Fear the Walking Dead Season 5: Lowest Rated Premiere Still Tops Sunday

Sunday's Fear the Walking Dead Season 5 premiere was the Walking Dead spinoff's least-watched season opener in series history, but still came out on top of cable ratings (via TV by the Numbers).

Fear won Sunday with a 0.6 rating in adults 18-49 and 1.97 million viewers, which TV by the Numbers reports is down one-tenth from its Season 4 midseason premiere and that season's finale. (Its pilot was watched by 13.96m viewers in August 2015; Season 2 opened at 6.67m and Season 3 5.08m).

The Season 4 premiere — which featured Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln), Jesus (Tom Payne), and Carol (Melissa McBride) in cameo appearances before sending Morgan (Lennie James) to Texas as part of the first ever crossover between the two shows — earned a 1.6 in the key 18-49 demographic and a total 6.11 million viewers when accounting for delayed viewing.

After its midseason finale revealed then-lead Madison Clark (Kim Dickens) was dead during action set in present day, the back half of Season 4 averaged between two and three million viewers, peaking with Madison's death episode (3.85m total).

Some former fans have since pushed back against the decision to kill Madison and install Morgan as lead, taking to social media to declare they won't be watching until network AMC embraces fan cries to "#BringBackMadison," the designated hashtag launched in efforts to reverse Madison's fiery Season 4 death.

"As far as I know, she's dead," Dickens previously told MovieWeb.

"It was the part I'm most proud of. Helping build that show from the beginning, across three different countries, that character was something I felt I had grown my whole career to get to play. I'm so proud of it, and it ended too soon for what I wanted, but there were a lot of changes over there creatively. I can't imagine they would want to revisit Madison, but she was a great character. I'm so proud of it."

The semi-rebooted Fear will soon highlight more Walking Dead crossover when Dwight (Austin Amelio) happens across Morgan and company.

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