Fear the Walking Dead Doing Time Jump for Final Season

The end of Fear the Walking Dead is about the future. The upcoming eighth and final season of the Walking Dead spin-off will be jumping years ahead in the timeline, according to a new synopsis revealed by network AMC, which announced the show’s conclusion during the Television Critics Association winter press tour. When the series returns for its Season 8 premiere on May 14th, it will pick up where last year’s Season 7 finale left off: with Morgan Jones (Lennie James) and Madison Clark (Kim Dickens) en route to PADRE to rescue Morgan’s abducted baby daughter, Mo (Avaya White). 

Split into two six-episode parts, the final season of Fear the Walking Dead will then jump seven years into the future with an eight-year-old Mo (newcomer Zoey Merchant). That brings the Fear timeline in sync with The Walking Dead, which spanned 13 years of the walker apocalypse: 2010-2023.

“The eighth and final season of Fear the Walking Dead kicks off with the first six episodes following Morgan and Madison’s plans to rescue Mo from PADRE,” reads the synopsis on the AMC Blog, “and seven years later — Morgan, Madison and the rest of the people they brought to the island are living under PADRE’s cynical rule. 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.”

Along with James and Dickens — who returned to Fear when the Season 7 finale revealed Madison survived her apparent death in Season 4 — the final season features returning cast members Colman Domingo, Danay García, Austin Amelio, Christine Evangelista, Karen David, Jenna Elfman, and Rubén Blades. Showrunners Andrew Chambliss and Ian Goldberg, who took over from series co-creator Dave Erickson in Season 4, have teased a “reinvention” for the Georgia-shot Season 8, which is centered on the water. 

“I think the thing that we’re really excited about is the promise of that final scene between Madison and Morgan in the Season 7 finale where it’s the two of them partnering up to take down this monolithic force that we only know as P.A.D.R.E.,” Chambliss previously told AMC.com. “We know what P.A.D.R.E. does isn’t that great, and we’re just excited about seeing these two iconic characters within The Walking Dead Universe teamed up together to bring down this really nefarious group.”

Fear the Walking Dead: The Final Season – Part 1 premieres Sunday, May 14th, at 9 p.m. ET/PT on AMC and AMC+. The six-episode Part 2 premieres later in 2023.