Now that Fear The Walking Dead‘s third season is beginning to inch closer and closer – June 4th is the date for your diaries – fans of AMC’s companion series are beginning to brace for a change of scenery, as Madison Clark (Kim Dickens) and the remainder of the crew take up residence on an isolated, and therefore relatively safe, Mexican ranch.
It lays the foundations for a new and gripping story arc, as the Clarks begin to acclimatize to Jeremiah Otto’s (Dayton Callie) self-sufficient aboard. But if history has taught us anything, it’s that a safe haven in the zombie apocalypse is often masking secrets of its own.
Adding a sense of gravitas to Fear The Walking Dead season 3 is the outgoing showrunner, Dave Erickson. Following three years behind the lens of AMC’s prequel series, Erickson has confirmed plans to bow out of FTWD once production wraps, leading the network to appoint Andrew Chambliss and Ian Goldberg as his replacements. In a candid chat with The Hollywood Reporter (via ComicBook), Dave Erickson conceded that he’s been eyeing the exit door for some time: “When you’re running a show, inevitably it’s all-consuming. Frankly, you end up not spending as much time with your kids as you would like.”
Further in the piece, he then outlined the sense of tension that will be simmering just beneath the surface of the show’s third season.
They’re essentially a group of preppers who prepared for the end of democracy, not necessarily the rise of the dead. They were well ahead of the curve compared to most people in the apocalypse. That’s where we start. As the season plays out, and this is something we’ve explored before but we do it in a deeper and darker way this season: what are you willing to do for security? What are you willing to do when you lock down on the resource of the day and the currency that currently matters in the apocalypse? What are you willing to do to protect it, and who are you willing to become?
Joining Kim Dickens and Dayton Callie on the casting docket are Cliff Curtis, Alycia Debnam-Carey, Frank Dillane, Daniel Sherman, Sam Underwood and Lola Guerrero.
Fear the Walking Dead will shuffle back onto our screens for a third season on Sunday, June 4th. Comprised of 16 episodes in total, it ought to satiate those viewers pining for the eighth season of The Walking Dead, AMC’s flesh-munching flagship poised to make its return in the fall – and when it does, expect the new run of episodes to motor along at a brisk clip.
