Fear the Walking Dead (season 1 review and personal opinion)

Fear the Walking Dead is a spin-off prequel based on the very popular series The Walking Dead and last Sunday we got to watch the action-filled first season finale.

One of the main differences between this and the original show is that there isn’t that much zombie presence. Instead, this time the plot is more focused on the fall of civilization and the beginning of the apocalypse rather than the struggle of surviving afterwards. The show introduces a family formed by two siblings (one of which is a drug addict), their mother and their stepdad. More characters like the stepdad’s other family will appear later on. Everything in their lives changes when an unknown virus starts making people come back from the dead. This is actually the purpose of the show, since the original The Walking Dead started when the world had already been taken by zombies. Now we get to see how it got to that point and how people reacted in a different location such as Los Angeles.

The first two or three episodes in my opinion were kind of slow, which makes sense in a new series like this when you have to introduce characters and set the tone for the rest of the episodes. That being said I think the dynamic between the characters is good and their reactions to the zombie apocalypse, such as denial, disbelief, fear, etc. were quite believable and understandable. It was a short season compared to most American television series (only 6 episodes), however the ending manages to give you enough answers to make you feel satisfied but still leave you wanting more. It was also a very clever move from the directors to set the premiere of the main show The Walking Dead only a week after Fear’s finale, as it works to build up more anticipation for its sixth season.

The success that Fear the Walking Dead received affirms that the zombie trend isn’t over yet, and instead it has become a separate genre that continues to grow with time.