Keith Carradine’s John Dorie Sr. Plays a “Major Role” in Fear the Walking Dead Season 7

Keith Carradine is saddling up for a “major role” as John Dorie Sr. in Season 7 of Fear the Walking Dead. Season 6 introduces the cowboy cop as the estranged father of gunned-down gunslinger John Dorie (Garret Dillahunt) when John junior’s widow, June Dorie (Jenna Elfman), investigates the meaning of “the end is the beginning.” Behind it is cult leader Teddy Maddox (John Glover), an escaped serial killer Dorie Sr. put behind bars decades before the zombie apocalypse. Dorie Sr. and June survived Teddy’s plot to bring about the end in “The Beginning,” the Season 6 finale, escaping into an underground bunker just as ten nuclear warheads detonated across the state of Texas.

“Without getting too far into where we’re planning in Season 7, he is going to play a major role in the show going forward. You see in the finale that he ends up in the bunker with June, the bunker that Teddy built for himself,” Fear showrunner Ian Goldberg said of Dorie Sr. during a recent live stream with TWDUniverse on Twitch. “He came a long way this season in terms of facing his past demons, his past ghosts, dealing with abandoning his son and then reconciling the death of his son and saying goodbye, and forgiving himself with June.”

The father and the son did not reunite or reconcile before Dorie’s death in the mid-season 6 premiere, “The Door.” Episodes later, in “J.D.,” June reads a letter from John revealing he forgave his father for leaving his family decades earlier.

“There’s really a long way that he’s come, but Teddy did succeed in his plan. Teddy did bring about ‘the end is the beginning,’ so you have to imagine that that is going to weigh heavily on Dorie Sr. going forward,” Goldberg said. “Because this is now twice that he has not been able to stop Teddy from doing horrible things. That’s gonna be one of many things he’s grappling with in Season 7. But if you like Keith Carradine, as I think we all do, there’s a lot more story to tell there in Season 7.”

In the new season arriving later this year on AMC, Dorie Sr. will work through his haunted history as this corner of the Walking Dead Universe transforms into a nuclear zombie apocalypse. For Carradine, his second season of Fear will be a revelatory one.

“One of the things I’m most curious about [is] where this is going to in Season 7,” Carradine said on an episode of Talking Dead following the Season 6 finale. “I’ve been given a couple of little hints of information about things that are going to be revealed about Dorie Sr. and certain burdens that he still carries.”

Follow the author @CameronBonomolo on Twitter for all things The Walking Dead Universe. Season 7 of Fear premieres later in 2021.