The Walking Dead Universe Will Never Do Crossovers Indiscriminately

After first bringing Morgan (Lennie James) and now Dwight (Austin Amelio) from The Walking Dead to spinoff Fear the Walking Dead, co-showrunner Ian Goldberg says Fear won’t implement such crossovers “indiscriminately.”

“As it was with Morgan, we will never do [crossovers] indiscriminately. It’s all true to the story and what the greater narrative we’re trying to tell is,” Goldbergtold SYFY.

“Last season going into this one is a lot about redemption. One thing we saw Dwight do a lot of on The Walking Dead, was he did a lot of bad things in his time. He was a bad dude for quite a while. But he was someone who had lost a great deal and was motivated by his love for Sherry, so we’re going to see him wrestling with that this season on the show.”

Morgan, Alicia (Alycia Debnam-Carey) and their outfit — Strand (Colman Domingo), John Dorie (Garret Dillahunt), and others — are now months into a mission to seek out and help strangers in need, guided by a cache of tapes recorded by journalist Althea (Maggie Grace).

That mission will bring them into contact with Dwight, a former Savior begrudgingly loyal to Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), now seeking redemption of his own as he searches for missing wife Sherry (Christine Evangelista).

“We don’t want to say too much about the story, but his arc very much lines up with the things that some of our other characters are struggling with,” Goldberg said.

“It’s exciting to play on this shared history between Dwight and Morgan, as both have been in The Walking Dead, but also just to see how fans are going to react. People seem very excited by the fact that he and Morgan are going to be reunited.”

Crossover between the two series won’t always revolve around one character going from one show to the other: as revealed by Walking Dead chief content officer Scott Gimple, smaller scale crossovers will exist in the form of ties linking the two series, such as the connection to Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) established in the Fear Season 5 premiere.

“It’s not gonna happen like this a lot,” Gimple said of Morgan and Dwight crossing over. “But I will say there are different sorts of crossovers we are going to do to tie the shows together, tie the universe together in certain ways that have to do with the greater happenings in the world.”

And it’s Gimple who “is in charge of the greater universe,” Goldberg said at WonderCon in April when asked about future crossover potential.

“I think we can say it’s a universe that’s constantly expanding and intersecting with each other, so anything’s possible. We’ve seen crossovers happen and they’ve been really exciting, so I’d say to expect more.”