Spoiler warning for anyone who isn't caught up on Fear the Walking Dead Season 3, particularly the most recent episode "La Serpiente."
As soon as Season 3 of Fear the Walking Dead brought both Rubén Blades' Daniel Salazar and Mercedes Mason's Ofelia Salazar back into the action after their respective absences, fans knew that we were in store for one of the post-apocalyptic thriller's most meaningful reunions yet, and Sunday night's episode pencilled in that reunion for a future episode. When CinemaBlend spoke with showrunner Dave Erickson about the back half of Season 3, I asked whether Daniel and Ofelia's familial rekindling would be a beautiful thing or something much darker, and here's what he told me:
In my opinion, it will definitely be beautiful. That's been a long time coming, and one of the things I like about this, is the back half of the season is very much about reuniting the family and bringing all these various plotlines and sort of weaving them back into one. So one of the things that's interesting to me is how people have changed in each other's absences. . . . Ofelia has clearly changed since Daniel last saw her. So it's interesting to watch everyone sort of reconcile who their loved ones have become during these absences. So however that turns out, I do think beautiful is an applicable word.
Dave Erickson hit upon a very interesting point there, in that the relationship that Daniel and Ofelia reform is going to be lightyears away from how things were when they were first split apart in the aftermath of Daniel's presumed death-by-fire. While he's got his own batch of new problems, Daniel doesn't seem to be quite as haunted by his violent past or the many deaths he'd caused, while Ofelia has taken on a much more confident and morally wavering personality that puts her way closer to her father's past than she was before. Not that Ofelia immediately needs to go hard on confessing the things she's done for Walker and the Nation, but one assumes it will come out at some point.
But that can all wait until after the initial reunion, of course. Daniel will likely get quite emotional whenever he lays eyes on his daughter again, regardless of what she tells him she's guilty of. And if she brings up how shitty Jeremiah Otto was, then he'll probably celebrate that bastard's death, too.
Sadly, we're still not sure when this big reunion will happen. Madison made the promise to take Ofelia to the dam during the next water pick-up, and we trust that she will, but there's no guarantee that the next water pick-up will be in the upcoming episode. There are going to be more than a few things standing and shambling in the way: zombies.
After all, just because Daniel and Ofelia's reunion may be beautiful in and of itself, that doesn't mean the world surrounding them will be quite as joy-filled. While the Nation members and the ranchers seemingly won't be out for everyone else's blood when Madison, Walker and Strand arrive with their tanker full of water, that's not exactly the only danger afoot. Dave Erickson also talked to me about the growing presence of the undead, so hopefully Daniel and Ofelia will lay all their feelings out on the table before things get hectic.
Fear the Walking Dead will continue bringing the suspense -- albeit without any further happy endings -- every Sunday night on AMC at 9:00 p.m. ET. At judging from the promotional materials that have crept up after Sunday's episode aired, we might see another character returning quite soon, which will probably be a hellish situation for Nick and his split loyalties.
While waiting for all that to happen, head to our fall premiere schedule to see everything else hitting the small screen soon.
