Originally written October 17, 2016

Since season 1 of Fear the Walking Dead was only 6 episodes, which mainly focused on just covering the zombie outbreak that we never got to see in The Walking Dead main series, it’s in this 15 episode second season where the show was given the opportunity to really come into its own. The result is kind of just a disjointed season with an inconsistent quality to it, but overall I did find it to be an improvement over season 1.

The start of the season is actually where it’s the strongest. After the season 1 finale, the group find themselves out at sea on Strand’s boat. I felt like this was a really interesting avenue to pursue, because I remember when watching The Walking Dead, one question I had is “why has no one thought to try and go out into the ocean, where the walkers won’t be able to get you?” The show happily shows the dangers that still do come with this idea, and the problem mainly lies with people. We see both internal conflicts as arguments and suspicions arise between people on the boat, as well as external problems when other ships discover them and make life difficult for them. There are some really interesting scenarios and some great character development that happened in the early part of this season, and I was really hooked for a while there.

Then, close to the mid-season point, they abandon the boat setting and go into more familiar territory. We get to see yet another community of people that seems promising at first and then has some dark secrets that get revealed, and shit inevitably hits the fan. I found the middle of this season to be the worst point of it, because it was too similar to stuff we’ve seen before on The Walking Dead, and quite frankly not done as well.

Finally, without spoiling the finer details, part 3 of the season finds the characters split up into three groups, which unsurprisingly comes with mixed results. I found that I would always have this same problem on The Walking Dead main series, where whenever the group was split up, some characters were really interesting to watch, and others I really didn’t care about. I felt like the unfortunate thing is that the group that was the most interesting to watch got the least amount of screen time here. One group had a new, interesting setting to explore, but the story there was kind of mixed. Finally, the last group focused on my favorite character on the show, but put him in a group of people that really weren’t all that interesting.

So, in conclusion, the first part of season 2 is really awesome, the second part isn’t that great, and the final stretch is a bit of a mixed bag. All in all, I still don’t think this spinoff series has reached the level of quality that its main series has, but I do at least think that the show has managed to slip into its own comfort zone. At first, it was really hard for me to come back to a show that only had six episodes that aired a year ago. However, as the season progressed, I did find myself caring more about some of the characters, and so I was much more interested in seeing what they would have to go through next. The show still has a lot of room for improvement, but this was a pretty decent second season.

3.5/5