners) as soon as things go sour. It all culminates in the mercy killing of Liza, a nursing student thrust into a greater medical role to meet the drastic needs of the situation and does her best to hold her family and community together (until she’s bitten and tearfully begs to be put down.) It’s a fitting emotional stamp on a distressing first season.
“Monster” (Season 2, Episode 1)
In hypothetical zombie apocalypse debates, a go-to what-to-do plan often involves fleeing by boat. After all, aside from a handful of zombie films like Land of the Dead or Lucio Fulci’s Zombi 2 (with its famous “zombie versus shark” sequence,) the undead usually have a rough time with the ocean. Fear the Walking Dead obviously kept these arguments in mind as the second season kicks off with the surviving Clark family and a ragtag handful of others heading to a boat to escape both zombies and the government’s bombing of Los Angeles. There, on the Abigail, they learn that they need to quickly become knowledgeable in boat maintenance but also wary of cabin fever and the fact that, when it comes to the master plan of “Oooh, we should go out to sea!,” other less kind people might have had the same idea.
“North” (Season 2, Episode 15)
Like Rick and Carl Grimes in The Walking Dead, Fear focuses a lot on the perception of patriarchal responsibility. How do you keep your family intact when everything seems to be trying to (often quite literally) pull them apart? However, unlike Rick and Carl’s redemptive last moments, “North” lays bare the horror of a father, Travis, realizing that he couldn’t stop his son’s descent into resentment and anger, nor his death. (His ex-wife, the late Liza, had asked Travis to protect him.) In the previous episode, he beats his son’s killers to death with his bare fists and is now left to pick up the pieces of his life amid a community that doesn’t know whether or not to trust him. It’s a much-needed examination on the impact of violence in a franchise that would grow to sometimes be content with simply letting the violence be the sole reason for watching.
“100” (Season 3, Episode 4)
The third season of Fear the Walking Dead is by far its best, and one of the high points is “100,” an episode that mostly focuses on a single lead character and is also mostly spoken in Spanish. Here we follow Daniel, a brutal former agent of both a military resistance and the CIA, who now seeks a purpose. The Walking Dead has always thrived with characters that have an immense capacity for doing harm and seek, in their own ways, a sort of personal atonement, and Daniel is one of its best examples. “100” is a great look at what that kind of person could offer the world: If what you’re best at is dealing death and you can’t escape doing it, is there ever any hope for making amends with yourself? “100” shows us that there is no easy answer to that question — Daniel might never escape either his past or his present.
“Children of Wrath” (Season 3, Episode 8)
One major feature of Fear’s third season is the fact that, after many of the lead cast members were killed off in surprisingly quick succession over a few episodes, the remnants are stuck on a survivalist compound. Led by the racist Jeremiah Otto, whose loose-cannon style puts everyone at risk even if he sees himself as the father figure saving everyone from what he believed was the inevitable fall of the United States, the entire operation is doomed from the start. As such, Jeremiah’s death in the mid-season finale is one of the most supremely satisfying moments in the show; he hurls abuse at everyone around him (even one of his own sons) until the bitter end. In a franchise that often tried to find the gray area among its psychopaths, sometimes it succeeded when it just let a man be bad.
“This Land Is Your Land” (Season 3, Episode 13)
Character development has always been hit-or-miss for The Walking Dead, a show built on broad emotional swings and hyperdramatic shifts into redemption or brutality. However, one of the best personality arcs belongs to Alicia Clark in the first few seasons of Fear, a young woman who goes from distant and fairly aimless beginnings to becoming a capable and efficient leader. In “This Land Is Your Land,” she finds herself trapped in a pantry amid a group of survivors, some infected and some not, with a limited air supply. Her pragmatic handling of the situation (in one of the most tense scenes in the series) reflects just how far she’s come and the ability to create a great character over time if you don’t resort to surprise deaths or sudden motivations.
“What’s Your Story” (Season 4, Episode 1)
Season 4 of Fear the Walking Dead brought with it an overhaul of sorts: Its first crossover with the cast of The Walking Dead. In this season premiere, four characters from the main series show up, including leads Rick and Carol, but only one sticks with the remaining Fear cast: Morgan Jones, a man at war with himself. A pacifist by nature that had to resort to, you guessed it, killing, Morgan leaves on a sort of soul-searching mission and eventually becomes the leader of the group in Fear. Of similar importance, though, is the introduction of John Dorie, the haunted, funny former police officer who becomes one of the most valuable characters in this soft reboot of the aims of Fear.
“Humbug’s Gulch” (Season 5, Episode 3)
The second major character from The Walking Dead to emerge in Fear is Dwight, former henchman to the main show’s archvillain, Negan. Here, though, he’s just a fairly unstable man looking for his wife, and his ability to join forces with not only John and June Dorie but make peace with Morgan Jones earns him a stamp of approval. Also, the beginning of the episode takes place in a ghost town as the scarred Dwight pursues John (and vice versa,) all of which has a kind of classic Western air. It’s more of the dry atmosphere that sets Fear apart from The Walking Dead, even as cast from the latter leaks in, and it makes a solid case that Fear is best when it shies away from traditional zombie mayhem.
“The Door” (Season 6, Episode 8)
There was no way for gunslinger John Dorie to go out but by surprise: He’d worked to resolve his relationship with his wife June, he was well-liked by many of the characters and the fans, and he was one of the most capable survivors in the apocalypse. A sudden shot in the chest by the secretive Dakota ends his life just after he seems to have rediscovered a motivation for going on. Many characters in the series have gone out this way, both leads and bit players, but John’s death is one of the most bold statements that The Walking Dead has ever made about mortality and the cruelty of death. “It doesn’t always have to mean something, John,” Dakota tells him before she pushes his body unceremoniously into a river.
“Sonny Boy” (Season 7, Episode 12)
From Travis to Jeremiah to Morgan, Fear the Walking Dead is consumed by emotional arcs regarding the trials of parenthood and eventual loss, either of yourself or your children. John Dorie Sr., the disgraced father of John, enters the series trying to resolve an old police case that led him to alcoholism and abandoning his son and family. In “Sonny Boy,” having found himself confronted by a mass of zombies and needing to protect Mo, Morgan’s adopted child, he dons makeshift armor and pushes through the sea of the dead. In a series about losing children and parents in heartbreaking fashion, John Dorie Sr.’s sacrifice is Fear at its most poignant. He’s bitten along the way, but he safely delivers the baby, a father finding his own forgiveness by helping another father and saving the next generation.
“All I See Is Red” (Season 8, Episode 6)
After losing his girlfriend to a zombie bite and burying her, Morgan Jones and his child “Mo” make a decision to abscond from their group entirely, instead seeking to return to Alexandria, a community created in the main series. Their reasoning? Morgan wants to find Rick Grimes. It leaves the rest of the cast of Fear adrift in a way, considering that Morgan had been the show’s star for almost four seasons now, but in the wider franchise, it fits. Michonne has left to find Rick. Daryl Dixon seeks him out as well. A 2024 spinoff, The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live is set to bring Rick (and presumably those seeking him out) back to the forefront. Despite dozens of leading characters across nearly 15 years of stories in a franchise that has spread to seven different shows, all roads still lead to Rick Grimes.
