“Fear the Walking Dead” showrunners explain premiere return of Troy Otto

Warning: This article contains spoilers for Fear the Walking Dead season 8, episode 7, "Anton."

Victor Strand is back! Only now he's not Victor Strand. At least he says he's not Victor Strand. But that's not fooling anybody. And it's certainly not fooling his old friend Madison (Kim Dickens) on the midseason premiere of Fear the Walking Dead season 8.

The duo were reunited at the Emissary Suites hotel, where Strand (Colman Domingo) was residing with a group of European tourists who got caught stateside during the zombie outbreak. Only now Victor was claiming his name was Anton, and Anton now had a partner named Frank and a son named Klaus. Oh, and he was speaking German, and actually speaking it really well!

Victor/Anton kept lying about his identity and was ready to sacrifice his old friend to a band of baddies to protect his past… until a change of heart led him to help Madison attempt to escape their clutches. It didn't work. They were captured and then came face-to-dented-face with the group's leader — a nemesis from their past.

Lauren "Lo" Smith/AMC Daniel Sharman and Colman Domingo on 'Fear the Walking Dead'

Madison thought she had killed Troy Otto with a hammer way back in season 3, but not unlike Madison herself, Troy — played by Daniel Sharman — is now back from the dead, and was ready to start busting heads himself unless she revealed the location of PADRE. (He also claimed to have killed Madison's daughter, Alicia, bringing her severed arm as gnarly proof.)

While Madison and Victor were able to eventually escape thanks to the armed arrival of Daniel Salazar (Rubén Blades) and company, it appears the conflict has only begun. We spoke to Fear the Walking Dead showrunners Andrew Chambliss and Ian Goldberg to get the scoop on Strand's master plan, how they brought Troy back from the dead, whether Troy actually killed Alicia, and Madison's next move.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: How did you all come up with this very jarring turn for Strand, who has gone German apparently?

ANDREW CHAMBLISS: It really originated with the desire to create a world for Strand that felt as alien to anything that he's been in before. And that's how we struck upon this idea of a settlement made up of international tourists who got stranded in the U.S. during the apocalypse. And it really was a lot of fun because it allowed us to kind of open things up and create this new persona for Strand.

And Colman had a lot of fun jumping in and learning German. We called him as soon as we were thinking about the idea, and then the minute we had anything resembling a draft of the script, we got it to him and he started working with a coach so he could learn the German so he wouldn't even have to think about it and he could just put all his energy into acting when we were shooting it. But it really was about building to this moment where we first see Strand. We just really wanted the audience to say like, "Wait, what is going on? Where are we? Who's this guy?" It was really all about feeling that dislocation.

Lauren "Lo" Smith/AMC Colman Domingo and Isha Blaaker on 'Fear the Walking Dead'

How genuine is he in terms of buying into this philosophy of helping people, or is it just the latest survival strategy, or is it a little bit of both?

IAN GOLDBERG: Well, I think knowing Strand as we do, it's a fair question because a constant struggle for Strand is: What's motivating him at any time? Is he doing it for other people? Is he doing it for himself? But I think in this case, what interested us the most is that while he is lying about who he is, his emotions and his heart are true. He really does love Frank and Klaus. They really have become a family to him, and he really is doing good within this community.

He's done a complete 180 from the Strand of season 7 in the tower. So in his mind, he really is honoring what he promised Alicia he would do, which was to be a better man. But the complicated part is that the reason he's doing that is because he wants to leave Victor Strand in the past, because he believes that no one would be up for redeeming Victor Strand knowing what he's done. And that gets complicated when Madison comes into the picture because she knows him, she knows his past, he knows hers, and he's trying to avoid facing that at all costs.

And where he comes to by the end of the episode, and Madison does too, is they both have to face their pasts in order to move ahead. And they do. He finally tells the truth to Frank and Klaus about who he is, and now he's reunited with his family in Madison, and he's let his new family of Frank and Klaus and his community into a whole other side to him, and they accept him.

Lauren "Lo" Smith/AMC Daniel Sharman on 'Fear the Walking Dead'

Where did the idea come from to resurrect Troy, because this is an actor in Daniel Sharman as well as a character you guys had never even worked with?

CHAMBLISS: It was something that Ian and I threw out half-seriously when we were trying to think of ways that we could have an antagonist who would really put the question front and center to Madison, to Strand, to Daniel: Have you guys really changed? Have you really escaped your past? Can you really move forward? And it felt like having someone return from their past seemed like the way to do it.

And the more we talked about it, the more excited we got about that person being Troy Otto. And you're right, we'd never written for the character. We had never worked with Daniel Sharman. So we scheduled a phone call with him and we introduced ourselves and pitched him what we were thinking and why we wanted to bring the character back, and what it is that he would get to explore with Troy Otto. And we had a really great conversation, and Daniel said he was a character that he loved to create and always wished he could explore more, so he was excited to come back and we were able to make it happen.

GOLDBERG: We were just huge fans of his and the character, even though we had not worked with him before. And then what was really exciting is when we knew that he was in and Daniel was interested in coming back, we talked about it with Colman and Ruben and Danay [Garcia] and all the people that had been on the show when he was in it previously — and their excitement was huge as well.

Everybody was excited to revisit this chapter of the show and to expand the Madison–Troy story, especially Kim and Daniel. They loved the dynamic and the dance that those characters did together in the past. And so they were really excited to get in there and explore this next chapter for Madison and Troy.

Lauren "Lo" Smith/AMC Kim Dickens on 'Fear the Walking Dead'

How much should we believe Troy when he says he killed Alicia?

GOLDBERG: Well, it's complicated because he does have her arm. That's definitely Alicia's arm. At the same time, Troy has not always proven himself to be the most trustworthy character, so we'll have to see in these final few episodes what the truth is of what happened. But we will be exploring that further, and we will be answering exactly how he got that arm.

Tory asks Madison at the end what she is fighting for: So what is she fighting for?

CHAMBLISS: I think kind of up until that moment, Madison thought she was fighting for her own redemption to try to make up for all the things she did at PADRE and separating children from their parents. But I think Troy puts a finer point on it and gets at the real issue that Madison's going to be struggling with as we go forward, is that she really doesn't have much left.

Both her children are gone. And if we think back to the one trait that defined Madison, it was that she would do anything to protect her children. It's why everything went so south at Broke Jaw Ranch. It's why she ultimately ended up trying to kill Troy at the end of season 3. And now she's left in this place where Troy's pointed out that she's kind of rudderless, and Madison is going to have to do some real soul searching, perhaps some grieving, to really find out what it is that's motivating her and what's driving her towards the end of the series.

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