Talking Dead Announces Return Date

06/29/2019 04:36 pm EDT

Talking Dead will return with host Chris Hardwick Sunday, July 21, immediately following the Fear the Walking Dead Season 5 mid-season premiere, the aftershow's official Twitter account announced.

Its return will end a seven-week hiatus: its most recent episode, aired June 2, trailed Fear's Season 5 premiere with stars Alycia Debnam-Carey and Colman Domingo alongside showrunners Andrew Chambliss and Ian Goldberg. Network AMC has aired horror series NOS4A2 in its place.

Ticket booking site 1oita reveals Talking Dead will perform a double taping Friday, July 12, followed by a Talking Dead Summer Special Monday, July 15. After its July 21 mid-season finale, Fear will undergo a short break: the back half of the season will return August 11 and is expected to run its Season 5 finale September 29, ahead of The Walking Dead's expected early October Season 10 premiere.

During its time away, the Talking Dead couch has missed the return of the long-missing Daniel Salazar (Rubén Blades), the arrival of former TWD star Austin Amelio to the spinoff, and the debuts of franchise newcomers Matt Frewer, Karen David, Bailey Gavulic, Ethan Suess and Cooper Dodson. Fear adds another new character, Sydney Lemmon's Isabelle, in Sunday's 505, "The End of Everything."

Other bombshells not examined by Hardwick include the still unraveling mystery behind the eventual disappearance of Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) — Fear has since crossed paths with the CRM group that has now captured a similarly disappeared Althea (Maggie Grace) — and a freshly unveiled potential connection between Daniel and TWD's Abraham Ford (Michael Cudlitz).

Characters crossing over from one show to the other will be a "rare thing," Walking Dead chief content officer and frequent Talking Dead guest Scott Gimple said during an April convention, but the mothership and its spinoff will grow further intertwined through connective tissue linking both shows to the wider Walking Dead Universe.

"It's not gonna happen like this a lot," Gimple said. "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."

New episodes of Fear the Walking Dead premiere Sundays at 9/8c on AMC. Talking Dead returns Sunday, July 21.

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