The Walking Dead Universe Timelines Could Sync After Fear Season 7

Is Fear flashing forward? Walking Dead Universe chief content officer Scott Gimple says Season 7 could move the spin-off closer on the timeline to Season 2 of TWD: World Beyond and Season 11 of The Walking Dead. Picking up where Season 6 left off — with Morgan Jones (Lennie James) and Grace (Karen David) as survivors of the hellish nuclear zombie apocalypse dropped on them by Teddy Maddox (John Glover) — Season 7 of Fear the Walking Dead is years behind World Beyond and Walking Dead. As the Texas survivors hunker down for the fallout from nuclear blasts, a time jump of multiple years might be the next big change to send shockwaves through Fear.

Asked at San Diego Comic-Con@Home if Fear might catch up to The Walking Dead on the timeline, Gimple answered, “They’re pretty far away from each other right now. We’ve talked about things on this show, and we’ve talked about things on other shows. I’ll give you one of those standard [answers]: it’s possible.”

Fear is approximately three years out from the global outbreak of 2010, putting current action around roughly the same time Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) disappears aboard a CRM helicopter in Season 9 of The Walking Dead. During that same season, a six-year time skip puts The Walking Dead on a linear path with World Beyond when their respective tenth and first seasons take place a decade-plus post-apocalypse.

According to dates revealed in the Season 10 finale of The Walking Dead, the flagship series is now set the furthest out in the timeline. Season 11 is 12 years post-outbreak, putting the final season in 2022 — a whopping nine years after Season 6 of Fear. It’s still early in the apocalypse for Alicia Clark (Alycia Debnam-Carey) and the other Texas survivors, who are now living through a second apocalyptic event that just might be felt beyond the Lone Star state.

“There’s certain people who are aware of [the nuclear blasts], and there’s certain people who aren’t, and there’s certain ways that it feeds story,” Gimple said, likely referring to the connective tissue linking the three shows: the Civic Republic Military. “But we lead with each of these shows with the characters of these shows first, with how it affects those characters on those shows. It’s definitely about the individual journeys rather than the mythology. Those serve the mythology in that we get a peek at more through them.”

Fear the Walking Dead returns October 17 on AMC. Follow the author @CameronBonomolo on Twitter for all things TWD.