Major spoilers below for the midseason premiere of AMC's Fear the Walking Dead.
When Fear the Walking Dead brought Season 3 back to fans for the midseason premiere, things seemed to be slightly in order for about five minutes, with Jeremiah's murder (thought by most to be a suicide) leveling out Walker's vengefulness against the ranchers. But even though Jake Otto is willing to work towards a peaceful goal, his brother Troy will likely never be down to share his world with anyone like the Nation. To the point where he got himself exiled from his own home, not to mention almost killed by Madison. CinemaBlend recently spoke with showrunner Dave Erickson, who said this when I asked if Troy would be back.
Madison really does, at the end of [Episode] 9, she really goes against her nature. I think she's torn up by the fact that her son has committed this murder. And she has a weight and a guilt because he did it for her, to prevent her from having to. And in theory, she didn't really want that for him. She didn't want him to become her. So I think in the act of not putting Troy down, in scapegoating him and sending him out into the wilderness, she's taking a different tact. She's going in a direction that we haven't seen her go in before. There's a strange intimacy going on between her and Troy, and I think it's a little more difficult because there's this slightly twisted incestuous quality in their mother-son surrogacy, but I think she makes the choice that isn't the true leader she's become and the brutal leader she's become; it's not evident in that decision. And that may come back to bite her on the ass. So, yes, there will be more Troy.
This season has really shown Madison to be the leader of her own story in Fear the Walking Dead's post-Travis world, and even Walker understands this. Hell, even Jake understands it, as he basically handed over the Ranch's weapons at the slightest of provocations. Madison is always more interested in keeping Nick and Alicia safe than anything else, regardless of what it takes or what it means for the future. (Here's how those relationships will be changing.) But even after all the bullshit that Troy put everyone through in the short amount of time that he's been on this show -- his antics in the midseason premiere certainly doing him no favors outside the purview of the militia -- Madison still chose to spare Troy's life by exiling him into the wild on his own. Only now, Troy knows who really killed Jeremiah.
So the next time viewers see Troy, he'll almost definitely be doing a lot more damage than just biting Madison on the ass. (Incestuous vibe not intended.) Troy spent a decent amount of time in "Minotaur" thinking that he and Nick were on the same page. They shared feelings about their respective dead fathers, and Troy thought that Nick sticking around for his self-made barricade meant that they'd formed a bond. Which was correct, to a certain extent, since Nick was intent on keeping Troy from getting himself killed, while also keeping him from bringing about the Ranch's full-on destruction. But the way that Nick diffused the situation was by somewhat arrogantly confessing to Jeremiah's murder. There should have been a record-scratch sound effect when that happened.
In that moment, Troy was shocked into surrendering, rather than killing Nick in revenge, which is really the only reason he got to live on to get booted from the Ranch. But one has to assume that he started plotting his revenge as soon as Jake alerted him about being sent away. After all, he immediately requested Madison be the one to see him out, possibly to test her mettle in the situation, which he also did by attacking Klah. And according to Dave Erickson, Troy likely wouldn't be around anymore had Klah actually been killed.
If [Klah] were dead, if [Troy] had killed him, I think Madison would have put him down. I think she stops him short of murdering him, and that's part of the reason why she doesn't end his life right there and then.
Madison stepping in, which guaranteed Troy's survival, likely won't gain her any favor in the future, since he still seemed intent on injuring her just after he made it known that he knew what she and Nick did to Jeremiah. And since they do have a pretty specific relationship, Troy probably knows that the better revenge against Madison will be to go after Nick and Alicia upon his future return, rather than trying to take her out. We even got a peek at what that revenge might look like when Episode 10, "The Diviner," started off with Daniel Sharman's return via Nick's heat-soaked delusion.
Other members of the militia are grateful to Nick for keeping Troy alive during that messy situation, to the point where Nick is having to play the part of the double-agent between the militia and the Nation. And you know that is just going to make things all the more complicated for everyone whenever Troy does show his face again.
With more awkward tension and action yet to come, Fear the Walking Dead airs Sunday nights on AMC at 8:00 p.m. ET. Stay tuned for more intriguing info from my talk with Dave Erickson, and head to our fall TV premiere schedule to see what else is hitting the small screen later this year.
