“No one’s gone until they’re gone.” The last words of Madison Clark (Kim Dickens) might foreshadow her return to Fear the Walking Dead, where an ongoing mystery conceals the secret identity of the stranger who saved Morgan Jones (Lennie James) when he was shot and left for dead. In the season 5 finale, “End of the Line,” Virginia (Colby Minifie) separates Morgan’s group at Humbug’s Gulch before she shoots him point-blank and leaves him to be torn apart by walkers. Moments after Morgan radios one last message of hope to the survivors, urging them to “just live,” someone guns down Morgan’s would-be devourers as he blacks out.
In the season 6 premiere, “The End Is the Beginning,” Morgan tells Isaac (Michael Abbott Jr.) about the mystery medic who shot the walkers before patching him up and disappearing, leaving behind nothing but a note: “You don’t know me, but I heard your message. You need to do the same. You still have things left to do.”
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There was reason to believe Morgan’s savior was Sherry (Christine Evangelista) — Dwight’s (Austin Amelio) at-the-time missing wife who was near Humbug’s Gulch the night of the shooting — but Sherry didn’t recognize Morgan when meeting him for the first time in “Honey.”
The rudimentary stitch-up could be the work of Dakota (Zoe Colletti), Virginia’s younger sister desperate to escape her sister’s clutches, but she’s seemingly ruled out in the midseason finale.
In “Damage From the Inside,” Dakota is present when Morgan reunites with Alicia Clark (Alycia Debnam-Carey) and Charlie (Alexa Nisenson) — both surprised to see him alive months after his apparent death. They heard the gunshot and what he said over the walkie, but how is he alive?
“I had some help,” Morgan says. When he’s asked who helped him, Morgan admits he’s “still trying to figure that part out.”
Madison also appeared to die after sending out one last message over walkie talkie, telling children Alicia and Nick (Frank Dillane) she didn’t want to lose their baseball stadium community because “I thought you needed it to stay who you are right now. But you know it. No one’s gone until they’re gone.”
She seemingly perishes when using a flare to immolate a horde of invading walkers, sacrificing herself to save her children and friends Victor Strand (Colman Domingo) and Luciana (Danay Garcia).
But Fear on Sunday teased a return trip to the stadium and made a callback to Madison’s three-click walkie trick from season 4. The half-season has so far eliminated the two lead suspects behind Morgan’s rescue — so is there a chance Madison returns?
“There’s always a chance,” showrunner Ian Goldberg told ComicBook.com’s Brandon Davis in an exclusive interview. “There’s always a chance. We can’t say much else about who saved Morgan, other than we saw the note. We saw that it was someone with an ulterior motive who said that Morgan still had things to do. It’s someone that Morgan doesn’t know. We know that from the note, also.”
Goldberg added, “I think when we do reveal who that person is who saved them, that note is going to take on a whole new level of resonance in terms of what it means.”
Madison could know Morgan because of the taped interviews with Althea (Maggie Grace) that Morgan’s convoy left for survivors to find across the state of Texas.
In October, an official AMC survey asked viewers if they were tuning into Fear‘s sixth season to “see if Madison returns.” And Dickens — who told ComicBook.com in a 2018 interview that Madison would have “shimmied up that wall” to get back to her children — seemed to hint that return was possible in a March interview with Access.
“I think fans are still upset about it at times. I don’t know,” Dickens said when asked about Madison making it back to Fear. “That’s the nature of the genre, though. You can be gone like that. And you can also pop up at some time, at any time.”
Fear will solve its Morgan mystery in episode 608, the original midseason finale that has since been postponed until next year.
608 now acts as the midseason premiere when Fear returns with new episodes in 2021. Follow the author @CameronBonomolo on Twitter for all things TWD.
