Fear the Walking Dead Star Gives a “Big F You” to COVID-19 as Filming Wraps on Season 6

That’s a wrap on Season 6 of Fear the Walking Dead. Stars Garret Dillahunt and Austin Amelio, who play John Dorie and Dwight respectively, took to Instagram to confirm they’ve completed filming on the nine-episode Season 6B after months of delays amid the COVID-19 pandemic. In March 2020, AMC Networks suspended production on the sixth season of the Walking Dead spin-off out of an “abundance of caution,” pressing pause on a season that had been filming in Texas since late November. After a planned three-week hiatus turned into a months-long break, work wouldn’t continue until a late summer restart that is now finished — “at long last.”

“Season 6 complete! At long last! Much love, respect and congratulations to the entire team. Your perseverance and obstacle-hurdling skills will be forever inspiring to me. Smiles all round,” Dillahunt wrote on Instagram, where he shared a photo posed with Morgan Jones actor Lennie James.

Amelio also announced the wrapped production with a selfie showing himself giving the finger on behalf of the pandemic-proofed set of Fear.

“Lucky as all hell to be a part of @feartwd . Love you all. Our little circus made it through the season,” Amelio wrote. “A big F YOU to anything that tried to stop us. Can’t wait for y’all to see it. That’s a wrap.”

Ahead of Fear‘s Season 6 return in October, James said it was “gonna be tricky” finishing filming under the same health and safety protocols that allowed the cast and crew of The Walking Dead to resume production late last year after spending much of 2020 shuttered by the virus.

“It’s gonna be tricky just not being able to see people’s faces, the vast majority of people around us,” James told ComicBook.com at the time. “Because everybody’s gotta be wearing masks and different degrees of PPE. So, and it’s just not being able to see people’s faces, not to be able to hug people, ‘Hello,’ is going to be a flake, particularly when we all get back together, that’s going to be kind of difficult.”

Danay García, who has played Luciana since Season 2, told us it meant having separated lunchtimes — where the camaraderie would act as a respite to the darkness and death of the walker-filled world of The Walking Dead.

We’d love lunch. Lunch is like our happy moment, [our] happy hour that’s for us,” García said. “And we’re gonna have to go our different, our own ways. Not just the actors, but the crew too. I think all of us, we’re gonna have to spread out. We can’t be in groups right there.”

In the second half of the nine-episode season that returns on April 11 with “The Door,” there is a civil war brewing as Morgan’s people ready for a fight with Virginia (Colby Minifie) and her Rangers led by Victor Strand (Colman Domingo).

Follow the author @CameronBonomolo on Twitter for all things TWD. Fear the Walking Dead Season 6 returns with new episodes Sunday, April 11, on AMC.