“You might not recognize much” in Fear the Walking Dead season 7

The fallout (pun very much intended) from the Fear the Walking Dead season 6 finale will have fans talking until the show returns for season 7 later this year. After murderous cult leader Teddy sends several nuclear warheads into the skies in the penultimate episode, the survivors have precious little time to sort out what could be the last moments of their lives in the Fear TWD finale.

Winter Is Coming talked with director Michael E. Satrazemis about this explosive episode and where it leaves things heading into the new season. Satrazemis has been with The Walking Dead universe since the very beginning. He currently serves as an executive producer on the first spinoff, but he frequently steps behind the camera – both on Fear TWD and on The Walking Dead – to direct key episodes.

There’s no question that everything is still up in the air after the finale moments of “The Beginning” and thankfully Satrazemis was able to offer up a few nuggets about what happened and what’s coming in season 7.

Michael E. Satrazemis breaks down Fear TWD season 6 finale

(Sarabeth Pollock): That opening sequence freaked me right the eff out. I was so uncomfortable through that whole thing. The episode as a whole was beautiful. It’s like a little horror movie.

(Michael E. Satrazemis): Thank you! You know, it was an anthology within an anthology. We opened on Rachel and the heartbreak level went to 10,000. I think it sets the tone for the episode and, you know, it was setting the tone for the future when you have to figure out what to do with these last 15 minutes and what do you do with your last ounce of hope.

Rachel was out but tried to live on for the baby and Rufus, that little sucker, the only thing left to smile about is that Rufus has brought a baby to Morgan. And Grace can’t deal with it yet.

What was your initial reaction when you saw the script for this episode? How far in advance did you know that you were going to nuke everything at the end of the season?

Well, I knew way in advance that we were going to do this, but you keep asking once in a while. “Are [the bombs] still going to land? Like I know it’s going to launch, but is it still going to land?” And then the writers would be like, “Yes, it’s going to land. They’re going to land and they’re going to detonate. And they’re going to continue to rip the earth apart. Yep, that’s what they’re going to do.”

And then a couple of weeks later, we’d be talking again and it’d be like, “So in 16, they’re going to land and they’re going to detonate.” So we had time to prepare, but it was something that I didn’t know if we could accomplish or not.

We worked really hard way before we even started prepping to really break down what elements we would need. The force of the detonation of a nuclear bomb is very hard to represent practically, even with VFX help. You know, Morgan and Grace are underneath the semi, and then lifting up the semi and blowing and blasting. We had 25 people blowing off dust cannons and fans and mortars and every smoke bomb we could get from this company that makes safe smoke bombs. We’re blowing diatomaceous earth, which they use to get rid of parasites in animals and humans, so everything was safe but we looked like powdered donuts. It blocked out the earth, and the sun. 300 yards of explosive dust. And we had to pray the wind would work in our favor that day. And it did.

It was also working out the perspectives that we wanted to tell the story from, because everyone’s got a different perspective to the missiles [being launched]. A lot of research was done on what [a bomb] does and how it reacts because we wanted to be as accurate as possible. And then we would transfer that to the actors so that we could have our actors in it safely and still represent it. We had to find places like underneath trucks and stuff, so it’s smaller, tighter spaces that maybe [gave them] a fighting chance.

I’ve watched the movie The Atomic Cafe so many times in school and this was so realistic. I think a lot of people will see that, especially if you understand that back in that time people used to go watch test detonations from the Strip in Las Vegas. This is exactly what it looks like.

I mean, we did the research and made it extremely accurate. It was important, because it’s a perspective that fans and audiences don’t get to see because [nuclear blasts] are something that are available to be seen. And thank goodness. So I think it’s pretty new to everyone and we wanted to make it authentic.

I think it’s intriguing in the sense of a season finale because someone asked me if you can survive a blast like that and I said yes, no, maybe, probably and probably not. There are so many factors that go into it, so without even trying you created this really beautiful cliffhanger with where everyone ends up, which leads to wondering how likely they are to survive. And then at the end when the dust settles you realize there are three more bombs.

If you do any research on a post-nuclear future there’s not a lot of hope out there, but we always have a little bit of hope in the apocalypse. So we’ll see, and I’m not saying much more because I know too much and the future is going to be… Listen, Ian and Andrew rewrote the landscape of the apocalypse.

Absolutely. And this is one of the most unique things this universe has ever seen. Nothing holds a candle to this.

Yes. We’ll see how we accomplish it. It’s definitely made the apocalypse more difficult to shoot.

With that in mind, I have to comment that it’s like the finale is a bookend to seasons 4 through 6. The show has different acts. You have seasons 1 through 3 and 4 through 6, and then there are these mixed messages of “the end is the beginning” and “this isn’t the end.” It feels like this is the end of Act II and there’s a clear transition. How should we come away from this episode and the past three seasons?

I would say you’re really accurate. I feel like 4 brought us into a new iteration of the show, 5 wound us up into what is season 6. And I would say that in season 7 you may not recognize much. Wow. That’s probably all I can say. It’s hard to think that you can watch those bombs go off and not have it bring something new. I think we can promise that those bombs make a promise, don’t they?

Oh yeah. I guess my last question is about the walkers. You have what I’m calling “shirt off my back walker” because he’s smoking from the blast. You’ve gotten to bring so many interesting walkers to life, especially in the past few seasons with the introduction of the nuclear threats. Is it fun being able to one up yourself every single time? From Dakota’s death to that smoking walker, you keep it fresh season after season.

Well I think when we started getting into what the nuclear blast does, that first flash of light is the heat and it travels the speed of light and then the force comes after. The first heat is this charring event that singes everything. That gave us the ability to have the two-tone walker. If you look into the blast zone part, I used an old trick from “The Grove” when we had all of those smoking walkers. We had them plumbed with smoke through their backsides. So while they’re walking they’d fall flat and reveal what happened to them. I think it’s neat to get a chance to rewrite everything. I think it’s a reinvention period. The landscape for sure, the earth, everything. How people survive will probably be reinvented and reinvented. They thought the apocalypse was bad but it just keeps coming, getting worse.

The hits keep coming. Well thank you so much. It’s always fun talking with you, but I can’t even imagine season 7 at this point.

It’s tough right now, but it’s really rewarding. Our stories are rich and I’m beyond excited about it. I can’t say anything, but I’m pretty juiced. It’s very difficult but I’m very excited. So I look forward to everyone seeing this episode this weekend and really look forward to everybody getting into season 7.

You can catch up on Fear TWD on AMC+. Season 7 will premiere later this year.

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