’The Walking Dead’s Austin Amelio Comments on ‘Fear’ Crossover

Former The Walking Dead star Austin Amelio has commented publicly for the first time on Thursday’s news Dwight will be the newest character joining spinoff Fear the Walking Dead.

“I get to have a consistent job and work with amazing people. There’s too many memories to expand upon. For some reason, Dwight keeps getting blessed with the best of both worlds,” Amelio said Friday at Wizard World New Orleans when asked about his favorite Walking Dead memory.

“I got to work with actors from Alexandria and the Saviors. Now I get to work with actors from Fear the Walking Dead. After a year and two months of being a really good secret keeper, that’s really exciting, I get to work with everybody in this world. I feel really blessed.”

As reported by ComicBook.com Thursday, Amelio’s redemption-seeking reformed Savior will board Fear in its fifth season as the second Walking Dead character to switch series.

Amelio reunites with past co-star Lennie James, whose Morgan was installed in Season Four as the spinoff’s new leading actor following the mid-season death of three-season leading lady Madison Clark (Kim Dickens).

Appearing at Walker Stalker Con Atlanta late last year, Amelio suggested Dwight’s search for long-missing wife Sherry (Christine Evangelista) will be what brings him west following his banishment from the Virginia settlements at the hands of a barely merciful Daryl Dixon (Norman Reedus) in The Walking Dead‘s eighth season.

“I’m going to find Sherry. I’m alive,” Amelio said, before noting the scarred Dwight was “put through the ringer” and “paid his dues” even before escaping the clutches of since-ousted Savior leader Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan).

“He hates Negan, he loves his wife… he’s gonna go find his wife.”

Following a promising hint tucked away inside a note that simply read “Honeymoon,” Amelio told ComicBook.com in April Dwight’s mission to reconnect with his wife is intertwined with his desire to “put some good back in the world, too, whatever that means.”

Morgan and new allies John Dorie (Garret Dillahunt), June (Jenna Elfman), Luciana (Danay García), Sarah (Mo Collins), Wendell (Daryl Mitchell), Victor (Coleman Domingo) and Alicia (Alycia Debnam-Carey) have since deciding against returning with Morgan to his old home in Virginia and will instead act out the pay-it-forward duties established by trucker Polar Bear (Stephen Henderson).

Using an old factory discovered in Season Four as a base, Fear Season Five will follow Morgan and the mission to help strangers in need, led by the prized cache of tapes recorded by documentarian Althea (Maggie Grace).

“What we see at the end of the season here is that their mission is to go out into the world and help people,” co-showrunner Ian Goldberg previously told EW.

“They will be using Al’s tapes as a guide to find those people. They’ll find some other people along the way, but they’ll also realize that, as Strand said, finding people won’t be easy. They are in short supply. So, they have a strong mission that their rallying behind but who knows what obstacles they’ll hit on the way to do that, and what inhabiting the river mill will look like with the new purpose?”

Fear the Walking Dead Season Five will premiere later this year on AMC.