Fear the Walking Dead is AMC’s zombie adventure series

If The Walking Dead can be described as a zombie drama, then Fear the Walking Dead is AMC’s flagship zombie adventure, and for good reason.

For a brief period of time during the third season of Fear the Walking Dead it seemed as though the Clark family had a relatively safe place to call home. While Broke Jaw Ranch was no Alexandria, it was a shelter that afforded a good amount of safety. Season 4 saw the show morph into something new and different. Now, instead of an apocalyptic zombie drama, Fear the Walking Dead has become AMC’s zombie adventure story.

With the breakout success of The Walking Dead following its debut, there were zombie fans who would never tire of seeing the undead on their television screens. The addition of Fear the Walking Dead, then, was welcome news. However, the challenge was keeping The Walking Dead’s companion series new and fresh, and wholly different than the original. That’s why it has evolved from a drama into an adventure as the survivors continue to move around.

The entirety of the first season was spent discovering the outbreak in Los Angeles and then being moved to a military base. Season 2 featured a boat and a foreign country, season 3 featured more of that with the addition of a dam, season 4 featured trucks and tanks and hurricanes, and now season 5 will focus on missions to find people who need help.

It helps that the Fear the Walking Dead timeline is set well behind The Walking Dead at this point. Now that Morgan has joined the show, and with Dwight right behind him, we know that Fear is currently set during the 18-month time jump between All Out War and The Walking Dead 901. While Rick’s group was busy working on bridges and making their respective communities home, Morgan’s group is out driving around. They’re venturing out without a home base (aside from Polar Bear’s factory) and that means we’re seeing a very different show because they aren’t going out with the intention of settling down.

While The Walking Dead continues to present an epic apocalyptic drama that is now focusing on the trials and tribulations of not only surviving in this new world but trying to build a new one, Fear the Walking Dead is becoming the adventure series we didn’t know we needed. And that’s for the best in that after a while the two shows would start to feel too much the same if not for something that sets them apart.

The other added benefit is that showrunners have great flexibility with locations and stories that wouldn’t be possible if the group was focused on settling somewhere. Granted, eventually the fuel will run out if they don’t convert to an alternate source, and the vehicles might not run much longer without maintenance, but for now they’re going to keep on trucking.

The adventure continues when Fear the Walking Dead returns on June 2.