Fear The Walking Dead Showrunner On How Season 3 Got So Good

Fear the Walking Dead‘s third season appears to be the time in which the AMC series truly found its stride. A strong ending to Season 2 helped lead to a border conflict in Season 3, seeing the Clark family side with the newcomer Otto clan in a border conflict with a Native American tribe.

New characters, conflicts, and developments have all culminated into Fear the Walking Dead delivering its best season (through six episodes, at least). For showrunner Dave Erickson, who is rounding out his final efforts with the series before departing when the season concludes, it is a “number of things” which lead to the show turning around the fans’ opinion.

“If I’m being completely candid,” Erickson started, “Season one was season one. It was six episodes. We were trying to edge up toward the moment close to where [The Walking Dead‘s] Rick [Grimes] was gonna be coming out of his coma. Just in terms of timeline, you know, so there was a lot of story to bite off, and we needed to be somewhat ambitious and accelerate, and that’s why we had a time cut between episode three and four. That really dictated the narrative to a certain degree.”

Season 2, which had a very strong run late as Danay Garcia was introduced as the strong Luciana ready to fight for her Colonia community in Tijuana, didn’t tell as much of a smooth and linear story as Erickson would have preferred. “I think season two, especially the first half, was far more episodic than I would have liked,” Erickson said. “And I think we also rushed the story a bit more, and we tried to adjust and slow it down in the back half of that season. And I think that we just kind of hit our stride in season three. And I think the pieces… The drive to end up on the border, which was something I’d wanted to do from the beginning, it just timed out in such a way that that’s where we landed, and I think we took the elements that we established at the end of last season and had the stage set, in a way.”

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The series has seen many changes this season and Erickson has one in particular which he is crediting the quality of Season 3 to. “The [writers] room this season has been spectacular,” Erickson said. “With the exception of Alan Page, it’s an entirely new group of writers, who all bought into the larger vision, the intention, direction of the show, and I think that’s been… that was instrumental. I also think we’ve gotten to a place where the actors are deeply… Their identification with the characters now is quite strong.”

With one two-hour midseason finale standing between Fear the Walking Dead and a brief hiatus, Erickson hopes to see the series continue at such a pace with similar reception from fans, revealing himself to finally have a better grip of the story than ever before. “We’re firing on, hopefully are firing and will continue to fire, on all cylinders for the rest of the season, but I saw this season a lot more clearly than I think I did, to be honest, season two,” Erickson said. “So I think that’s a big part of it, as well.”

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Fear the Walking Dead airs Sundays at 9 pm ET on AMC. The Walking Dead will return for its eighth season in October with a trailer coming in July at San Diego Comic Con. For complete coverage and insider info all season long, follow @BrandonDavisBD on Twitter.