Fear the Walking Dead: EP talks Daniel and Ofelia

The midseason finale left many questions about our characters in Fear the Walking Dead. Executive Producer Dave Erickson has some insight to give us before August.

Daniel and Ofelia have had a tough time since they joined this group. Ofelia had always taken care of her parents and they protected her. They also sheltered her from the life they led in El Salvador.

Ofelia always wanted to see how she could survive more on her own and branch out with people other than her family. Daniel never wanted to be indebted to anyone and didn’t trust that anyone would take care of his daughter the way family does.

Then Ofelia and Daniel lost Griselda. She was snatched from them. Neither of them could protect her. They have to live with knowing she was alone and afraid at the end. They couldn’t even bury her or say goodbye. Someone outside of their family had to take care of her.

Ofelia will have the chance now to survive and help others without always worrying about the approval of her father or taking care of her father in the second half of the season because he won’t be with her. She is going to have to rely on her own judgment.

Dave Erickson talked to Entertainment Weekly about the midseason finale and the back half of season 2:

"Ofelia is somebody who really was kind of trapped in her life. She’s someone who gave up a great deal in order to take care of her parents, and what she’s come to realize now is they didn’t need that much taking care of. And now, at the moment where she should become whatever she wanted to become, she’s trapped in the apocalypse. So it’ll be interesting to see how that manifests and what Ofelia is able to do to reconcile the loss of her parents now that she’s orphaned."

He also revealed secrets about the fate of Daniel Salazar. Usually we have to wait and see if a character that is presumed dead or at least gone will ever return. Dave Erickson seems to want to reassure us that Daniel will be back.

"We don’t see Daniel burn, and that’s intentional. I think what’s important at the end of the midseason is that it’s the impact on Ofelia and the rest of the characters that Daniel’s gone. That’s going to spin Ofelia specifically in a new direction for the back half. From my perspective, in terms of the arc of the show, this is not the last we see of Daniel Salazar. He will be done for the season. We won’t be seeing Daniel in the back half, but my hope is we will see the return of Daniel in season 3."

I think that in The Walking Dead something that help create the badass characters that we’ve grown to love and become used to as apocalypse standards is that they lost their pre-apocalypse families and ties and had to stand on their own and make new families.

They were liberated from the worry of relationships and family. While that created a stress of a different sort in grief and PTSD, it allowed them to be in the present of the apocalypse rather than the past of holding onto protecting what they had.

Next: Review of midseason finale

I like the idea of having Daniel and Ofelia separated. Ofelia can become her own person and Daniel can find a way to forgive himself, let go of his guilt over Griselda, and let his daughter grow up. They should be very interesting and formidable as a team if and when they reunite.

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