TWD: World Beyond Easter Egg Connects to Fear the Walking Dead

Warning: this story contains spoilers for Fear the Walking Dead Season 7 and TWD: World Beyond Season 2. It’s all connected in The Walking Dead Universe. After Jadis (Pollyanna McIntosh) crossed over from The Walking Dead to The Walking Dead: World Beyond and Michonne (Danai Gurira) crossed paths with characters from the spinoff, there’s another connection linking World Beyond to Fear the Walking Dead. All three shows are tied together by the Civic Republic Military, the mysterious helicopter organization that flew away with Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) on The Walking Dead and touched down on multiple seasons of Fear. 

In the series finale of World Beyond, “The Last Light,” ex-CRM soldier Dennis (Maximilian Osinski) recalls a military buddy from the “early days” who “went out on one of the first resource runs and never came back.” 

“He’d always talk about his family’s cabin down in the Smokys. On the banks of the Pigeon River, surrounded by huge pine trees,” Dennis tells his wife, CRM Staff Sargeant Jennifer “Huck” Mallick (Annet Mahendru). “I always wondered if he went AWOL. Got back there and made his own ‘happily ever after.’”

This old friend is Beckett (James Armstrong), the black-clad zombified CRM soldier who attacks Althea (Maggie Grace) on Fear Season 5 episode “Here to Help.” When Al investigates the soldier’s maps marked with a three-circle symbol, she encounters CRM soldier Isabelle (Sydney Lemmon) in “The End of Everything.” 

Isabelle, a soldier and pilot with the call sign Ground 17, reveals she shot Beckett. During a routine supply run, Beckett “cracked” mentally at the sight of irradiated walkers and was killed in the name of operational security. “Nobody just walks away, let alone with the maps he carried,” Isabelle tells Al. 

In “The End of Everything,” Isabelle disposes an item of Beckett’s: “A key to this cabin he always talked about.” The cabin “had this view that you could see all the way to the end of creation,” says Isabelle.

After Al’s up-in-the-air love interest makes a flyby in Season 6, Isabelle returns and reunites with Al in Fear Season 7 episode “Reclamation.” When the CRM sends a Reclamation Team to eliminate the AWOL pilot, Al tracks Isabelle to her hideout: Beckett’s cabin in the Smokys. 

From there, Al and Isabelle run away together and stay one step ahead of the CRM — ending Althea’s story on Fear the Walking Dead. The cabin is likely abandoned by the time Dennis and Huck consider escaping to the Smoky Mountains years later on World Beyond. 

“We really felt it was important to show there is this connectivity between the shows, it’s all part of this one universe, and the CRM has its hand in all three of the shows in some respect,” World Beyond co-creator and showrunner Matt Negrete said on Talking Dead. “If you think about a character like Dennis, he goes back to the beginning of the CRM. He was a soldier, he probably would have crossed paths with Beckett.”

“So it’s a nice way to show that all of these shows, while very separate in a lot of ways, are also very connected,” Negrete said. 

Fear the Walking Dead Season 7 returns with new episodes April 17 on AMC. Follow the author @CameronBonomolo on Twitter and ComicBook’s @NewsOfTheDead for TWD Universe coverage all season long.