‘Fear The Walking Dead’ Showrunners on Finale Death, Season 5 Plans

Fear the Walking Dead put an essentially blank canvas of a future into place for its surviving characters heading into its fifth season.

Spoilers for Fear the Walking Dead‘s Season Four finale follow. Major spoilers!

Before Episode 4×16 of Fear the Walking Dead came to a close (titled, “…I Lose Myself”), the villainous Martha had succumb to the apocalypse. Morgan’s conscious was cleared from the burden of having to kill her, having handcuffed her to a police car only to discover she had died and reanimated there. At a glance, Morgan’s wish to help Martha transform into a better and civil person was frustrating but remembering Morgan’s encounter with Eastman on The Walking Dead (at a time where he wanted to kill anyone in his path) offers some perspective on why he is eager to help those who are struggling.

Heading into Season Five, co-showrunner Andrew Chambliss and Ian Goldberg want to maintain the optimistic approach seen in its characters through the back half of Season Four. “I think going forward, this show is really going to be about the mission of hope and it’s going to be about our characters trying to make the world a better place,” Chambliss said. “Both because it’s the right thing to do, and also because they see it as a way of making up for all the bad things that they have done.”

While the men behind the curtain don’t want to reveal too much about what the group’s big conflict of Season Five will be, they are aiming for something different from previous seasons. “We had an antagonist in Martha in the back half of the season, and we had an antagonist in the first half of the season with the Vultures,” Chambliss said. “We don’t want to say whether there is or there isn’t going to be an antagonist [in Season Five], but what our characters are going to be up against, going forward will definitely be different than anything they’ve faced before.”

It’s hard to predict what the characters on Fear the Walking Dead will be up against in Season Five because there is no comic book or source material which the show pulls from for a narrative baseline. It will, however, begin production in Austin, Texas in late November.

“We are filming in Austin again for Season Five,” Goldberg said. “But what we can say is we, without giving away sort of where we’re going story-wise, we will be exploring different parts of the greater Austin area, and possibly the greater Texas area, as part of the story we’re telling. So we’re always trying to avoid repetition, and that will continue, yeah, as these characters take the next evolution in their journey.”

Fear the Walking Dead will return for its fifth season in 2019. The Walking Dead airs Sundays at 9 pm ET on AMC. For more updates and insider info all year long, follow @BrandonDavisBD on Twitter!