Fear the Walking Dead Boss Describes Season 6 “Anthology” as 16 Different Movies

Fear the Walking Dead returns Sunday night for its sixth season, but it will be a season with a slightly different narrative structure than one might expect. The new season will be more of an anthology format, something that will see each episode focus on just a few characters. It’s an approach that series showrunners Andrew Chambliss and Ian Goldberg said was like having 16 movies throughout the season.

In an interview with Digital Spy, Goldberg said that the anthology format allowed them to give more focus to the characters while also building a larger story.

“It’s something that we got really excited with the anthology format,” Goldberg said. “These really are 16 movies. They focus on two or three characters and have their own identity, their own tone, their own world, while at the same time building to a more cumulative narrative like Andrew mentioned. Part of the fun of it is, we can use these episodes as windows into different communities of Virginia, which are their own little worlds unto themselves, and it also allows us to tell these intimate, emotional stories of what our character are going through in these worlds.”

He continued, “And the really fun part is, we’re big fans of movies and we kind of approached each episode as our Fear the Walking Dead lens on a particular movie or a particular genre. And without giving away what those movies are that were our inspirations or our touchstones, you’ll see that they really run the gamut of tones from western to detective story to action, and it allows us to have a lot of fun and paint with a lot of different colors on our storytelling brushes.”

Fear the Walking Dead Episode 6×01 is titled, “The End is the Beginning.” The official synopsis for The End is the Beginning reads, “Mortally wounded Morgan must decide whether to help a desperate stranger while a mysterious bounty hunter tries to finish what Ginny couldn’t.” The episode is directed by Michael Satrazemis on a script from co-showrunners Ian Goldberg and Andrew Chambliss.

The Walking Dead: World Beyond airs Sundays at 10pm ET, following new episodes of Fear the Walking Dead at 9pm ET. The Walking Dead will return for 6 more episodes in Season 10 in the spring. The 11th and final season of The Walking Dead will begin airing in the Fall of 2021.