It goes without saying that an episode of Fear the Walking Dead should include members of the actual Walking Dead. i.e., zombies. But, a recent episode of AMC’s hit zombie apocalypse series very nearly didn’t include any undead.
The TV shows set within the Walking Dead universe all focus heavily on the characters and their reaction to the outbreak, as well as how they manage to survive. However, the zombies — or walkers — also help to strongly convey this story.
Many gruesome deaths have occurred thanks to the walker’s involvement. In addition, there have always been particularly creative zombies included.
So, how could AMC forget such a vital element?
A tense storyline left walkers to fall to the wayside
In Episode 9 of Fear the Walking Dead’s sixth season, the storyline was front and center.
Virginia (Colby Minifie) was in the middle of a battle to survive as both Victor Strand (Colman Domingo) and Sherry’s (Christine Evangelista) groups tried to hunt her down and kill her.
Morgan (Lennie James), on the other hand, was desperately trying to keep Virginia alive — not because he wanted to but because the survival of Grace (Karen David) and Daniel (Ruben Blades) depended on it.
This led to plenty of tension centered entirely around the storyline and led to an episode almost devoid of walkers. In fact, when the episode was first filmed, not a single walker made an appearance.
A walker was added after initial filming was completed
According to Comic Book, Fear the Walking Dead’s co-showrunner, Ian Goldberg, has since revealed that Episode 9 initially didn’t have any walkers present.
“It’s a strange thing because when we approach these scripts, walkers are such a big part of it. And we realized when we got into it that we just had not put any in [Episode 609],” Goldberg said.
“I think because we were so kind of consumed with the human drama between Virginia and Morgan, and sort of the final gathering clouds of the war and the storm and sort of this end of Virginia, that we watched the cut and we were just like, ‘Wow, there’s no walkers in the episode.'”
Initially, they were okay with the lack of the undead in the episode. However, thanks to the delay of episodes due to the global coronavirus pandemic, they finally decided to include one.
“It didn’t really bother us that much, but we thought, ‘It might be good to have some walker presence,” Goldberg revealed. “So we had to get a couple pick-ups [shots] anyway, so we decided to put one [walker] in.”
This walker makes its appearance when Virginia is trapped under a log and subsequently rescued by Sherry. Because of this, Sherry is the one who manages to kill the single walker for the episode.
Fear the Walking Dead has been renewed by AMC for a seventh season but, as yet, no release date has officially been announced.