Fear the Walking Dead's Lennie James Wants to Fight Faster Walker Variants

By Cameron Bonomolo

Fear the Walking Dead star Lennie James wants a swing at the French's faster walkers revealed on The Walking Dead: World Beyond. In a post-credits scene trailing the series finale of the spinoff, a French doctor (Carey Van Driest) recovers old transmissions from American virologist Dr. Edwin Jenner (Noah Emmerich) conferring about the French's reports of the undead's "variant cohorts" overseas. "We haven't seen anything like that seen here at all," Jenner says in the video recorded in a lab at the CDC, "nothing close." These faster and potentially man-made variant zombies are unlike any seen before in the Walking Dead Universe — and the Morgan Jones actor wants a crack at them. 

"I can't wait! I'm like, 'bring it on.' I've been waiting for walkers to catch up for years," James, who starred on The Walking Dead before crossing over to Fear, said on Talking Dead. "I stand there, wait for them to come, stick a stick out, wait for another one to come, back in the head. I want them running at me so I can swing and take them all out at speed."

The regular walkers of the Walking Dead Universe "only move fast when you're not looking, but I can see them coming fast," James pointed out. "I'm really looking forward to killing some fast-moving walkers." 

The French doctor appears to reanimate as one of these variants when a man with a gun (Oryan Landa) shoots her dead, blaming teams of Primrose and Violet doctors for "starting this" and then "making it worse." It's unclear if the man is referring to the decade-long zombie apocalypse or the new breed of walkers, but the scene takes place in a dusty old French biomedicine lab with graffiti reading Les morts sont nes icl: "The dead are born here." 

"The coda after World Beyond had everything to do with the past and future of The Walking Dead Universe. There is another big story that will be told relating to that scene, and we can't wait to start showing it to the world," The Walking Dead Universe chief content officer Scott Gimple said in a statement aired on Talking Dead. "The universe is unfolding...This is a big story, and in some ways, it's hopefully just starting."

This new story is "going to go some places," Gimple teased, "and with some people you'd never expect." 

Season 7 of Fear is currently years behind the final seasons of World Beyond and The Walking Dead, but the video transmission from the long-dead Jenner reveals these variants have existed overseas since the start of the global outbreak in 2010​.

Fear the Walking Dead returns with new episodes​ April 17 on AMC. Follow the author @CameronBonomolo on Twitter and ComicBook's @NewsOfTheDead for TWD Universe coverage all season long. 

Trending Now: