Fear the Walking Dead Doing Seven-Year Time Jump in Final Season

03/26/2023 07:55 pm EDT

When Fear the Walking Dead returns for its eighth and final season, years have passed since Morgan Jones (Lennie James) and Madison Clark (Kim Dickens) set sail for P.A.D.R.E. to rescue baby Mo at the end of season 7. During the show's last WonderCon panel, co-showrunner Ian Goldberg revealed the Walking Dead spin-off picks back up seven years later, and our heroes have changed a lot since last we saw them. With the group living under P.A.D.R.E. rule, everyone's belief in a better world lies with the island community's nest of abducted children — including the now eight-year old Mo (Zoey Merchant).

"At the end of season 7, Morgan and Madison made a pact, an unlikely alliance, where they're going to go into P.A.D.R.E. and get baby Mo out," Goldberg said, adding the time skip will reveal the fates of the survivors who fled Victor Strand's (Colman Domingo) burning tower in the Texas nuclear zone by raft. "We are going to be picking up those stories in season 8, and one of the things that we're gonna be seeing a lot of is life inside of P.A.D.R.E. It's something we've been teasing since season 7, and we really wanted to lean into: What does life look like inside this place we've heard so much about?"

Fear the Walking Dead is "going to be jumping forward in time seven years," Goldberg confirmed of the final season set 12 years post-outbreak. This major time jump not only synchronizes Fear with the present-day Walking Dead Universe timeline, but it makes for a "very special" sendoff for the show that has aired since 2015. 

"Making the seven-year time jump was really special. It's a very, very special season," added directing-producer Michael E. Satrazemis of the shortened 12-episode, two-part final season. "The 12 episodes move very, very quickly, and I feel like we found a really beautiful way to end it. Most shows don't have this kind of completion so it's elegant, beautiful, devastating, and filled with humanity."

The season's logline reads: "The eighth season begins after the conclusion of Season 7, when Morgan's and Madison's hopes to rescue Mo from P.A.D.R.E. did not go as planned. Now, Morgan, Madison and the others they brought to the island are living under P.A.D.R.E.'s cynical rule. With our characters demoralized and dejected, the task of reigniting belief in a better world rests with the person Morgan and Madison set out to rescue in the first place — Morgan's daughter, Mo."

Fear returns with its season 8 part one premiere Sunday, May 14th, on AMC and AMC+. The final six episodes of season 8 part two will air later in 2023, concluding with the series finale.

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