Nightmare Fuel: The crew of the Nathan James come across a seemingly derelict French ship and decide to search it. When they board, they find everybody on board dead, their corpses charred beyond recognition, having died the moment the nukes hit.
Alternative Character Interpretation: One offered by the show itself for Sean Ramsey. Is he a true believer in the Immune-supremacist views he espouses or is it just his method of coping with surviving the plague while almost all his friends and and family died? While Sean claims it's not an act, his own brother Ned doesn't seem to believe it and calls him out for running away from his home and grief.
Base-Breaking Character: Jacob Barnes. He is initially introduced as a negative stereotype of the Intrepid Reporter, and hatred for him increased after broadcasting his interview with Curtis, revealing Michener's past sins to the world, and driving him to suicide. However, it's later revealed that Michener was actually assassinated, and Barnes puts himself at risk to help Kara and later gives a public What the Hell, Hero? to President Oliver that snaps him out of his Heroic BSoD and costs Barnes his own life. In retrospect, it seems that his primary concern was getting the truth, no matter how unpleasant it may be, to the American people, though his earliest portrayal still stuck with many viewers, who consider his murder a case of Take That, Scrappy!, rather than Redemption Equals Death.
Diagnosed by the Audience: It's been hinted that Dr. Vellek may suffer from bipolar disorder. It's also hinted that he may have passed on this disease to his daughter Lucia.
Tex, with his cheerful attitude and casual disregard for protocol, turned out to be such a dynamic character that he immediately became more prominent than some main characters before being promoted to the main cast in Season 2. Needless to say, there was much outcry over his death at the end of Season 3.
Maya may be a Sacrificial Lamb, but she makes a bigger impact in her few episodes than some characters make across multiple seasons.
Pint-Sized Powerhouse Bivas is a standout among the season 2 additions to the crew, and many fans mourn her short run.
Femme Fatale Lucia Vellek might be the best-liked villain from the later seasons.
Fanon Discontinuity: Some fans would like to think that the show ended after season 2. This is due to how the Red Flu outbreak which kicks off the show is largely resolved by that point and characters start dying too often for many fans' tastes afterward, starting with the Season 3 premier confirming that Rachel's injuries were fatal when the Season 2 finale ended on an Uncertain Doom note for her.
The plot point about the Nathan James not knowing about the Red Flu because it was under radio silence is a lot more difficult to watch when real life navy ships and submarines came out of radio silence to find the world in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Iron Woobie: Chandler. Behind the steely gazes, he's really, really hurting.
Les Yay: "Cry Havoc" featured some scenes hinting at a possible attraction between Val and Granderson.
Life Imitates Art: In the first season, a virus (the Red Flu) ravages Italy and an Italian cruise ship. In 2020, a virus (COVID-19) also did the same to Italy, with cruise ships particularly being hard hit.
Mrs. Granderson crossed hers long before Nathan James arrived in Baltimore, although she justifies it by claiming it was something she had to do because the majority of humanity crossed the line first (according to her, anyway).
Dr. Hamada firmly crosses it when he decides to forcibly harvest stem cells from Kara's baby.
Niels Sorensen finally crosses it when he gives Sean Ramsey the classified locations of the labs where the cure is being manufactured.
He manages to take several steps further by casually infecting survivors just to see who'll become infected and then goes even further by coming up with a plan to spread the virus through infected teddy bears that were intended to be given to young children.
If the Ramseys didn't cross it by destroying the cure labs, they were truly over the line when they destroyed the New Orleans refugee fleet.
The journalist, Jacob, who has been hounding President Michener, finally completely crosses the line by using false pretenses to gain access to the Immune agent who shot Dr. Scott, and then attacking Michener over his lapse in judgement in bringing his son to the Florida quarantine zone.
Allison Shaw, who was aware of Michener's occasional lapses into self-doubt and anxiety over his survival and suicide attempt and very likely romantically involved with him, was actually the spearhead of a conspiracy against him with the ultimate goal of dismantling the vestiges of the United States and converting into regional fiefdoms. She started by ordering his murder and then oversaw the destruction of his legacy. And then, to top it off, just like Mrs. Granderson, justifies all her actions with pro-fascist rhetoric about the need for a strong leader who will put the boot to the population.
The regional leaders arguing over the remains of the United States like vultures and the revelation that they've been intentionally starving the people in order to gain a docile workforce who'll do anything for the promise of a meal - all so they can plunder the still-vast resources of the United States for themselves alone.
Dr. Vellek plans to cure the plant version of the plague. He just hasn't included the little detail that he will slip a mickey into the cure that renders humans pliable and suggestible to any orders from a non-dosed human, upon which he will set himself up as world dictator.
Characters have a tendency to make long Info Dump speeches about their backstories for the most tangential of reasons, leading some viewers and reviewers to go 'Huh?' and roll their eyes rather than sympathize with the tragedy the characters are facing.
The second season finale's climactic scene where Nathan James' crew goes around touching the people of St. Louis to spread the contagious cure is shot in dramatic slow motion with swelling uplifting music to set the mood. It's a little bit much but then it's taken over the top when Chandler sees two boys saluting him before he kneels down and cups their cheeks with a sage look on his face.
Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Danny and Kara didn't gain many fans due to their cliched Forbidden Romance in early episodes threatening to become a Romantic Plot Tumor. But then the writers pulled the focus away from their romantic plot and and focused on them doing their jobs, allowing the characters to develop as individuals instead and leading to them being better received by the audience. The relationship is ongoing, but is reduced down to the occasional mention that doesn't detract from the main plot.
Season 3 takes Kara off the ship and into the White House, while Danny stays on the ship. Their interactions are reduced to little more than a handful of video or phone calls, and they only reunite briefly very late in the season.
Rooting for the Empire: Partially. A lot of people agreed with Granderson's measures, namely euthanizing those infected by the plague (keep in mind its 100% kill rate) with a painless and instant cocktail, burning the bodies (which is standard for dealing with diseased corpses) and overall attempting to rebuild society following The End of the World as We Know It. That being said, her main issue, besides being power hungry and tyrannical, is that she acted as a Social Darwinist; rather than taking in anyone not sick, she selected and chose based on what she deemed useful while turning away those that couldn't match her criteria (itself an impractical measure given that there would have been a real need for manpower). And then there was her attempt to keep the cure for herself and her select few rather than shutdown Olympia and distribute it the moment she learned of its existence.
Kara and Danny fell into this the very first moment they appeared on screen, thanks to their tired, cliched Romantic Plot Tumor that took time away from the main story, but not enough time to give them any more character development than "star-crossed lovers". Danny's behavior at the end of the third episode, disobeying orders and endangering the mission to protect Kara's safety (which was not in jeopardy) and then demanding that she stay away from him, incited groans from viewers who are now completely uninvested in their story.
Some reviewers are saying that the romance and the characters were Rescued from the Scrappy Heap with the reveal that Kara is pregnant, saying that the development, if handled correctly, adds an element of emotional heft to future arcs for Danny and Kara that the original, hackneyed, Forbidden Romance didn't have.
This has pretty much dispelled by the second season, as both characters have proven to be functional crew members of the Nathan James while (outside of Danny's spiel in episode three) exhibiting none of the baggage that comes with forbidden romances.
Chandler, of all people, is starting to get his own Scrappydom after his condemnation of Rachel's murder of Niels. The reasons are myriad: besides his looking sanctimonious (not to mention like a bit of an idiotnote His claim of dumping Rachel with civilian authorities is particularly grating, considering what they found in Baltimore) about it, fans are displeased over the fact that he had already given Michener a free pass for his transgressions (even vowing to keep them secret) and was willing to give Flea (one of the redneck bounty hunters they captured from the prior episode) a pass as well, yet is treating Rachel as a full criminal in spite of their history together and all she has done. His reasons for keeping Niels alive (a la using him against the Ramsays' propaganda campaign) are also considered weak at best.
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The latter half of Season 3 shows that the regional leaders have secretly split the United States into their own private sovereign territories. This seemed to be setting up a modern day, multisided civil war story arc for Season 4 that would pit the multiple regions and leaders against each other and the legitimate President and Chandler. Instead, the arc is quickly and neatly wrapped up in last two episodes of Season 3.
The reason is the show hadn't been renewed beyond Season 3 until long after the season was complete. Instead of risking the show being Left Hanging they wrapped it up for closure.
Seasonal Rot: Season 4 is considered to be weaker than the first three, with a plot that skewed more towards science fiction rather than a grounded take on the aftermath of a fictional calamity. Season 5 was better received by being a pure geopolitical thriller.
Special Effect Failure: The fact that the Russian rebel's choppers are CGI is very obvious, what's worse is that they are American military choppers.
To be fair, it's later stated that they were taken from NATO bases abandoned due to the virus. Even though that doesn't make sense from the original dialogue as the special ops team recognise them as "Russian" when they clearly aren't.
Squick: One episode features a drug dealer turned town leader akin to Titus Andover. Not quite as ax crazy, but he's just as fond of rather young teenagers. He gets poetic justice in the form of being stabbed by the father of one of his victims with his own knife, which he had arrogantly tossed to the ground, believing that Chandler would not execute him.
The Season 1 finale revealing Granderson as a villain with an army of militarized police aired around the same time that the riots in Ferguson and the criticism of the Police's militarization came to a head. Season 2 makes this worse with Granderson's army of Corrupt Cops shaping up to be the season's main enemies just as more and more instances of unchecked police authority are being reported in the media.
The growth of a quasi-fascist cult based on the notion of the naturally immune being "chosen" is clearly based on real-world right-wing movements that hold up their members as some sort of "chosen" group, and season 2 episode 8 adds vaccine paranoia to the list, with them broadcasting propaganda claiming that Nathan James is distributing a false cure.
Season 3 clearly mirrors the real-world ongoing tensions within Asia as the Chinese leader, Peng, is jockeying for ultimate control over Asia, using a False Flag Operation attack on American forces in Vietnam in order to distract the US. Also, the domestic tensions in the United States between a program of measured economic intervention by Michener to help ease the country back on its feet, and the more pro-free-enterprise regional leaders under him (which could trade short-term political gain for longer-term economic instability), mirror to some extent the difficulties real-world countries have had after extensive and wrenching disasters.
Season 3 also focuses on political intrigue within the United States, with a cabal of regional leaders working (in cahoots with China, no less) to undermine the well-meaning federal government in order to give more authority to local governments. However, it's soon revealed that all the regional leaders are corrupt and only want to create their own personal fiefdoms to control with absolute power with no concern to the welfare of the people. They even begin walling off their territories to prevent the free movement of people.
The Woobie: Poor Jeffrey Michener. First he has to watch tens of thousands of people die in the safe zone he compromised by bringing in his infected son, then having to smother his daughters once they came down with the Red Flu. He gets used by a cult who only want to use him to seize power and who kill even more of the people he had managed to save in the New Orleans refugee fleet. Then, after he gets thrust into the presidency and is just barely managing to hold the United States together, he gets murdered by The Conspiracy after being humiliated in front of the entire country when his secret is revealed.
