Fear the Walking Dead Showrunners Tease the Final Episodes

Only six episodes remain of Fear the Walking Dead. When the eighth and final season of the Walking Dead spin-off picks back up this fall for its last episodes, there will be returns. There will be reunions. And there will be resurrections. The "All I See Is Red" midseason finale ended with Morgan Jones (Lennie James) exiting the series just as Troy Otto (Daniel Sharman) — who appeared to be killed off in season 3 — returned from the grave. That's not all. The first footage from the final episodes reunited Madison Clark (Kim Dickens) and Victor Strand (Colman Domingo), who had been absent for the first half of the final season. In the end, Fear is going back to the beginning. 

"It's such a gigantic task to think about bringing all these stories, all these character journeys, not just to a conclusion, but also bringing them full circle," showrunner Ian Goldberg said on AMC's Inside Fear the Walking Dead Final Season Part 1 special. "When we started to think about, 'Where do we want these characters to end up?' It led to the question of, 'Where did they start?'"

Added showrunner Andrew Chambliss, "We wanted to look back at these characters from their very beginnings on this show and look at who they were back then, and who they were now, and we can see how far they've come." 

That includes Madison, who is coming to terms with the loss of her children, Nick (Frank Dillane) and Alicia (Alycia Debnam-Carey); Strand, who has been "drastically reinvented" and is seemingly going by the name "Anton"; Daniel Salazar (Rubèn Blades), who has found new purpose as the commander of a parent army; and grieving parents Dwight (Austin Amelio) and Sherry (Christine Evangelista), who found their way back to each other, only to separate over the death of their son, Finch.

In the back half of the final season of Fear the Walking Dead, Goldberg said each of the characters will "have to look back in order to look forward." 

"The theme that kept coming to the front of our minds was just this idea of family. And it all started with Madison Clark," added Chambliss. "She was this matriarch at the beginning of the apocalypse who always wanted to protect her kids, who wanted to create a world where they could be safe. Who wanted to give them something that really didn't exist anymore."

He continued: "It all kind of boils down to the story — the story we want to tell, the story that we think will bring together all the themes, all the characters, everyone's stories in a way that will feel satisfying. And also feel like it has some real finality to it."

Fear the Walking Dead season 8 returns this fall on AMC and AMC+.

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