Fear the Walking Dead: Whats Next After This Devastating Death?

This post contains spoilers for Fear the Walking Dead Season 4, Episode 3, “Good Out Here.”[hhmc]

Well, that was unexpected. On Sunday night, Fear the Walking Dead presented one of the most surprising deaths in the Walking Dead franchises history. Fans have speculated since the Season 4 premiere that Madison Clark (Kim Dickens) might be dead in the series present-day timeline, as the season flits back and forth between flashbacks and reality. We still havent seen even a peek at Madison outside of flashbacks. But Sunday did not unveil Madisons death. Instead, at the very end, it was Nick whose sudden demise came as a major shock.

There were no hints in previous episodes that Nick might be dying any time soon—which only made this week even more painful. Nick expired just as he started to realize that violence will only beget more violence, which might feel like a major echo to fans who still watch The Walking Dead; in many ways, there were clear parallels between this and Carls death. The difference? Many fans were betting that Carl was a goner long before he actually died, thanks to hints the series had dropped along the way—like that flash-forward to a devastated Rick.

But Nicks death—both its occurrence and the way it was written—expressed the most tragic reality of the apocalypse: death isnt doled out deliberately when people are ready to leave, or after they have learned their Big Lesson. Sometimes, it happens when a characters journey is just beginning. In that sense, Fear has once again achieved something its predecessor could not. One of The Walking Deads chief problems, especially in recent seasons, has been its tendency to over-rely on character deaths to deliver emotional story beats. There, characters tend to die mostly during premieres, penultimate episodes, and finales. Fear, on the other hand, loves an unexpected death, which gives the spin-off a dangerous streak that the original Walking Dead has largely lost—and a slightly less cynical air.

The attention to detail in this weeks Fear was also harrowingly poetic. Blue bonnets, a bright blue wildflower, serve as a motif for hope; in a flashback, Madison points to the flowers presence as a sign that theres still good in this world. So when an emotional Nick comes across a patch on his travels, he stops to pick one—right before killing one of the Vultures men. Though hes filled with rage, Morgan later tells Nick that its not too late to find his own peaceful path—and to learn, as he did, that “all life is precious.” Unfortunately, as Nick sits down to read Morgans favorite book, The Art of Peace—holding the flower hed picked earlier—gunfire pierces the air. Blood from the man hes just killed mingles with Nicks own as he realizes hes been shot by Charlie, a little girl whos also a Vulture. As he dies, blood gushes from his mouth the same way it gushed from the mouth of that slain Vulture as Nick held him down.

In many ways, The Walking Dead shows are procedurals—designed to continue on and on, swapping characters in and out as they go. But their apocalyptic backdrops also give this material a weight of tragedy one doesnt feel with, say, hospital dramas. These series clearly aim to keep shuffling along for as long as possible—but its hard to make so much death and tragedy meaningful without having a clear notion of what its all building toward. Thats probably why The Walking Dead so often relies on deaths as emotional climaxes, and why those emotional grabs often ring hollow. Because Fear the Walking Dead doles out its deaths more sparingly, and with a little more care, its skirted some of that criticism.

Then again: the Clarks have now lost half their family. The families theyve met and traveled with are all pretty much dead. Is total destruction the endgame here? Is all that viewers have to look forward to a moment when literally everyone is gone—or one lone survivor is seen walking into the sunset? Would even a moment of tenuous hope, as survivors create a thriving community, be a satisfying conclusion after watching so many hopeful settlements crumble? Its these questions that make Nicks death—as beautifully rendered as it was—a little fraught. Maybe Fear will find a path The Walking Dead has not. I hope it does—but after so many seasons of gushing blood, crying families, and ruined would-be societies, its growing more and more difficult to imagine a satisfying endpoint for both of these series to be walking toward.

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