‘Fear The Walking Dead’ EP Explains Why [SPOILER] Died Instead Of Troy

Jake’s arm was bit by a zombie after Nick stopped him from killing Troy in Season 3, episode 12 of AMC’s “Fear the Walking Dead.” Despite Nick and Troy’s best efforts to save Jake, the older Otto brother succumbed to his injury, leading Troy to put him down. According to showrunner Dave Erickson, the final confrontation between the siblings was always part of the show’s Season 3 plan. He, however, admitted that they had not decided who between Jake and Troy should be killed off until later into the season.

“That was always going to happen,” Erickson told ComicBook.com of the final fight between Jake (Sam Underwood) and Troy (Daniel Sharman) last episode. “The real question, and we didn’t refine this until we got later into the season, was ‘Who was gonna go?’ And I think for our purposes, Troy has become such a pivotal character that if he were to go, it needed to be at the hands of somebody ... someone else. And I think we got to a place where Troy’s connection to Nick (Frank Dillane) and to Madison (Kim Dickens) was such that to lose him, it would have been premature.”

Fortunately for Erickson, Underwood had already anticipated his character’s death before he got the news that his journey on the show was going to end. “When I had the conversation with Sam, he was incredibly gracious, cause God knows I hate having these conversations,” Erickson shared. “He said, ‘I’ll look at it, of course. I just assumed that was gonna happen.’”

After Jake’s arm was bit by one of the undead, Nick chopped the former’s arm off at the elbow to prevent him from turning. But Underwood knew that Jake was already a goner the moment he was bit by the infected. “No one survives being bit,” Underwood told AMC in a recent interview. “I didn’t think Jake would make it out and he goes pretty quickly.”

Apparently, Jake didn’t die the way Underwood would like him to be killed off. “Because Jake has been a little bit sensible, it would be good to go out with a couple of machetes and straight into a pack of infected,” the British actor told BT TV when asked how he’d like to see his character bow out. “We need to show off that Jake is really a Rambo bad-ass. After the first 100 infected are taken down, maybe they can have a little chomp on him, but we’ll at least get the first 100 down and out of the way before they manage to get to him. Just a 100.”

An all-new episode of “Fear the Walking Dead” airs on Sunday, Oct. 1 at 9 p.m. EDT on AMC.