‘Fear The Walking Dead’: Rubén Blades on Daniel Salazar’s Return — And Final Moments On The Show

You just can’t keep Daniel Salazar (Rubén Blades) down. Though he was missing in the first two episodes of this season of Fear the Walking Dead, and the last time we saw him, seven years earlier, he was still grappling with some serious mental deterioration, when we reunite with Salazar in this week’s episode, “Odessa”, he’s surprisingly not just in charge of himself — he’s running an army.

Spoilers for Fear the Walking Dead Season 8, Episode 3 past this point.

We catch up with Daniel, not with a big reunion, but a small one: he rescues Madison (Kim Dickens), and basically says “oh hi, how are you,” after nearly a decade of thinking she’s dead.

“Salazar, he’s not a back-slapper,” Blades told Decider on the understated meeting.

Salazar, it turns out, has gotten control of his mind, and helped organize the parents in the area who are desperately searching for their children. Those children have been stolen and raised by an organization known as PADRE, and are being formed into an army of their own… Meaning Salazar and his parent army are about to go head to head with a fighting force of their own kids.

To find out more about where we join back up with Salazar, as well as some teases for the final episode of the series, read on.

Decider: What was your reaction when you found out that season eight was going to be the last season of the show?

Rubén Blades: First of all, I was not surprised in the sense that I know things begin and end. It’s eight seasons. Some people feel like they express that this as a cancellation, and I thought “Cancellation? We had eight seasons.” I don’t think there’s going to be shows in the future that are going to last eight seasons, frankly, the way everything is and now streaming. So I wasn’t exactly surprised. I just think that there will be life after for all The Walking Dead universe through spinoffs and special shows. So I don’t feel that this is the end of Salazar. I just think that it’s the end of this story, of this part of the story with these characters, and you got to move on. So I didn’t feel particularly hurt or anything.

How do you feel about how things turned out for Daniel at the end? Were you satisfied?

Look, Daniel Salazar is such a complex character that I’m never going to be satisfied with having to share the time for lines and the camera time and story time with other characters. One of the big problems that you have in a series is that it’s an ensemble. When it is an ensemble, is that everybody else deserves a space and a break. So you couldn’t really explore all the complexities of Salazar, and that is always something that I will keep in my mind: what if? What would’ve happened?

But in all, I think that through the eight seasons Salazar showed to be a man of great capacity, intelligence, and awareness of what was going on and resourceful, always till the end. I won’t spoil it, but I will tell you this, in the last episode, the last episode, you will be again surprised by something that Salazar does, and it’s an interesting moment because it’ll surprise… Everybody will be like, “Whoa, I was not expecting this one.” When you think that you have him all pegged up, then all of a sudden something happens where you go like, “Whoa, wow, I didn’t realize this.” And it just [goes] to show that, and I asked for that moment because it just has to show how much more of Salazar you don’t know, that you could have known. But I think a lot of people know Salazar is, like I said, very resourceful. He’s a guy who never ends, surprisingly. Ever. Never.

Well, to that end, and to jump into spoilers for the third episode, after spending several seasons watching him dealing with some serious mental, brain, physical issues, he seems surprisingly chill seven years later. Have these past few years helped heal his trauma? What was your take on the continuity there?

I think basically what happened with him is one of the things that was affecting him was his sense of failure. He couldn’t save Griselda. He couldn’t save Ophelia. He felt he had failed, really. And in a situation like the apocalypse, what are you going to live for if the things that you care for are gone? Especially [a] man like Salazar. Salazar is somebody who wouldn’t hesitate in committing suicide if necessary in that sense, just like a Roman general would cut his veins and then die in a pool of water just because he failed as a general or to avoid shame. But what saved Salazar was that he found these people, these parents. That’s the thing that sort of brought him back into, “I’m going to stay. I’m going to live. I got a reason to live.” And then made him focus again.

And also, he feels like he was taking a lot of Yerba Mate. He was doing things to sort of calm down his anxieties. But I think that the turning point was the fact that he found a reason to live, which he didn’t have until then. And that was creating a lot of problems. All the visions and all the problems that he was having were related directly to a failure and his failure to save [Ophelia], I think. That’s why he was having visions of her and visions of his wife and whatnot. And PTSD, he was a guy who went through, like I said, many, many, many pressures. So he found a reason to live with, and that saved his life because it made him focus on them and on being of service again.

I think this ties into everything we’re talking about, but it’s such a surprising moment when he encounters Madison again after all these years, and he’s so matter of fact about it. Like, “Oh, there you are again.” What was it like during that moment?

Yeah, but again, the problem would be to not understand Salazar. Salazar, he’s not a back-slapper. He’s not the guy who [says], “Oh, how are you? Oh my God, I hadn’t seen you.” So he’s kind of like the guy who sees her and then… That. But one of the things that made Salazar successful in Intelligence is not to reveal what he’s thinking or feeling.

You see him, and he always plays [the] idiot. He plays the dumb guy. He doesn’t know, “Oh my God, no, please, no.” And then he takes three guys out with their own guns, so the fact that he sees them, another actor maybe would’ve overplayed it. “Oh my God.” But he sort of figured, if there’s somebody who’s going to make it, it was going to be this one. I’m sort of surprised about you, but I’m not going to let you know that with [Madison] or somebody else. But it’s like, “Yeah, oh, you’re alive. Why am I not that surprised? Of all of them you would be the one who would survive just like I did.” So that’s why he took it like that. But he was surprised. He was very surprised.

Yeah. This is definitely a side trip, but one of my absolute favorite moments in the show is you and Karen David singing together in “Today and Tomorrow”. It doesn’t seem like there’s going to be time for that again, but will we get another musical performance?

You mean are there going to be other musical performances?

Yeah.

Well, I don’t know if I should talk about that, but I don’t know if it’s… In all honesty, that was a special moment. Let’s put it that way.

To jump back to the episode, I thought it was an interesting thing to have him leading this parent army for a very righteous cause to get these children back, but at the same time, it’s a war. He has an army. There’s a child army. He’s lost so many children in his life. How does he wrestle with and how does he play with that conflict?

I think basically, again, there’s a reason for him to live, and there’s a reason for him to sort of feel that he can redeem himself in the sense of doing something positive. He couldn’t have his daughter, he lost his daughters. He was going to help these people to find their daughters and their sons basically. He moved his own trauma and made it work. Just like Sisyphus has been condemned to push that rock all the way up [just] to see the rock come down and have him come down, that’s a punishment from the gods. He makes that rock his reason, and the moment he does that, the punishment ends. Now it’s his decision to put the rock back up, and that way he finds peace, and I think that Salazar found peace by making the saving of the children of other people his own redemption for not having been able to save his own.

We don’t know if Daniel is going to survive until the end of the series, but there are lots of different avenues, flashbacks, other ways you can go. Is the Walking Dead universe something you would want to revisit at some point down the road?

I think, oh yes, very much so, because like I said, there are stories that are still pending. There are things that are still in need of expansion, so sure, absolutely. I think all of us would given that we have time, because again, everybody in the show has things to do. I got my music and I got other things to do as well, activism and stuff, so sometimes the time conflicts, but sure, I would do it in a heartbeat. Yeah.

Awesome. Ruben, thank you so much for taking the time to chat… Very excited to check out the rest of the season.

I want to tell you this. You’re going to love the last episode.

Ooh, I love it. I love those teases.

You’re going to love the last episode. I think you’re going to love a lot of the episodes. I think there’s a lot of stuff happening, mind you, but I think that the last episode has so many nice things that I think you are going to love it very much. But the series, all the episodes, there’s a lot of action. Boy, there’s a lot of action and fights and stuff. It’s really good.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Fear the Walking Dead airs Sundays at 9/8c on AMC and streams on AMC+.