Fear the Walking Dead Season 6 Could Catch up With The Walking Dead Timeline

Multiple time jumps coming in the sixth season of Fear the Walking Dead could bring the spinoff closer in step with both The Walking Dead and The Walking Dead: World Beyond, each taking place ten years after the onset of the zombie apocalypse. Much of the first three seasons of Fear take place in the two months before Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) wakes up from his coma in the premiere episode of The Walking Dead, but the spinoff is now years behind: its fifth season takes place roughly seven months before Rick’s disappearance, putting Fear more than seven years behind present-day action on The Walking Dead.

“Not only is there a time jump, but there might be time jumps,” Walking Dead chief content officer Scott Gimple teased during Fear‘s sixth season presentation at virtual Comic-Con. The new season premiering in October will pick up where we left off, with Morgan’s (Lennie James) group of Texas-based survivors freshly separated by Pioneer leader Virginia (Colby Minifie) and dispersed among different settlements.

Fear will be “playing around” with time in its new season, Gimple told Entertainment Weekly earlier this year. Asked if this would bring Fear closer in sync with the other two Walking Dead shows, Gimple answered, “Yeah, who knows? I would love to get to be like Crisis on Infinite Earths. That would be super cool, but that’s way down the line.”

That multi-part television event, inspired by the DC Comics crossover event of the same name, brought together the casts of The CW superhero series Arrow, Batwoman, The Flash, Legends of Tomorrow, and Supergirl.

Such an event would only be possible for the Walking Dead Universe once Fear has caught up with the current timeline, which would bring the show’s action into the year 2020. (A gravestone spotted in a second season episode of Fear confirmed the outbreak started in 2010, the same year The Walking Dead premiered on television.)

“We’re going to see a lot of time pass,” Gimple told EW. “There is a lot of time that can pass, yeah.”

An eventual crossover could be in the works, but it’s unlikely Fear permanently unites with the already expansive ensemble of The Walking Dead. Responding to speculation both shows are heading for a merger, Fear star Jenna Elfman explained, “If you merge the two shows, then you only have one show.”

“I think that you can’t have one show with [that many characters] — you’d have so many actors, you guys would be waiting weeks for a second scene between characters you love,” Elfman said during a 2018 convention appearance. “So I don’t know that becoming one show would even be what you guys would want because it’s too much. You can’t put that much into an hour.”

For all things TWD, follow the author @CameronBonomolo on Twitter. Fear the Walking Dead Season 6 premieres Sunday, October 11 on AMC.