One year after her fiery death in the mid-season finale of Fear the Walking Dead's revamped fourth season, viewers continue to rally behind the #BringBackMadison campaign to reinstate Madison Clark (Kim Dickens) as lead on the Walking Dead spinoff now heading into Season 5.
"You ruined what was a great show and treated Kim Dickens like sh-t," tweeted one fan in response to Fear writer-executive producer Scott Gimple, who retooled the spinoff following his promotion to Walking Dead chief content officer.
"The only way that I would ever consider watching again is if Kim came back, but you truly don't deserve her."
The tweet ends with #BringBackMadison, the designated hashtag part of a now year-long effort to bring back the former series lead killed when she torched a horde of invading walkers to save children Nick (Frank Dillane) and Alicia (Alycia Debnam-Carey).
Tweeted one former viewer, "I don't give a sh-t about this show if Madison doesn't come back!!" Yet another declared the decision to kill Madison "the stupidest move in television history."
But Dickens, who has since reprised her role as Joanie Stubbs in HBO's Deadwood: The Movie and filmed pilot Queen Fur for Showtime, told ComicBook.com in October losing characters unexpectedly comes with the territory of the zombie genre.
"I don't think that's how it works," Dickens admitted. "I don't think they do come back."
Still, Dickens took issue with Madison's decision to stay behind when cornered by walkers, adding she's "pretty sure Madison would have shimmied up that wall."
Despite the well-stoked efforts of the campaign, Dickens does not expect Fear to revisit Madison: the series has since transitioned to an almost entirely new ensemble led by The Walking Dead's Morgan (Lennie James), leaving just Alicia and Strand (Colman Domingo) as the last standing stars with the series since its 2015 freshman season.
"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."
But Dickens, who in the past admitted she was blindsided and heartbroken by the decision to kill off Madison, remains open to a reprisal.
"We would have to sit down and talk about it, but I love the character, I love the fans, and like I said, I was so proud of the show," she said. "So, I would never say no, without discussing it and seeing what they were talking about."