The end of “Fear the Walking Dead” is coming

“The biggest challenge,” he says, “has been feeling that responsibility that we act as caregivers for these characters who have been in ‘Fear…’ from the beginning, like Strand, Madison, Daniel and then also characters who have come from ‘The Walking Dead.’ ‘like Morgan, Dwight and then the characters we’ve created. And we really feel a responsibility to do right by them for the actors who play them and for the fans.”

“Fear the Walking Dead” was born as a spin-off of the main series, in turn created based on the comics by Robert Kirkman, and although it always maintained narrative connections and even received characters that “traveled” from the original plot, it managed to give over the years a seal of its own.

It is true that, as happened to “The Waking Dead” last year, “Fear…” comes to an end not without having shown some signs of exhaustion, but its plot knew how to stay fresh with many changes of locations, entrances, exits and re-entry of characters; and a seven-year ellipsis in the continuity of the narrative, among others.

In the final episodes, the group made up of Madison (Kim Dickens), Victor Strand (Colman Domingo), Luciana (Danay Garcia), Dwight (Austin Amelio) and Daniel (the Panamanian singer-songwriter Rubén Blades, who now appears with a mate as a nod to these latitudes), among many others, will maintain a final combat with an enemy from the past that puts at risk the integrity of the secluded and safe island on which the heroes could settle to build a future once and for all.

Télam: We often judge the entirety of a series by how it ended. For example, everyone remembers the bad taste that “Game of Thrones” left… Did that make you feel more pressure for this ending?

Andrew Chambliss: We don’t want to disappoint the fans. There’s always that pressure, but the approach we’ve taken is to tell the story that we believe in the most, the one that we think really takes these characters down the most interesting path and shows the most growth for them. Our hope is that the public will enjoy it.

T: One of the characters who returned in this second half of the final season was Strand, who was in a very different place the last time he was seen before the story took a seven-year jump.

AC: I think he probably had the biggest transformation of everyone from the previous season. The last time we saw him he had been trying to create this world that he could control in the tower and his efforts to do so, his efforts to be a sort of hero of his own story, led to the destruction of the tower and the breaking of the family he had created. And in the seven years since, he built a new life, found love, family, a community.

And now that his old life is colliding with his new one, the question is whether he can merge these two identities and which one will win. Could he be the new Strand, who seems to have genuinely built a meaningful life with real relationships that aren’t based on getting an advantage? Or will he fall back into the old Strand who likes to scheme and think of himself before anyone else? That will really be the crux of your journey in this final stretch.

T: He is a complex character, neither hero nor villain; He has a heart, but he did things wrong so many times… Do you have a favorite character?

AC: It’s like asking a parent to choose their favorite child! (Laughs). No, I varied throughout the series, there are things that we love about everyone and I think what we have to do as writers is find something that we fall in love with each of us. There are definitely characters that are a lot of fun to write and someone like Victor is one of them.

T: These final episodes will close many narrative arcs, and some of them will necessarily be tragic or bittersweet. How did you balance what you thought was right for the story with the expectations of millions of fans?

AC: That’s something we think about a lot. After all, this is a story set in the zombie apocalypse, so not everyone is going to have a happy ending. What we did to see if it passed the test is if it seemed to us that the stories came full circle. And for some that ends in a happy place, for others it ends in a tragic place and for others it ends in a place that is a mix of the two.

T: How was the process with the cast? Did you talk to them? Did they take any opinions into account?

AC: Yes, particularly in this last batch of episodes, because many of these actors have been living with these characters for close to a decade and are very close to them, they have ideas about what the end of the journey should be like. So we had a lot of conversations at the beginning of the planning stages, where they talked about what they expected and I stayed with that, I went into the writers’ room and tried to create a synthesis, something that would make them feel that their characters got the ending they wanted. they deserved. And those conversations continued as we wrote the season and until the last day.

T: Both “Fear…” and “The Walking Dead” are stories that allow us to deal with many topics. What would you say, ultimately, this series was about?

AC: I think at its core it was about a couple of different things: it was about family and how you can build a family that you choose, which is what was really at the heart of the show from the beginning. And then it addresses the question of what it means to be a decent person in such an unforgiving world.

How they try to hold on to their humanity, to what matters to them, when they are put in positions where they have to do very dark things, where they often have to resort to violence, where they have to choose between people they love and their own survival.

T: Would you say that is the reason for the lasting success of this franchise?

AC: I think so because, at the end of the day, what these series do is eliminate all the differences of who they are, what they do, their socioeconomic level, and it makes everyone on an equal footing. It allows you to see what people are at their core and what can happen when you don’t have to follow social rules. I think in many ways these series provide characters in which to see a part of ourselves.

T: With the success of the new spin-offs of “The Walking Dead”. Can you imagine that some of these characters could also return in the future?

AC: There’s definitely room for more stories to tell with many of them and the really talented actors who bring them to life. I think it would be a shame if we didn’t get to see more of their stories in some form, in some corner of the “The Walking Dead” universe. I have no idea if that’s going to happen or not, but it’s something I definitely hope to see in the future.