‘Fear the Walking Dead’ Executive Producers Reveal When Season 5 Takes Place

Fear the Walking Dead executive producer Scott Gimple and showrunners Andrew Chambliss and Ian Goldberg note the upcoming fifth season of the spinoff is set sometime during the 18-month time skip that separated The Walking Dead episodes 816 and 901, placing it years behind present action.

"Morgan left Virginia about... a couple months after the events of episode 816," a cautious Gimple said at WonderCon. "On Fear the Walking Dead, maybe a few more months have transpired. And Dwight also left in 816, took the long way, so if you count a few more months at the beginning of this season... I put it to Andrew and Ian."

"We've got a calendar in our office with the exact date and year," said Chambliss. Added Goldberg with a laugh, "Down to the minute."

Gimple added Fear "is now significantly behind the time of Walking Dead. Walking Dead did jump [six years]."

Season Nine of the flagship series underwent that six-year time skip following the disappearance of Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln), creating a separation of more than 90 months between its Season Eight finale and its recent Season Nine closer.

Viewers were tipped off the new season remains in the past when the first Fear Season Five trailer, released Sunday at WonderCon, showed 12-year-old Charlie (Alexa Nisenson) had aged little since June's Season Four finale.

The coming season reunites former Walking Dead stars Morgan (Lennie James) and Dwight (Austin Amelio), who each left Virginia following the defeat of Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan). Morgan departed of his own accord after a brief residency at the junkyard once overseen by Jadis (Pollyanna McIntosh), while Dwight was exiled by Daryl (Norman Reedus) before embarking on a one-man mission to reunite with wife Sherry (Christine Evangelista).

Now, sometime after banding together to defeat the Filthy Woman (Tonya Pinkins), Morgan, with Charlie, Alicia (Alycia Debnam-Carey), Victor Strand (Colman Domingo), Luciana (Danay García), Althea (Maggie Grace), John Dorie (Garret Dillahunt), June (Jenna Elfman), Wendell (Daryl Mitchell), and Sarah (Mo Collins), are a unit on a mission to locate and help other survivors, using Althea's tapes as a guide.

Their mission brings the group across Dwight, the suspected dead Daniel Salazar (Rubén Blades), and a terrifying new threat that promises to pit the survivors against "some of the most dangerous walkers they've faced yet."

Fear the Walking Dead Season Five premieres Sunday, June 2 on AMC.

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