WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Fear the Walking Dead Season 6, Episode 16, "The Beginning," which aired Sunday on AMC.
With Season 6 of AMC's Fear the Walking Dead now concluded, a look back has led some to notice the unorthodox story structure of the finale.
Showrunners Andrew Chambliss and Ian B. Goldberg spoke with Entertainment Weekly about the atypical story construction of Episode 16, "The Beginning," the last episode of the season, which aired on June 13. Referring to the challenge of ending the season, which had been presented as an interwoven collection of sprawling storylines with each episode concentrating on a single character set, Chambliss recalled, "When we were thinking about how to bring everyone's stories to a conclusion, we obviously couldn't do it in anthology format, where we're focusing on a select group of characters."
The focus of "The Beginning" shifts from Daniel and his crew looking for a hideout from the impending nuclear doom in one segment to Dwight and Sherry finding a storm shelter in the next. The following part has Teddy and Dakota encountering John and June, who locate Teddy's bunker and save themselves while the former two perish. Strand carries the next few minutes as he meets Howard, a new character, in an abandoned building. Rounding out the plot are Morgan and Grace, who adopt Rachel's baby after she chose to take her own life early in the episode. With so much happening at once, the creative team used title cards to break up the action.
"In terms of the title cards, that's actually something that we came up with when we were working on the cut of the episode. We really wanted something that announced in each act, that this was the start of something new," Chambliss said. "We... landed on the idea of pulling some of our favorite lines from the episode... and put those at the beginning." Goldberg added, "I think our favorite one that amused us every time was, 'Enjoy the view, a--hole.', for the Dwight and Sherry story. That one tickled us."
As executive producer Scott Gimple put it before Season 6 began to air, "We're going to have these 16 little movies that all sort of fold into each other. It's the only show that's doing it right now." Chambliss admitted that to draw each of the five primary storylines to a satisfying, season-ending point in one episode, while also remaining faithful to the character arcs, seemed difficult.
"Then, the idea occurred to us that, we could tell these little short stories that, in a way, honored the anthology format of the whole season, and allowed all the characters to have their own conclusions to their stories, and at the same time, set up where they're going to go in Season 7," said Chambliss.
Fear the Walking Dead stars Lennie James, Rubén Blades, Colman Domingo, Danay Garcia, Maggie Grace, Garret Dillahunt, Jenna Elfman, Alexa Nisenson, Karen David, Austin Amelio, Mo Collins, Zoe Colletti and Christine Evangelista. New episodes air Sundays at 9 p.m. ET/8 p.m. CT on AMC.
Source: Entertainment Weekly