AMC's 'Fear the Walking Dead' returns with characters in 'survival mode'

In life, we are constantly reminded that family is what matters. Turns out in the apocalypse, that's true as well.

As Season 3 of “Fear the Walking Dead” gets going Sunday June 4, on AMC, the characters come together post-apocalypse at what used to be the U.S./Mexico border, trying to rebuild not only society but their families. Madison and Travis (Kim Dickens, Cliff Curtis) are back together, but daughter Alicia (Alycia Debnam-Carey) is not the same person she was, as a result of her murder of Andres in Season 2.

Nick (Frank Dillane), meanwhile, is feeling rather mortal after he and Luciana (Danay Garcia) were nearly killed in an ambush by an American militia group, while Strand (Colman Domingo) has designs on harnessing the new world's currency, and Ofelia (Mercedes Mason) struggles to survive in captivity.

Though everyone is together at the border, each feels isolated, and the individual struggles will be front and center this season, according to Debnam-Carey. That's especially true of Alicia, a young woman hardened by the horrific act she found herself committing last season.

“It makes her much less of a child,” the Australian actress explains. “She sort of loses a semblance of innocence in that moment, and then she becomes so much more of an equal throughout the course of Season 3 because she's on the same playing field as everyone else.”

“I'd say she definitely has to re-evaluate what her priorities are in the rest of the season,” she continues. “And we find ourselves at a sanctuary, and she is one of the few people who's actually seeing what the world becomes on the outside, and one of the few people that's actually really had to do some horrific things. And so she finds it hard to relate to a lot of people within the inside. She finds it hard to come to terms with her new purpose, I guess, and her new ideal and what she is supposed to be doing now.”

Travis, meanwhile, is a man on a mission. The loss of one son has transformed the normally docile family man into a killer and someone ready to take on the apocalypse, according to actor Curtis.

“It's a new Travis,” the native New Zealander says. “It's not a Travis we've seen before - very strong, very calm, sort of like unrecognizably calm under duress in some ways. His morality is now being distorted from the core morality he used to hold ... He's into survival mode.

“So he has a singular mission right now,” he continues, “and that is he's lost one son and he's not going to lose another. He's going to go and find Nick, and he's going to reunite Nick with Madison and Alicia and that's all he cares about right now. And if it takes looking death in the eye, then he's willing to sacrifice everything to reunite that family.”