REVIEW: Fear the Walking Dead, S3 Ep3 – Teotwawki

The third episode of Fear the Walking Dead sees the Clark family coping with a new community with potential sinister secrets while Strand finds himself in a tricky situation. And a familiar face returns from the dead. For real.

The episode begins with an upbeat flashback featuring a Jeremiah Otto’s four-part video series called “How to Survive the End of the World as We Know It” (TEOTWAWKI), and so far on the Broke Jaw Ranch people seem to have survived the horrors of the world. We see a little more of this community and how they operate. Not as elaborate as the communities on the main show, but at least they’re alive and clean.

As revealed in the sneak peek released earlier this week, we get to see some more of the Otto family dynamics and how one brother, Troy, can easily thrive in the new world order of Fear the Walking Dead. While the other, Jake, advocates a more humane (but probably less practical) approach. Nick gets into another intense confrontation with Troy but there are no casualties just yet. And Maddie continues to be a fierce mama bear, protective of her kids against the troublesome Ottos. But she later bonds with Jeremiah over having family members with serious addictions.

Meanwhile Strand drove into another community, thinking that his connections with the boss, Dante, would help get him into a better position in the world. Unfortunately for him, his past sins have come back to haunt him and he finds himself swearing service to Dante just so he would not be tossed into a pit of walkers, the punishment for those who cross Dante. Strand knows that he is out of his depth and he just has to make the best of this.

Now for the big reveal: Daniel lives! Not in a flashback or a hallucination or as a walker, but as a proper living being. I lamented what seemed to be his death in the mid-season finale of season 2. But one is never truly dead on Fear the Walking Dead until we see the corpse. So though I don’t know how or why he escaped the burning compound last season, I’m just glad that he’s back. And it looks like the next episode will enlighten us on his strange circumstances.

Hopefully, he’s on Strand’s side as the latter really needs an ally in his current predicament. He can’t just talk his way out of this one.