Fear The Walking Dead quick catch up guide of seasons 1-3
By Sonya Iryna
If you haven’t watched the first three seasons of Fear The Walking Dead here’s what you need to know to jump into the season 4 premiere.
The Fear The Walking Dead season 4 premiere is just a week away and this season is bringing some big changes. The story is essentially being rebooted with a time jump. The surviving characters are in a new place and meeting new people, including Morgan Jones from The Walking Dead.
Bits and pieces of the backstory covering the time jump and how they got to Texas will be told in flashbacks throughout season 4. But if you are thinking about checking out Fear The Walking Dead for the first time and you haven’t watched seasons 1-3 never fear. Thanks to the reboot you don’t have to be caught up on the show in order to understand what’s going on in season 4.
But it will be helpful to know what has happened so far. So here is a quick summary of seasons 1-3 that will get you caught up on the story.
Read through this guide to Fear The Walking Dead and you’ll be ready to watch the Fear The Walking Dead season 4 premiere after The Walking Dead season 8 finale on Sunday, April 15th. Season 4 is definitely going to be the best season yet so it’s a great time to discover Fear The Walking Dead or give it another chance if you tried it before but didn’t really get into it.
Season 1
Season one starts with Nick Clark, a drug addict, waking up after a binge to find that his girlfriend and fellow addict Gloria is missing. He goes to find her, and is horrified to discover that Gloria has died, and turned, and has fed on several other people that were in the spot where they would usually go to get high. Gloria is the first known walker and it’s believed that the outbreak started with her.
Nick runs from the scene and is hit by a car. He ends up in the hospital where his mother, Madison Clark and sister Alicia Clark come to see him. His mother’s partner Travis Manawa also comes to see him. Travis is a high school English teacher. Madison is a guidance counselor at the same school. No one believes him when he tells them about Gloria and what he saw.
The outbreak spreads and starts getting covered by the local news. In the chaos of a riot Travis and his estranged son Chris take shelter in a barber shop with the Salazars: Griselda, Daniel and their daughter Ofelia. They all escape the riot together and return to the Clark home. Things are crumbling fast and the group prepares to leave and head to the desert thinking it will be safe. They don’t make it out.
The military comes in and quarantines the neighborhood. Madison is shocked to discover that the military is going out and killing everyone they can find in the surrounding neighborhoods to stop the outbreak from spreading. Travis’ ex-wife Liza, Chris’s mother, who is now with the group and is a nursing student goes to the camp to offer medical help and to keep an eye on Nick and Griselda.
Nick and Griselda are sick and so are taken by the military to a camp where all sick people are being kept in cages. There Nick comes across a suave and savvy con man, Victor Strand, who helps Nick escape for his own reasons. Madison, Travis and the others make it to the military camp to find Griselda and Nick. Griselda dies and is put down in the camp.
After the group escapes the military camp Strand takes them to a safe house he has prepared. They still don’t know that much about him and don’t trust him, but they don’t have a lot of other options. The safe house is very secure and has food and water. But it also has a large boat anchored just offshore. They make plans to head out to sea to escape what’s going on.
Liza reveals to Travis and Madison that she has been bitten. She begs Travis to kill her so that she won’t turn. He does, but his act of euthanizing Liza causes traumatized Chris to begin to unravel. The group sets sail on Strand’s boat, The Abigail, trying to reach Victor’s compound in Mexico.
Season 2
Season 2 starts off with the survivors fleeing to Mexico on Strand’s yacht. They face a lot of problems and face off with other survivors that are trying to steal the yacht but they make it to Mexico. During the journey Travis’ son Chris is becoming more and more volatile and unstable. He is a danger to the group, particularly to Madison whom he does not like. He blames Madison and Travis for Liza’s death.
Eventually they make it to the compound, which is where Strand’s partner Thomas Abigail is along with a large group of workers and their families. Thomas is sick, and reveals to Victor that he has been bitten. The two had a suicide pact in place if one of them was to get bitten, but Victor doesn’t go through with his agreement. He puts Thomas down. Celia, the woman who runs the compound and knows Thomas and Victor very well, has been putting all the people who turned in a large cell in a basement. She believes the dead are just different, not completely dangerous.
The group knows that Celia is a threat that needs to be deal with. They eventually kill her and flee, although Daniel ends up engulfed in the fire he started to burn down the compound and the dead and he is presumed dead. The group scatters.
Nick goes off on his own. Ofelia goes off on her own to try and get back to the US. Travis and Chris go off on their own and Madison, Alicia and Strand take off as a group. Throughout the season the various groups find themselves in trouble with strangers and walkers. Chris turns on Travis and joins two college kids from the US who were in Mexico when the outbreak hit. Eventually they kill him. Nick finds a community where he is able to recover from injuries and there he meets and falls in love with Luciana. Madison and Alicia leave Strand behind at a hotel where they all found temporary shelter.
The Clarks are reunited with each other and with Travis and they decide to head for the US border with the survivors from La Colonia, the group that Nick and Luciana were part of. At the border they are fired upon and taken captive by some men in military clothing. Ofelia, on her own, is wandering in the desert where she is found but not taken in by an older man.
Season 3
At the beginning of season 3 the group is under fire at the border. Luciana is shot and the group is taken captive by the men in military clothing. They separate Madison and Alicia from the others, who are taken to a basement. It’s revealed that the men are the members of a survivalist militia group that have a ranch near the border. They have been killing anyone they capture that is sick or not white and performing experiments to see how fast they turn after dying. Troy Otto, the head of the militia, is unstable and extremely volatile with a history of sadistic violence.
While Madison and the others are trying to figure out how to survive this new threat the border facility is overrun. Everyone is separated. Alicia and Travis take off in a helicopter with Jake Otto, Troy’s brother who is a bit more stable mentally. During the flight the helicopter takes fire from an unknown source. Travis is killed.
Madison, Alicia, and Nick take up residence at the ranch. They remain on guard and suspicious. The head of the ranch, Jeremiah Otto, is a bigoted survivalist with a checkered past that includes abusing his family and having a problem with alcohol. The group is leading is a bunch of other white survivalists who have planning for the end of the world for a long time. They have lots of water, food, and guns but no idea how to deal with walkers.
At first Jeremiah refuses to allow Luciana on the ranch because she isn’t white. But Madison insists that the Ottos owe them. So Luciana is allowed to stay until she recovers. She knows that the ranch is dangerous for her so she leaves, alone, as soon as she can. Nick, Madison and Alicia stay on at the ranch.
It turns out the ranchers are facing a bigger threat than just walkers. They have a long feud with a Native American group that lives in the same area and says that the ranch property is theirs by rights. They attack the ranch. It turns out that Ofelia has joined the Native group, who found her dying in the desert and saved her. Ofelia has no qualms about fighting against the people she used to be in a group with, although allegiances tend to shift quickly in this world.
Troy Otto and Nick develop an unlikely kinship. They are both somewhat unstable although Troy is much more violent. There are lots of conflicts between the Ottos and the Clarks and the ranch and the Native group. Nick kills Jeremiah Otto in order to prevent Madison from having to do it. Troy is banished from the ranch.
When Troy sneaks back into the ranch to cause trouble Jake Otto takes him back out to the banishment spot. He sees that Troy has assembled a herd of walkers and directed them at the ranch. Jake, Troy and Nick try to head off the heard but they can’t. Jake is killed by walkers.
Madison left the ranch with the leader of the Native group, who took over the ranch after Jeremiah’s death. They head to a bazaar where they have heard they can buy water. The ranch is quickly running out of water. At the bazaar Madison finds Strand, who has gotten himself in trouble again. Madison frees Strand and he tells them about a dam not far away where they can get water.
Strand knows about the dam because he was held captive there. The man who was running it was an old business contact of Strand’s who took him prisoner. Then the dam was overthrown by another group, and in that group was Daniel Salazar who had escape the fire at the compound. Madison makes a deal with Lola, the woman running the dam with Daniel’s help. That deal includes Madison bringing Ofelia Salazar to the bazaar to be reunited with her father.
The ranch is overrun by walkers and only a handful of the ranchers manage to escape by hiding in the underground pantry. Alicia is there as well, and only barely manages to survive along with Ofelia. When Madison and Strand return they take Ofelia to the bazaar after telling her that her father is alive. Along the way to the bazaar she reveals that she was bitten when the ranch was overrun. She dies minutes before Daniel arrives at the bazaar. He takes it badly and turns on Madison and Strand.
Meanwhile Strand has made a deal with the group running the bazaar. He owes them, and in order to save his life he tells them about the dam but one of the conditions of the deal is that he and Madison won’t be harmed.
There is a showdown at the dam between Madison and the ranch people, Lola and her people, and the group from the bazaar that want to take over the dam. Madison kills Troy Otto in order to prevent him from being a threat any longer. Nick ends up blowing up the dam after making sure that Madison and Alicia are allowed to leave. There is a massive explosion and the fate of all the survivors is up in the air, except for Madison who is shown washing up on a nearby beach alive.
What We Know About Season 4
So far all that is known about season 4 is that Madison, Alicia, Nick and Strand survived the explosion and found each other again. Luciana also has returned and is with the group. There is a time jump. And several new characters will be meeting and joining the Clarks including Morgan Jones and new characters John, Althea and Naomi.
How the characters survived the explosion and found each other and Luciana will be explained at some point in season 4 which kicks off on April 15th immediately after The Walking Dead season 8 finale.