Fear the Walking Dead Showrunner Explains Zombie Bite Cure

[Warning: This story contains Fear the Walking Dead spoilers.] “Healthy and thriving” are unusual terms to describe someone suffering a zombie’s bite, but that’s what happened on Sunday’s Fear the Walking Dead. Last week’s “Blue Jay” ended with Dwight (Austin Amelio) and Sherry’s (Christine Evangelista) seven-year-old son Finch (Gavin Warren) being bitten by a walker: a victim of the experiments that PADRE’s Shrike (Maya Eshet) and Crane (Daniel Rashid) have been conducting to cure “carrion” bites (what they call zombies). Shrike forced June (Jenna Elfman) to administer radiotherapy treatments to halt the infection — an idea inspired by the zombie-bitten Alicia Clark (Alycia Debnam-Carey), who was exposed to radiation and survived a bite longer than anyone June had ever seen.

As June explained, the radiation did manage to stop the infection caused by bites — but the amount of radiation required was worse than the infection, and the radiotherapy treatments always proved lethal. But in Sunday’s “Odessa,” Crane revealed that Finch not only survived the bite, but he’s “healthy and thriving” after a week of treatments. Elsewhere in The Walking Dead Universe, bites to areas of the body that can’t be amputated — like the neck, back, or shoulders — means a death sentence. So, how is Finch alive? Did Fear the Walking Dead cure zombie bites? 

“Well, if she did then she deserves a Nobel Prize. But the one thingwe should say is that, what she was doing on that train, whatPADRE’s doing on that train, really is akin to kind of a moreadvanced form of amputation. It’s trying to remove the infected tissuebefore the infection can spread,” showrunner Andrew Chambliss explained to Insider. “So even if what they’re doing inthat train ends up working, it’s not a cure. It’s not going to end thezombie apocalypse. It would certainly be a very useful tool to have toallow people to survive, particularly if you get bit somewhere where youcan’t just chop off an arm or a leg.”

Radiation has played a major role in Fear since season 5: Alicia was exposed to irradiated walker blood, and Grace (Karen David) was seemingly suffering from radiation sickness. Season 6 dropped a literal nuclear bomb on the Walking Dead spin-off, and season 7 was a full-blown nuclear zombie apocalypse. While not an outright “cure,” Shrike and June’s radiotherapy treatment could come in handy should a character suffer a bite that can’t be amputated. 

“The fact that June was using radiation as part ofthis treatment is certainly an echo of elements that we’ve brought intothe show in the past. But what interested us the most about these werethe psychology behind why PADRE would want to do them in the firstplace and what is driving them that they would subject the kids thatthey’ve sworn to protect to these experiments, which very much put theirlives, in peril,” added showrunner Ian Goldberg. “At the end of the day that was really what itwas about for us. And we think the world-building is cool, too, and whatit does, the sort of aperture that it opens to the rest of theuniverse. But, ultimately it was just about about PADRE and digging into who they are and why they’re doing what they’re doing.”

New episodes of Fear the Walking Dead premiere Thursdays on AMC+ and Sundays on AMC. Stay tuned to ComicBook/TWD and follow @CameronBonomolo and @NewsOfTheDead on Twitter for more TWD Universe coverage.