With the most recent season over of The Walking Dead, normally, most fans of the show would have to wait months for the next season. Luckily, The Walking Dead spin-off is debuting this summer and this past Sunday, during the season finale, the promo aired for Fear The Walking Dead.
It's no secret The Walking Dead is a polarizing show. You either love it or hate it, or you watch it every week, almost religiously, then tell Twitter how much you hate it. Regardless, even though, at times, the zombie genre feels like it has been done to death, people cannot get enough of The Walking Dead, so why not do a spin-off?
Fear The Walking Dead, the spin-off from The Walking Dead, is doing things a lot different than a traditional spin-off would do. Normally, a spin-off show revolves around one of the more lovable characters from the main series and a majority of the time, it takes place after the events of the show where said character came from.
This new spin-off breaks away from that formula and takes a look at what's happening in the rest of the world, while under the zombie apocalypse. On top of that, it takes place during the first outbreaks in Los Angeles. While the building relationships and the daily survival are the key to what makes The Walking Dead run, the early days of the outbreak are something every fan wants to see, but you simply can't do it with where the show is at right now.
The Walking Dead is 5 seasons in, and the show is huge, but the problem many people who haven't seen the show yet but want to get into it is that there's almost 70 episodes of the show to get through. That can be an extremely daunting task for someone new to the show and while there are quite a few people who don't mind binging on Netflix to catch up on the show, it can be a bit much.
Fear The Walking Dead puts everyone at square one, from those who have been fans since the beginning, to those who have been interested but just haven't had the time to blaze through the AMC hit. The only real connection that this show has, that we currently know of, is that it takes place in the same world as The Walking Dead, but on the other side of the country in L.A.
On top of that, it takes place before man was fighting man and zombie for survival. How this virus works, which was actually explained in the first season of The Walking Dead, isn't as cool as seeing it spread and people's first reactions to it all, and that's what it looks like fans will get treated to.
On top of that, Fear the Walking Dead isn't as tied to The Walking Dead as the comic is, which is pretty important for not just new viewers, but everyone checking out the show. Fans of the comic expect a certain amount things, story and character-wise, to remain true to the comics, and sometimes, when things don't go that way, it can alienate fans of the books. With Fear the Walking Dead, there's little to nothing to worry about. The show should stay true to the world that's already been created, but the showrunners don't have to worry about much else. There's a limited amount of rules to follow about who these characters should be and where the story can progress to.
With The Walking Dead just airing its season finale, there's going to be a lull, so Fear can fill that lull for fans who can't get enough of the show. However, that does beg the question "is this going to over-saturate the market?" It's completely fair too, since zombies have been the "in thing" for the past few years and there's already many people that find the genre completely passe. The key to keeping this fresh is to simply keep the stories compelling and give it a completely separate look and feel from the original show. If a story feels to similar to something that's happened on The Walking Dead, it's going to be obvious.
All we can do now is wait and see how the show is going to turn out, but one thing is for sure, the concept seems to be pretty awesome as folks really want to see the early days of the virus outbreak. We'll just have to wait and see for when Fear the Walking Dead comes to AMC this summer.
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