Kim Dickens & Colman Domingo on "Fear The Walking Dead" Themes and Character Journeys (Interview)

With "Fear The Walking Dead" on mid-season hiatus, the cast and crew descended on San Diego Comic Con to discuss how the series has progressed in it's journey and evolved over the seasons.

"Thematically, one of the things season three is about is resources and appropriation of resources and land, and specifically re-appropriation. That's something about the apocalypse, it's wiped away existing borders, many of which were put in place through violence and another theme of this season which is the building and rebuilding of civilization," says the show's producer.

"For Madison, she's definitely become more of a merciless character," says Kim Dickens. "In the beginning, she's probably a merciless high school counselor. She was really beholden to her morality and her compassion and her heart. By season three, I think she realises the currency is more brutality when required. Her main goal throughout has been to survive and to protect her family and now, it's at a higher cost. I think Madison has been quick to realise that."

The characters have struggled to find a place to call home since the apocalypse began, as each place they've stopped has had something go wrong, thus forcing them to move on to somewhere else, something Colman Domingo spoke on. "I think that's always the hope. I think that's exactly the nature of all of these characters, that you're constantly going to this new place and you're like, 'We're gonna rebuild and build here,' and then as you see, it will fall apart. Great civilisations always come tumbling down in some way. I think that's the nature of humanity and that's what we're exploring in the show is we're always hopeful and seeking this place that we can build on. Madison said it so clearly in this season, 'We can thrive here. We can make something of this.' Just like we tried to do in the hotel, we see how well that went, we definitely tried to do that on the boat, we see how well that went. We're constantly going to be searching cause I think that's just the nature of who we are as humans."

Colman Domingo's Victor Strand has experienced a compelling journey with highs and lows surrounding love, loss, and the will to survive. "When I first was engaging with Victor Strand in season one, I loved the fact that he was this mysterious man of means, a self-made man, the things that they would tell me about him. Then season two was all about his deconstruction and I feel like it was also a deconstruction of Western civilisation in many ways, what he represented and the things he was all about. He had to take stock and maybe as the world has taken stock in who they are and getting back to basics. I think that season three has been a journey for him to go off on his own to figure that out and hopefully merge the two in some way, to take the skills that he knew, that he could build and rebuild on. He just didn't know how. It's funny, there were times every so often, I was confused with what I was doing and I would call Dave up [on] how I'm playing this character, someone who I thought was this. But I thought, 'Oh that's a great journey for this man, to become a bit more human, and in touch with his feelings in many ways. Then to see how he can rebuild and use a little bit more of that con man, to survive, because he is a survivalist in many ways. He just has to figure it out and that's been an exciting journey."

Fear The Walking Dead returns on Sunday, September 10, at 10PM on AMC.