Fear the Walking Dead Just Set Up Its Lengthiest Time Jump Yet for Season 7

A Fear the Walking Dead bombshell could mean the biggest time jump yet for the Walking Dead spin-off heading into Season 7. Spoiler warning for Sunday's Season 6 Episode 14. When our group of survivors infiltrated the underground parking garage where Teddy (John Glover) and his End is the Beginners planned for life to "begin again" until it was destroyed by Alicia (Alycia Debnam-Carey), Riley (Nick Stahl) revealed the bunker was prepared enough for anyone inside to "never have to go topside again." In "Mother," Teddy's cult has found a new home: a hotel resort with a Cold War-era basement bunker built to withstand a nuclear blast.

Dakota (Zoe Colletti) tells Alicia that the new bunker is "stocked with so many supplies that they wouldn't even have to step outside for years," and Teddy finally divulges his plan: using the second key stolen from Morgan Jones (Lennie James), he'll launch a missile from a beached submarine washed ashore in Galveston, Texas. It will destroy everything — everything except Alicia — who Teddy says is going to rebuild the world from inside the fallout shelter.

If Teddy succeeds in setting off his submarine-launched missile, ending Season 6 with a bang, the fallout could be enough to force the survivors underground until Season 7. According to Atomic Archive:

Fallout is defined as one of two types: early fallout, within the first 24 hours after an explosion, or delayed fallout, which occurs days or years later … Most of the particles decay rapidly. Even so, beyond the blast radius of the exploding weapons there would be areas (hot spots) the survivors could not enter because of radioactive contamination from long-lived radioactive isotopes like strontium 90 or cesium 137. For the survivors of a nuclear war, this lingering radiation hazard could represent a grave threat for as long as 1 to 5 years after the attack.

"Mother" takes place an estimated three years after the initial global outbreak that aided Teddy's early release from prison. A time jump of five years or more would put Fear closer in step with the Final Season of The Walking Dead, which is set some 12 years into the zombie apocalypse, according to the Season 10 finale "Here's Negan."

In August, TWD Universe chief content officer Scott Gimple teased there would be "time jumps" — plural — in Fear Season 6, which so far has skipped over just weeks at a time. He previously told EW the new season would be "playing around" with time, but Gimple did not give a definitive answer when asked if these leaps would bring Fear in sync with the concurrent timelines of The Walking Dead and spin-off The Walking Dead: World Beyond.

Fear returns in two weeks with its penultimate episode of the season. Follow the author @CameronBonomolo on Twitter for all things TWD.