How Fear’s Explosive Ending Impacts The Walking Dead Universe

The Season 6 finale of Fear the Walking Dead ends with death, destruction, and decay — and a new beginning for the survivors of a nuclear missile launched by cult leader Teddy (John Glover). In “The Beginning,” the submarine-launched missile fired by Teddy and Riley (Nick Stahl) in the penultimate episode of the season detonates, but Althea (Maggie Grace) calls in a last-minute rescue when a CRM helicopter piloted by a masked Isabelle (Sydney Lemmon) touches down and airlifts Daniel (Ruben Blades), Luciana (Danay Garcia), Sarah (Mo Collins), Wes (Colby Hollman), Jacob (Peter Jacobson), and Charlie (Alexa Nisenson) to safety.

“We will likely see Isabelle next season. I think for me and Ian [Goldberg, showrunner], one thing we’re very interested in is exploring Al’s relationship with Isabelle and exactly what it means to Al and to Isabelle,” showrunner Andrew Chambliss revealed on Talking Dead. “I think the other interesting thing is just seeing how someone like Isabelle, and perhaps the CRM, would react to half of Texas being blown off the map.”

Spin-off The Walking Dead: World Beyond, set more than a decade into the zombie apocalypse and taking place years after the events of Fear‘s sixth season, reveals the classified location of the Civic Republic to be somewhere in the southwestern United States. This privileged and authoritarian civilization is home to 200,000 survivors, including Civic Republic Military Lt. Col. Elizabeth Kublek (Julia Ormond), who is likely aware of the ten warheads that detonated across Texas in the year 2014. (Season 2 of World Beyond and Season 11 of The Walking Dead each take place more than a decade post-outbreak.)

“It’s kind of changing the world fundamentally,” Chambliss teased, “and it’s definitely going to send shockwaves beyond Texas and the characters on this show because it’s a pretty big deal when a bunch of warheads go off.”

The Lone Star State is now ground zero of a nuclear zombie apocalypse and the setting of Season 7, making for a “completely new reality for our characters to reckon with.”

“We’ve seen them grow very formidable and able with how they’ve navigated the apocalypse for these six seasons. And now it is a whole new game with the apocalypse,” Goldberg said on Talking Dead. “And yes, they are going to have to deal with devastation, nuclear fallout, ash, unbreathable air, destroyed structures, limited resources, all these new environmental factors that are going to make survival just exponentially more difficult for them.”

Fear the Walking Dead returns with new episodes later this year on AMC. Follow the author @CameronBonomolo on Twitter for all things The Walking Dead Universe.