Fear the Walking Dead: Dwight Finds Family and Redemption in Season 5

The Walking Dead‘s Dwight (Austin Amelio) crossed over into Fear the Walking Dead Sunday in search of disappeared wife Sherry (Christine Evangelista), but will find new family and redemption under orders from Daryl (Norman Reedus) to go out there and “make it right.”

“It was exciting for us to sit down with Austin because we’re huge fans of his character and of the work he did on The Walking Dead. But what we thought was cool and what we got excited about with bringing Dwight onto Fear is that it was going to be a redemption story, and we were going to see a more hopeful side of Dwight start to take shape,” co-showrunner Ian Goldberg told EW.

“And obviously when we find him, he’s not in a hopeful place. And this episode, it’s quite the opposite where we know that when he left The Walking Dead at the end of season 8, Daryl spared his life and told him to find Sherry and make it right. We see that that hasn’t been going very well for him. And he’s in a desperate, low place where he doesn’t believe he’s ever going to find her or ever make things right, which puts him in a position where he’s at the end of his rope.”

A chance reunion with Morgan (Lennie James) comes after colliding with John (Garret Dillahunt) and June (Jenna Elfman), lovers once separated and brought back together against all odds. It gives the desperate Dwight a glimmer of hope when his hunt for Sherry hits a dead end at Humbug’s Gulch.

“He doesn’t think there’s any place for him to go. He’s suicidal, frankly. And he’s fortunate enough to come across John Dorie and June, who’ve got this incredibly hopeful story that we saw play out over season 4,” Goldberg said.

“And there are people who are able to bring him out of his funk and to give him a reason to keep going. That was really exciting to us. And like everyone else in the group — from Morgan to Alicia, Dorie, June, really everyone in our group — Dwight’s someone who has things to make up for, and now he’s found a new family that he’s going to be able to do that with. And it’s going to be a challenge for him. But we’re going to see a different side to Dwight than we saw for a lot of The Walking Dead.”

Having John and June be the first Fear characters to meet Dwight “just felt right” because “Dwight is looking for someone who he loved and Dorie had been through that same exact experience,” added co-showrunner Andrew Chambliss.

“It really seemed like those two parallel story tracks were telling us that Dorie and June should be the first people to encounter him. And we really saw it as Dwight being a mirror image of Dorie and almost a sign of what could have happened to Dorie if he had not had the luck to find June.”

Chambliss added: “And given where Dorie is at the beginning of this season, of kind of feeling the guilt for all the things that he does have in the apocalypse — Dwight really exacerbates that, because it is someone who has not had the same fortune he’s had.”

Fear the Walking Dead Season 5 airs Sundays at 9/8c on AMC.