AMC

Fear the Walking Dead has a character who is the embodiment of Rick Grimes’ famous description.

This article contains spoilers for Fear the Walking Dead.

It is an iconic line in the comics and was repeated to great effect in the show.

“We are the walking dead,” Rick Grimes declares, causing cries of excitement in readers and viewers alike.

The speech comes relatively early in the comics, when the group seek to challenge Rick’s leadership at the prison. But it was much later in the show, coming when the survivors are at their lowest ebb, just before they find (temporary) solace behind the walls of Alexandria.

It is true that the living are literally the walking dead in Robert Kirkman’s universe, but there is a character in AMC’s companion show who would class himself as that even before the zombie apocalypse.

It is no coincidence that the first character we met on Fear the Walking Dead was Nick – a junkie living in squalor and seeking nothing more than his next hit.

By the time season two comes around Nick appears to have found his calling, swapping the high of drugs for the elation of wandering through swathes of the undead covered in guts.

When he stands nose to nose with one such walker, it is as if he is looking in a mirror. After all, Nick knows what it is like to be a member of the walking dead, he knows what it is like to be seen as a monster, albeit one destroying himself more than others.

Nick embraces his place in this new world order far quicker than anyone else and he openly admits to liking it out there.

It is a dangerous mind-set, but it is also one that makes perfect sense given his backstory.

Nick is by far the most interesting character in Fear the Walking Dead and it will be fascinating to see how he develops.

He has all the attributes to be the ultimate survivor; one who has long since seen the depths of his despair and who has come out the other end; a man not afraid of his own demise having for so long invited it with each new hit.

Rick is right: everyone still alive in this world is among the walking dead. But few can say they were already there before the infection first took hold.

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