TV Bits: 'Game Of Thrones,' 'The Walking Dead,' 'Fear The Walking Dead,' 'American Gods'

In today's edition of TV Bits:

The first season of Fear the Walking Dead concluded with the cast conspiring to get on a boat and escape the zombie apocalypse by heading out into the Pacific Ocean. And as all of the marketing for the second season so far has shown us, they manage to get on the boat, which is a large luxury yacht that's big enough to act as the central location for an entire cast of characters on a TV series. Anyway, AMC has released a cool featurette about the making of Fear the Walking Dead season 2 and the focus is entirely on this boat and the challenges that come with filming on water. The yacht itself was constructed for the show and the ocean is actually the massive water tank at Baja Studios in Mexico, which was constructed for the filming of Titanic. Like the show or not, this is a fascinating glimpse at a very complex shoot.

Meanwhile, in vanilla The Walking Dead news, a teaser trailer for the season finale arrived online and was quickly pulled. It's not clear what went wrong here, but the details should prove very interesting to fans as it offered the first glimpse of Jeffrey Dean Morgan as Negan, the show's next Big Bad. The Wrap managed to snag the two screenshots above, which show off Morgan in Negan's trademark black leather jacket and his weapon of choice, a baseball bat wrapped in barbed wire named "Lucille."

As Starz's upcoming television adaptation of Neil Gaiman's American Gods moves full steam ahead, new cast members are being added left and right. While Ricky Whittle, Ian McShane, and Emily Browning will headline the series, Sean Harris, Yetide Badaki, and Bruce Langley have joined the cast. Harris will play Mad Sweeney, a "down on his luck leprechaun." Badaki will play Bilquis, "an ancient goddess of love who craves the worship she inspired in eras long gone." Langley will play Technical Boy, a "New God who is purveyor of all things technology."

One of the great secret weapons in Game of Thrones' arsenal has always been its female cast members. From the cruel Cersei Lannister and the wily Margaery Tyrell to the noble Daenerys Targaryen and the increasingly unstable Arya Stark, the women of Westeros and Essos have have supplied HBO's flagship series with its heart and soul. In a genre where female characters are so often reduced to damsels in distress or one-note side characters, Game of Thrones feels awfully unique. Now, Entertainment Weekly is celebrating the upcoming sixth season with a cover story focused on the show...and six covers dedicated to women in the cast. (Find them here.)

Of course, the show has also come under fire for putting its female characters through living hell for sake of putting them through living hell, an issue that the show's creators have promised to address in the new season. That won't be enough to help poor Sansa Stark forget about her marriage to Ramsay Bolton, but it's a start. But controversies aside, visit their site to see a gallery of images from the that EW issue and you'll recognize just how much the quality of these characters outweighs every thinkpiece. Arya, Brienne, Cersei, Daenerys, Margaery, and Sansa aren't just great female characters – they're some of the best characters on TV right now. And these photos are wonderful.