Exiting Showrunner Talks About 'Fear the Walking Dead' Season 3 Open-Ended Finale
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Dave Erickson, who exits the show as showrunner due to new Sony and AMC projects, explains the weird Christmas dinner dream sequences as well as talks about the need for the open-ended finale.

AceShowbiz - "Fear the Walking Dead" season 3 ended with an open-ended finale which left lots of room for interpretation. [SPOILER ALERT!] The finale featured Troy's (Daniel Sharman) death, a new villain (Ray McKinnon's Proctor John), Strand (Colman Domingo) shooting Daniel (Ruben Blades) in the face, Nick (Frank Dillane) blowing up the dam and Cliff Curtis' Travis appearing in some weird Christmas dinner dream sequences.

One thing which was left unanswered in the finale was whether other characters except for Madison (Kim Dickens) survived the explosion as Madison was seen swimming to shore alone. Dave Erickson, who is set to exit as showrunner of the spin-off of "The Walking Dead" to develop new Sony and AMC projects, revealed that the open-ended finale was intentional due to the creative transition between seasons. "The goal for me was to wrap things up for the emotional and dramatic standpoints. We've been exploring violence, and morality obviously throughout the season, and I wanted to bring those things full circle," Erickson said.

He added, "We chose to leave it a little more open-ended, so at the end obviously the only person we see make it to shore is Madison. And we can find out, as I'm sure we will, in season 4 who else made it out of the water."

As for why it was Nick who had the detonator instead of Strand, Erickson explained, "Nick was looking for another way. I think what's interesting to me is Nick kind of went back to the beginning of the relationship between Strand and Nick and in a brief pop in season 1 where Strand has the key to this cell that they're locked in on the military base and Nick lifts stuff from his pocket."

He continued, "And so it's a call back to that, and I also think what it afforded Nick was an opportunity. He's killed and he's suffered the weight of that since the mid-season finale, and now he sees a third way. He's looking for another way that doesn't necessarily cause or call for violence. If that means he's going to sacrifice himself, he's willing to do that. So he sees an opportunity to save his family and also offer Strand a degree of mercy and forgiveness."

When asked about the Christmas dream sequence with Travis, Erickson revealed that he "wanted to mess with the structure a little bit." He went on saying, "We had talked in the writers' room about Jacob's Ladder and this idea of her experiencing something in this dream state that we'd come to realize is not just a dream. It's really her death and the things that she's seeing into the final moments of her life as she drowns."

Erickson revealed that he co-wrote the episode with Mark Richard. The former showrunner explained that Madison's twisted and strange dream was about Madison's world, in which she killed Alicia (Alycia Debnam Carey) because of her action while Nick looked at her "with scorn, derision, and hatred." The twisted world also led to an imagery in which "there's peace back with Luciana [Danay Garcia] and they've had a baby, which might be a zombie baby."

Erickson also weighed in on the upcoming crossover between "Fear the Walking Dead" and "The Walking Dead". "My personal feeling is that the story is strong enough in 'Fear', that we could have easily have continued for another two seasons, without the need for the crossover," he said.

Leaving the show, Erickson opened up that it felt "bittersweet." He said, "I feel like we had a good season. I think we did good work. I think we found something of a rhythm. The irony is that I see season four more than I saw season three, and I had a pretty good sense of season three."

However, Erickson said that he didn't discuss his idea for season 4 with the new showrunners. "I think it will probably be completely different. It will be its own thing. I'm sure it will be equally great. But I have not had any conversations with the guys about direction. It's time for them to take it and run with it," he said.

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