Fear the Walking Dead 510 Opening Minutes Reveal Homage to Dawn of the Dead

AMC has released the opening minutes from Sunday’s Fear the Walking Dead 510, “210 Words Per Minute.” Per its official synopsis:

Morgan and Grace search a shopping mall to fulfill a dying man’s wish; Dwight is tested.

The episode is a homage to George A. Romero’s 1978 zombie classic Dawn of the Dead, which brought together a hodgepodge of four survivors holed up in a Pennsylvania mall.

Morgan (Lennie James) fields a call from Chuck, who says he got in touch via walkie talkie Channel 4 after coming across the group’s outreach video left behind in a gas station. “When you get here, I just want you to do one thing,” Chuck says. “Kill me.”

Chuck explains he got bit when corralling the dead, and his lack of a gun means he can’t kill himself before he inevitably succumbs to his bite wound and turns. His last wish is to be found and buried outside, under the stars.

Morgan, Grace (Karen David) and Dwight (Austin Amelio) are surprised to find the abandoned mall in near untouched condition, aside from a handful of stray walkers. When Morgan and Grace reach the security office where Chuck said he’d be, they find it empty before Dwight calls them back out.

The trio shine a light on a sprawling crowd of walkers milling about the lower level. Their dedication to fulfilling Chuck’s last wishes means they’re going in.

Should the group reclaim the Bridgeview Mall, it could become their new base of operations after being duped out of the denim factory by Logan (Matt Frewer). The survivors have been on the move, helping strangers in need as they search for a community to call home.

“We’re going to see these characters look inward and deal with some things they haven’t dealt with before. At the same time, we’re going to have some fun,” showrunner Andrew Chambliss told TV Insider of what lies ahead in Season 5B. “We have some fun new characters entering the show, and we also have some surprising characters entering the show. We’re going to expand the world in which Morgan and the rest of the characters are operating.”

Fear‘s mall episode is the latest Romero homage out of TWD Universe: The Walking Dead has paid frequent tribute to Romero’s works, including an overt nod to Dawn‘s Stephen “Flyboy” Andrews in the form of a walker who appeared in a Greg Nicotero-directed episode of Season 3.

New episodes of Fear the Walking Dead Season 5 premiere Sundays at 9/8c on AMC.