More people are dying, more people are turning, and the last quarter of the episode is just Adams and his unit trying to stay a step ahead of the horde, doing whatever they can to slow them down.įinally, they manage to escape, with Adams holding up the rear, and, just after they close they the doors, he has the wherewithal to chain them shut, as some of the survivors make it to the doors, screaming in pain as the infected descend on them. Adams and his team have to flee, realizing there’s nothing they can do with all the chaos. Panic ensues, people get trampled, now more people are turning. Then, maybe about a third of the way through the episode, someone gets sick, dies, and then quickly turns, biting someone in the neck. Imagine, the episode follows Adams and his unit, collecting refugees, checking them for bites, and then bringing them to the arena (Kind of like what we saw in Huck’s flashback in episode seven of World Beyond). Not with us being told about this incident, but, with us seeing this incident. THIS is how season one should have ended. We also learned why they decided to do it: Because the arena in the city, which was being used to house refugees, had gone haywire, leading to thousands of people being turned into infected.įear The Walking Dead _ Season 1, Episode 3 – Photo Credit: Justina Mintz/AMC (In fact, if I recall correctly, in the days leading up to that episode, the promotional material was the question “What is Cobalt?”), in the hopes of destroying as many of the infected in the city as possible. In the penultimate episode of the first season of Fear, we heard about an operation the National Guard were going to carry out called “Cobalt”, and learned it was the government’s plan to firebomb L.A. The thing is: We know what that terrible thing was. This wasn’t some arbitrary decision made by some cackling supervillain, but, a decision made because something so terrible happened, that the government realized that Cobalt was the only thing they could do. You see, the first season skipping over nine days would have been fine, if it weren’t for the fact that, within those nine days, a situation so horrendous happened that it convinced the government that Los Angeles was untenable, and needed to be destroyed. Image of a zombie, The Walking Dead 101 “Day’s Gone Bye”. I always assumed Kirkman meant he never wanted to focus on what caused the outbreak, not that he wanted to skip over the outbreak entirely! If they were going to do that… why even have a show set at the beginning of the apocalypse in the first place? I think at one time, Robert Kirkman said how he didn’t want to focus on the how of the zombie apocalypse, but, even with that, it felt like Fear was intentionally on fast-forward, skipping past some of the most important parts of the outbreak. Yet, when it came down to it, the ball was dropped. Even the theme song (For lack of a better term) is frightening. Just re-watching the pilot (For the purposes of another article I hope to have out later this week), it feels so much more frightening than later seasons (As well as some later season of The Walking Dead), mostly because it centers on people who are in no way prepared for the zombie apocalypse, at a time when the world is in no way prepared for it. I think there was so much potential in that first season of the show that was simply not capitalized on, that I would be remiss if I ignored it. In my opinion, the first season of Fear The Walking Dead is the biggest blown opportunity in T he Walking Dead Universe. Shawn Hatosy as Corporal Andrew Adams and Ruben Blades as Daniel Salazar – Fear The Walking Dead _ Season 1, Episode 5 – Photo Credit: Justina Mintz/AMC THIS is how the first season of Fear The Walking Dead SHOULD have ended.