The Walking Dead will be back on October 11, but you kind of don’t have to wait that long. This Sunday, the prequel spinoff Fear the Walking Dead kicks off its six-week first season. And guess what? You can watch the opening of that first episode right here, right now.
Admittedly, it’s a bit of a slow burn, especially on your computer. But it already has a more foreboding tone than the original show.
Fear the Walking Dead takes place at the very start of the zombie invasion our heroes near Atlanta are currently dealing with. This show takes place in Los Angeles while Rick (star of The Walking Dead) was in the coma he was in at the start of that show. Kim Dickens and Cliff Curtis play Madison and Nick, a school guidance counselor and an English teacher, whose family is at the center of the show. Through them, we’ll see a city decaying from the inside as the undead begin to take over. In fact, the opening three minutes featured above seems to feature their son, who isn’t having a good day with his girlfriend.
At Comic-Con in July, showrunner Dave Erickson said he and series creator Robert Kirkman wanted to do a show that was almost the opposite of The Walking Dead. That’s a rural show, this is an urban one. “The audience knows what they have in store,” Erickson said. “On the show, the characters slowly come to understand. At first they don’t know what this is. They think they’re sick, they don’t know it’s the undead.” He described the first season as “the shark you don’t see.”
Well, you can see Fear the Walking Dead starting August 23 at 9pm on AMC. It’ll run through October 4 and then, the next week, regular The Walking Dead returns.
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