Is ‘Fear The Walking Dead’ About To Kill Off Madison?

Fear The Walking Dead might be heading into its mid-season break with the death of longtime lead Madison Clark.

This season has been split into two distinct periods — 'before' and 'now' — and Madison has been MIA from the latter, appearing only in flashbacks at the stadium, which has since fallen into ruin and now overrun by a horde of walkers.

Before his death, Nick got bloody vengeance on Ennis, and Alicia gets her own when she finishes off Ennis' brother, Vulture leader Mel, by blowing him up and impaling him with her weapon.

In the past, a recuperating Mel tries to enlist Naomi to the Vultures' side.

"The people who stay, die... and everything they were fighting for dies with them," he tells her.

Unnerved, Naomi tells Madison to consider Mel's warnings and think about leaving the diamond before Ennis makes good on his threat and forces the stadium to fall.

"Whatever comes at us, we'll handle it. Because going out there, things won't get any better," Madison tells her. "No. I built this place for my kids, so Nick and Alicia could have something close to a real life."

"You want to protect them," Naomi says, "you're going to have to disappoint them."

"I thought about us walking away," Madison admits. "After we came back with the seeds. I asked Alicia to prep a car, just in case. But I saw it on her face... like I was chipping away at everything we built here. I told myself I wouldn't use it."

Naomi, accepting but disappointed, tells her, "I think you should reconsider.

"Madison, I've been on the wrong side of where you are right now. And I really don't want to see that happen to you," says Naomi, who only just recently revealed the traumatic loss of her young daughter. "This place, I know you built it for your kids, but it's not worth risking their lives. Or yours."

Later, as Madison evicts Mel from the stadium, he warns they're "holding onto something that's gone" and they're "trying to be the type of people that are extinct."

"No one's gone 'til they're gone," Madison tells him, forcing him out by gunpoint.

Nick, who was wary of bringing a wounded Mel into their walls, talks with Madison as she prepares to defend their home.

"You remember when I said that I was afraid of who I was out there? I think I was really afraid of being away from you," he tells her.

"Because you show me the way. You always find me when I get lost. And I felt found here. I felt like... I was finally starting to get it. So having a guy kill himself because we're afraid of him, I don't think that's where you wanted us to wind up."

That night, the stadium comes under siege when Nick and Alicia venture out to bring Mel back at the request of Vulture mole Charlie.

Once they've returned, Ennis and the Vultures unleash a horde of more than 2,000 walkers into the stadium's parking lot, cutting the Clark kids off from rescue — lest the survivors open the gates and risk the walker flood penetrating their walls.

"Mom, I'm sorry. We had to come out there. We had to try and save him," Alicia says over walkie talkie. "We couldn't just hide. We didn't mean to do this to you. But it was the right thing to do."

Madison, Strand, and Luciana band together to go and rescue Nick and Alicia — likely to disastrous consequences.

At the end of 'The Wrong Side of Where You Are Now,' Naomi has led Althea and Morgan to the devastated remains of the stadium. Al rams the van through the gates, revealing the innards of the stadium to be sprawling with scorched walkers.

"I lost everything. I got nothing left to lose," Madison says in the preview for the mid-season finale, titled 'No One's Gone.'

Should fans brace themselves for the revelation Madison is dead?

She's yet to be talked about in the present — suggesting those closest to her already know what happened to her — and it would certainly explain both her absence from the 'now' timeline and the bloodlust exhibited by a hostile Alicia and Strand, the latter of whom owes Madison a blood debt after she rescued him in the wake of the Gonzalez Dam explosion.

Or could Madison have been trapped in the collapsed stadium, cut off from her pack, who would then presume her to be dead? That's what happened with Naomi, only for Alicia, Strand and Luciana to learn she was alive and seemingly aligned with their enemies.

As The Walking Dead readies itself to lose leading man Rick Grimes in season 9, there's no longer such a thing as pulled punches in this franchise — and it could signal an exit for Madison Clark, who just may go down fighting not just for the stadium, but for her kids.

Fear The Walking Dead airs its mid-season finale Sunday, June 10 at 9/8c on AMC.