This early in the life of Fear the Walking Dead, AMC doesn’t really have to fall back on gimmicks in order to bring in viewers, but they’ve got a nutso idea for how to not only keep audiences interested in the L.A.-based drama in the off-season, but how to keep people from fast-forwarding through the commercials on The Walking Dead. And it all revolves around a half-hour special that takes place on a plane.
The still-untitled special will tell a standalone story centered entirely during a flight, with a group of passengers trying to survive a zombie attack on a plane. What makes this different from most supplemental series material is that the character that ends up making it to the end will be introduced as a brand new character for the 15-episode Season 2. From that, we’ll assume that the airplane is headed towards Los Angeles, and that the survivor either has had some kind of pilot training, or will leap from the plane using a parachute. Either way, it should be interesting, to say the least.
Of course, AMC isn’t planning on delivering the special to viewers in its complete half-hour format immediately. The special will pop up online initially, and it will air in chapters during the commercial breaks of Season 6 of The Walking Dead. So just when you think it’s safe to skip past that Geico commercial, you might be faced with a beverage cart being knocked over by a bloodied walker – or is it a flier in this case? I really hope there’s a tagline like “Here, E.T.A. means estimated time of abomination,” or something equally terrible.
The details pretty much end there, according to EW. While we may get a title at some point, we probably shouldn’t expect any cast information for Fear the Walking Dead Season 2 right away, as to not potentially spoil the special’s surprise ending. As well, it isn’t exactly clear how many chapters the special will be broken up into, or how many will actually air during each Walking Dead episode. I can’t imagine it will stretch out past the hiatus, though, and will probably be wrapped up by the time the midseason finale airs.
Though we already knew that Fear the Walking Dead destroyed in the ratings on Sunday night, this week has delivered even better news, as the Live+3 ratings raised the total viewers to 13.3 million, up from 10.1 million. As well, 8.5 million of those were in the key 18-49 demographic, up from 6.3 million. That puts this spinoff nearly on par with the average number of viewers for The Walking Dead proper. The numbers will almost certainly drop by the time next week comes around, but that’s pretty amazing, all things considered.
You’ll be able to experience the new high-flying special when The Walking Dead Season 6 debuts on AMC starting on Sunday, October 11. Pre-boarding is not advised.
