This spin-off companion series of The Walking Dead has kept viewers clawing and biting for nearly 6 months, but when the pilot episode premiered on August 23 to nearly 10 million viewers, fans were greeted by the blood and guts they’re used to. But it wouldn’t be a Robert Kirkman show without a slight twist: It takes place in the large and heavily populated city of Los Angeles that had yet to take notice of the upcoming apocalypse.

With a dynamic set of characters, themes that mimic those of The Walking Dead and it’s tasteful development, Fear The Walking Dead is well worth sinking your teeth into.

Bringing light to the beginning of the apocalypse, Fear is set during the four weeks The Walking Dead main character Rick Grimes was in a coma.  This perspective provides the viewers with a refreshing and somewhat terrifying change of scenery.

As the show follows a blended and dysfunctional family that becomes forcefully drawn together as the dead arise on Los Angeles’ sunny shores, Fear lives up to its name and expectations. It doesn’t attempt to outshine its counterpart using its developing terror or try to make the viewers love the characters instantly. They’re flawed, not unlike everyone else and it’s one of the things that is completely right about this show.

Everything seems agonizingly normal at first. However, as a couple of bloody events unfold (with a few snuck-in puns), viewers are able to see the conflicting values and ideas these characters have. Plot and character development allows ample room for prediction in the future. Similar to The Walking Dead you think you know what’s going to happen, but there’s always something more. Something that always means more blood.

Speaking of the The Walking Dead and all the glory of its explosive walkers, fast-pace, and ever-changing plots, Fear takes a somewhat different approach. The show allows things to develop at a steadier pace and build suspense while indulging the viewer with bloody surprises.

There is only one episode left in the first season and Fear has raised some serious questions and ideas that parallel those of The Walking Dead: Who’s the bigger threat, the dead or the living? Where can we go to get away from the “dead?” Where can we get enough supplies? How can we protect what we perceive as normal life, and what is normal, now? Who can we trust?

Fear is becoming it’s own, independent show and is even guaranteed a 15 episode second season. With its sneaking cleverness, aggravating suspense, dynamic and developing characters, and just the right amount of progression, Fear The Walking Dead has earned itself 4/5 stars.

Fear The Walking Dead’s finale episode The Good Man  is set to premiere on October 3 at 8 p.m. on AMC.