While it has proven itself to be a massively popular franchise, AMC’s The Walking Dead has had its highs and lows when it comes to ratings and critical reception. During the seventh season of The Walking Dead, fans were losing interest and criticizing the show for having terrible pacing and being too brutal. Meanwhile, the spin-off Fear the Walking Dead had been widely praised for managing to stand out and even be superior to the original show. While The Walking Dead’s eighth season was panned, Fear the Walking Dead‘s third season was praised for its writing. However, things started to change when the creator of the series Dave Erickson stepped down as the showrunner and was replaced by Ian Goldberg and Anthony Chambliss. During it’s fourth season, Goldberg and Chambliss were panned as showrunners due to them killing off the main character Madison Clark (Kim Dickens) and her son Nick (Frank Dillane), a fan-favorite. Goldberg and Chambliss received further criticism for shoehorning in Morgan Jones (Lennie James) a character from the original show as the new main protagonist and bogging the season down with poor writing and slow pacing. The show’s fourth season was agreed to be a massive step down from its previous installment. The fifth season did not help things at all and was shown to be even worse with bad acting, writing and pacing, having few to no good episodes during the season. This has motivated fans to start a petition that demands for Goldberg and Chambliss to be fired as showrunners.

Despite the overwhelmingly negative reception to Fear the Walking Dead’s fourth and fifth seasons, fans of the show were pleasantly surprised with the season 6 premiere. In this episode titled “The End Is The Beginning,” Morgan Jones meets a new friend (Michael Abbot Jr.) who begs him to get him to safe location from the undead in order to get to his pregnant wife. All while this is happening, Morgan is on the run from a bounty hunter (Demetrius Grosse), who has been hired to kill him by the antagonist of the season Virginia (Colby Minifie). The episode received critical acclaim for its steady pacing, great performances from James, Abbot and Grosse and overall better writing compared to the last two seasons. Fans have already been calling this the best episode since season 3.

Since it is only the season premiere and there are 15 more episodes to get through, it is unclear if this season will be good. However, if the rest of the season is like the premiere, fans can be happy that they will finally get a good season from Goldberg and Chambliss.

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