Fear the Walking Dead Season 2 Has Water Zombies So Yeah, It's Awesome

Why the premiere revealed a new and improved series

By Jean Bentley Apr 11, 2016 2:00 AMTags
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You know what's more terrifying than the regular zombies who terrorize Rick Grimes and co. on The Walking Dead? WATER ZOMBIES! Which is what the survivors on Fear the Walking Dead are facing in season two as they set sail to hopefully safer shores. Spoiler alert: It was scary and awesome, which is what we've been waiting to happen on this show from the series premiere.

While season one was brief, its slow burn was a tad too slow. Sure, the premiere was tense and terrifying as we saw the beginnings of what would become the landscape we see each week on TWD. But then everyone just, like, hung out for a while.

In the finale, though, as our survivors fled to the ocean, we finally saw the scope of what was happening. And in the season two premiere, we saw that the stakes are much higher now—both from the impending threat of the zombie virus AND from fellow survivors who are taking the apocalypse as a cue to take advantage of their fellow humans (read: looting and murdering. Just like on The Walking Dead, where other humans pose just as much of a threat as the horrible undead monsters!).

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Here's the deal: Everyone is now on Victor Strand's (Colman Domingo) yacht, heading for San Diego. Travis (Cliff Curtis) had to kill his ex-wife, Liza (Elizabeth Rodriguez), before she turned into a walker, and as we opened this season, their son, Chris (Lorenzo James Henrie), was still messed up about it. It brought him and recovering addict Nick (Frank Dillane) closer, considering they're both experiencing some major emotional turmoil.

So when Chris jumped off the yacht, Nick immediately jumped in the water after him. Turns out all Chris wanted to do was swim, and everyone was relieved. But then they realized they were swimming in a shipwreck, and WATER ZOMBIES began to attack them. (WATER ZOMBIES are so cool they should probably be referred to in all caps, right?)

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Travis hopped in the dinghy and snagged them from the water in the nick of time—then got back to the yacht just as another vessel headed towards the Abigail.

Turns out Alicia (Alycia Debnam-Carey) really messed things up by making a "friend" on the ship's radio, revealing pretty much all of their vital info (the size of the yacht, their desalinization equipment, how many people, their location)—and now said "friend" is on his way toward the Abigail, presumably to do to them whatever happened to the shipwreck with the walkers (swimmers?).

So now they're on the run from the other ship as well as attempting to escape to San Diego—though the radio friend did suggest that they try to head to Hawaii, which seems like a good idea. Would the island have been infected by the disease?

Basically, everything was much more tense and exciting in this episode, revealing a promising start to season two. What did you think of the new direction?

Fear the Walking Dead airs Sundays at 9 p.m. on AMC.

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