The Walking Dead franchise isn't exclusive to just one show anymore. Heck, it rarely has been, for the first spinoff launched in 2015. That means that there have been TWD Universe spinoffs for two thirds of the franchise's decade and a half-long run. And when you have The Walking Dead itself, along with six spinoffs, there are plenty of moments and memories that fans have been presented with over the years.
For a fandom as devoted as the TWD Family, dates carry a lot of memories. For example, they would never forget the October date in which the original series premiered in 2010, nor would they forget the date that it ended in 2022. However, June 2 recalls memories of a pretty infamous date in the franchise's history - one that produced arguably the worst season of any Walking Dead show.
June 2 was the day that The Walking Dead Universe's worst ever season premiered
We may have found one of the dates that Walking Dead fans don't want to remember. June 2 marks the anniversary of the season 5 premiere of spinoff Fear The Walking Dead, which is widely recognized as the moment that the former prequel series was beyond saving from its controversial new direction.
Titled "Here To Help", it saw the survivors of the show enact Morgan Jones' plan to help people in other zones. This led them to what appeared to be a town in danger of a nuclear meltdown - if not one that had already experienced it. The heroes also found themselves in need of help as the result of their plane crashing, stranding them in the location as they looked for ways to fix it - and for ways out of that location.
The episode itself was undoubtedly one of the better ones from the fifth season, but it set the stage for what is easily considered the worst season of not just the show, but the entire Walking Dead franchise. Considering that the third season of the same show was considered one of the best of the franchise, that's an insane drop in standard. But if you were watching the show at the time, you already knew that.
Fans' biggest gripes with the fifth season was that it took all the elements of the divisive fourth season and multiplied them, leaving behind the things that actually worked in that one. The result was a messy, uneven, and very questionable string of episodes that left us all wishing they had just left the show alone - because make no mistake about it: The original incarnation of Fear The Walking Dead was better than this.
The original Fear line-up was an eclectic blend of hardened, struggling characters all trying to survive when the world suddenly went to hell around them; the second line-up was full of uninteresting replacements, lacklustre villains, and multiple cliché storylines. It wasn't The Walking Dead and it certainly wasn't Fear, and it was this that led to that reviled fifth season.
Season 5 is easily the lowest-rated season of the show on Rotten Tomatoes, with a 59% rating; the consensus reads that it is suffering from "early-onset rigor mortis". The audience score is much lower at just 44%, clearly indicating that fans weren't happy with the questionable direction that the series had gone in. And, honestly, it's hard to blame them: Season 4 had its issues, and it completely collapsed in the second half, but season 5 upped the ante in every way it shouldn't have.
From the overreliance on walkie-talkies (that had questionably long range) to the infamous found-footage episode "Channel 5" (which was panned by fans and critics), Fear season 5 was a disaster all around.
The true moment that Fear was broken beyond repair
If we're being honest, Fear The Walking Dead's run is a bit of a mixed bag. That is to be expected from a show that ran for eight seasons, but it's a completely different ball game for this show. See, the first three seasons - overseen by Dave Erickson - were a prequel to the original series designed to show us what the beginnings of the apocalypse in the TWD Universe looked like. And they truly were fantastic, with the third season peaking to such a level that many rank it among the Top 3 seasons of any TWD show. Unfortunately, everything went wrong after that.
The Walking Dead creatives decided to have Fear catch up with the main series in its fourth season, becoming a companion to it in the hopes of getting a double-ratings win on Sunday nights when they started airing back-to-back (Fear originally aired in the summer). New showrunners Ian Goldberg and Andrew Chambliss came in and the decision was made to bring Morgan Jones (played by Lennie James) from that show over to Fear as its new lead. To call the move a failure would be an understatement.
Disrespectfully, all involved sidelined the Clark family, who were the main characters of the show, in favor of Morgan, who fans had grown weary of on The Walking Dead due to his constant flip-flopping, sanctimonious lectures, and repetitive storylines. Moving him to the spinoff when it was thriving - and putting him front and center at the expense of the actual main characters - was a decision that Fear would live to regret.
Both critical and audience reception to Fear were overwhelmingly negative from that point onwards and, despite an initial bump due to the back-to-back pairing with the original show, the ratings plummeted - with season 5 setting record viewership lows amid the negative response. That response got so bad that, at one point, fans created a petition to get the show new leadership and restore it to its former glory.
Fear is widely considered among the worst spinoffs of all time, which doesn't feel fair considering that the first three seasons are fantastic. Kim Dickens' performance as Madison Clark brought such a grounded realistic grit to such an ambitious concept and it was fascinating seeing her character hold her family together in a world that threatened to tear it apart. That was far more interesting than Morgan's monologues about being better when he willingly passed judgment on anyone who did things less worse than some of the things that he had done on The Walking Dead. And five seasons of that unfortunately solidified a phenomenal show's downturn into a run-of-the-mill, lacklustre TWD 2.0 without any of the interesting characters.
What the Fear creative team tried to do in season 4 wasn't terrible; the first half of the season was really good and, with the exception of killing Madison off, it successfully pivoted from one version of the show to the other. We just didn't know then how bad that second version would become. The mistakes of the second half were magnified and it became very clear very quickly that season 5 was only going to double down on that more throughout.
Despite some highs down the line (like the first half of season 6 being genuinely solid), Fear never recovered from the poor decision-making that allowed season 5 to exist in the first place. That season damaged fans' already-broken relationship with the show, highlighting how poor it had become and ultimately resulting in audiences tuning out. Not even bringing Madison back from the dead in the final season could repair the damage.
Fear The Walking Dead was a low point for the whole franchise and it's a reminder that, even after all these years, the show was far better off before it became "Morgan and Friends".
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