Watch the First Clip From Fear the Walking Dead's Final Season
In the Season 8 premiere of Fear the Walking Dead, Madison Clark (Kim Dickens) would rather die than live as a hostage under PADRE. Last year's Season 7 finale revealed the previously presumed dead mother of Nick (Frank Dillane) and Alicia Clark (Alycia Debnam-Carey) escaped her apparent death in Season 4, seemingly sacrificing herself to save her children from a fiery walker swarm. But as Morgan Jones (Lennie James) learned, Madison survived, only to wind up as a collector for PADRE: a mysterious organization that "rescues" children — called "eggs" — by stealing them from their parents.
The first-look clip, which you can watch above, shows a sedated Madison struggling against her captors — going so far as to attempt suicide to escape her prison. "I know you want to die," a guard tells a drugged Madison, "but PADRE's not going to let that happen."
AMC Networks confirmed the upcoming eighth season of Fear the Walking Dead, premiering May 14th, will be its last. Rolling out in two parts that will conclude later in 2023, Season 8 of the Walking Dead spin-off will consist of a final 12 episodes rather than the standard 16.
Picking up where the Season 7 finale ended — with Madison and Morgan Jones (Lennie James) en route to PADRE by boat to rescue the kidnapped Mo (Avaya White), Morgan's baby daughter — the two-part final season will jump seven years into the future.
The eighth and final season of Fear the Walking Dead kicks off with the first six of 12 episodes "following Morgan and Madison's plans to rescue Mo from PADRE and seven years later — Morgan, Madison and the rest of the people they brought to the island are living under PADRE's cynical rule," per the official logline. "With our characters demoralized and dejected, the task of reigniting everyone's belief in a better world is the person Morgan and Madison set out to rescue in the first place — a now eight-year-old Mo."
"We started to talk about, 'Well, what if Madison had been part of PADRE?'" Ian Goldberg, who serves as showrunner with Andrew Chambliss, told EW about Madison's seasons-long absence and return in Season 7. "And it also helped explain for us one of the big questions, as we were kind of digging into bringing her back, which is Madison was a character established from the beginning of the series that was all about her family. And we know if she's still been out there since her last episode in season 4, why hasn't she found Alicia? Why hasn't she found her kids?"
Goldberg continued: "And this was the answer that we landed on, which is that she had been held hostage by PADRE and forced to do a lot of things she didn't want to do. And that's where we find her. And so it just was this really interesting heartbreaking change for Madison of being somebody who was all about her family, and now has become someone who has to rip families apart."
Fear the Walking Dead: The Final Season premieres Sunday, May 14th, on AMC and AMC+.