Fear the Walking Dead: Showrunner Erickson talks season 2
By Susie Graham
Fear the Walking Dead returns for season 2 in less than a month and showrunner David Erickson gives us a little bit of information to get us ready to set sail on Abigail.
David Erickson must have been taking lessons in interviewing skills from Scott Gimple during the off-season. Scott Gimple is the master of giving out very little information in his answers, yet still sounding like he told you everything you wanted to know.
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It’s not until later that you realize you didn’t really learn anything from his answers, but he still managed to get you excited about what’s to come. Last season on Talking Dead, I thought David Erickson was a little more forth coming with his answers than Scott Gimple. Well, that didn’t last long.
Variety spoke with David Erickson and got some really nice answers about season 2 of Fear the Walking Dead to get us excited about the upcoming season aboard Victor Strand’s yacht, Abigail. Let’s see if we learn anything.
"The good thing about The Abigail is that as a boat, it’s a vessel we can live on for quite some time, which has its advantages but is also something that others might potentially envy. And what we will learn is we weren’t the only people with the bright idea to go to the water. You’ve got thousands of miles of coastline, and I think one of the interesting themes for us in the first several episodes is this question of displacement; we’ve literally watched our home be destroyed and we know we can’t go back – there’s no going home again, so where do we go?Frank Dillane as Nick and Colman Domingo as Strand – Fear The Walking Dead _ Season 1, Episode 6 – Photo Credit: Justina Mintz/AMCAnd now we’re stuck on this boat with Victor Strand who we don’t know very well, and somebody who is a bit of an enigma, so I think slowly we’ll peel that onion and get a better sense of who he is. And you also have the dynamic between the Salazars, between Ofelia and Daniel, and the Clark-Manawas, where they’re closer to each other — I think they have bonded over the past couple of weeks — but we will be playing with that question that Exner (Sandrine Holt) posed last season, “What is family? Is it blood or is it bond?” And I think that question will be tested over the course of the season stuck on the boat."
Okay, we learned that we’re going to deal with group dynamics. There may be others out on the water. They will be dealing with the notion that the world is really over. Their idea of what the future held and their idea of home and safety has forever been altered.
"It’s not a terribly big time jump and that’s primarily because I felt it was important… all the characters have gone through incredible losses in the last episode, and on top of that, they’re also seeing the loss of their homes, so I thought it was important not to brush past that too quickly, and to let that be part of what they’re dealing with as we move forward. And also, I wanted to make sure we had their introduction to the boat — I didn’t want to jump too far down the road and have it become pat by the time we got there, that they’re tying knots and they’ve become seamen. I thought that would be a little too abrupt. So there will be a time cut, but it will not be a dramatic one."
Now, we learned that there will be a small time jump. Not large enough to avoid dealing with the losses we experienced in season 1 or to have our survivors be kicking too much zombie butt out of nowhere. We want to see them grow and develop.We want to see how the group gets to know each other.
When asked if he could talk about any new characters, David gave his best Gimple answer ever, “I could, but I won’t.” He said those things were part of the larger story and needed to be a surprise. The characters from Flight 462 and how that will connect with the Fear story will remain a surprise as well.
"In terms of a stopgap and the design of it, I have to give credit to AMC, I think it’s been great, because it’s kept the story alive over the hiatus and I think that’s incredibly helpful. And I think there are characters on that plane that I’ve found really riveting and really interesting and it remains to be seen…I can’t tell you that we’re never gonna see any of them again, but I think it’ll be exciting to see how and when we might integrate them."
So, we did learn a little. Enough to be excited and interested for those of us who are ready to set sail with Victor, Nick, Daniel, and the group on Abigail and find out how the infected story continues in Los Angeles and beyond. Thank you, Mr. Erickson and Variety.
Flight 462 has 6 more parts. Fear the Walking Dead returns for its second season on Sunday, April 10th. We have 7 episodes and then a break. The second season will finish up with 8 more episodes later in the summer.
(Via Variety)