Could Madison Save Morgan on Fear the Walking Dead?

Fear the Walking Dead showrunners Andrew Chambliss and Ian Goldberg seemingly aren’t ruling out a theory suggesting it might be Madison Clark (Kim Dickens) who saves Morgan (Lennie James) from almost certain doom.

When The Hollywood Reporter postulated Madison is actually still alive and will return just in time to rescue Morgan, who was shot in the shoulder and left defenseless against an encroaching pack of walkers, Chambliss said, “That is a fascinating theory. And we’ll just have to wait for Season 6 to see how things go.”

When Madison was killed off midway through Season 4 — via an offscreen death that happened when Madison, backed into a corner, set fire to an advancing horde of walkers — Dickens, as well as Chambliss and Goldberg, openly confirmed Madison had died in post-episode interviews.

The situation facing Morgan is less definitive: neither the showrunners nor Talking Dead would confirm Morgan’s death, suggesting the second oldest still-surviving Walking Dead character behind only Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) might yet make it out of Humbug’s Gulch alive. In his first comments since the Fear Season 5 finale, James similarly avoided committing to Morgan’s death.

“You know, listen, he was bleeding quite a bit from that wound. And, he also had walkers encroaching on him,” Goldberg told Insider. “So you know, whether it’s in the shoulder or the heart, it’s a bad gunshot wound and it’s not going to be one that he could easily survive.”

In what appeared to be his last minutes alive, Morgan radioed a message of hope to his now separated convoy of survivors that have been spread out among different colonies overseen by Pioneer leader Virginia (Colby Minifie). How Morgan’s fate plays out in relation to that major Season 6 development is something viewers are “going to have to wait and see.”

“I think all we’ll say is that Morgan’s final message to everyone was telling them to just live and he meant that on, I think a more metaphorical level telling them to try to live their lives because there actually was some validity to what they were doing,” Chambliss told Insider. “But for Morgan, the question is whether or not he’s going to be able to take his own advice and literally live 30 seconds past when the camera cuts in that final shot. And that’s just something people are going to have to wait and see.”

Some Fear fans thought Season 5 was hinting at Madison’s return when daughter Alicia (Alycia Debnam-Carey) encountered trees decorated with inspirational messages. The artist behind those trees was later revealed to be lone traveller Wes (Colby Hollman), who ultimately spurred Alicia to paint her own trees with messages inspired by her late mother.

Dickens — who has since moved on with roles in the Deadwood movie, Showtime’s Queen Fur and USA Network’s crime anthology Briarpatch — previously admitted she was doubtful Fear would ever revisit Madison Clark.

“As far as I know, she’s dead,” Dickens told MovieWeb in March. “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.”

That admission came after Dickens told ComicBook.com she was just as doubtful Madison would have stayed behind at the Dell Diamond baseball stadium, telling us she was “pretty sure Madison would have shimmied up that wall” and escaped to reunite with children Alicia and Nick (Frank Dillane).

Fear the Walking Dead returns to AMC in 2020. The Walking Dead Season 10 premieres Sunday, Oct. 6 at 9/8c on AMC. For more TWD intel, follow the author @CameronBonomolo on Twitter.