(This article contains spoilers for the season 6 finale of “Fear the Walking Dead.”)
Now that is follow-through.
I’m not sure many people expected actually expected much of anything would happen with the nuke when we learned that Teddy’s doomsday cult wanted to blow everybody on “Fear the Walking Dead” up. Obviously, it’s a pretty exciting threat to have to deal with, but come on. Did you really think a nuke would go off on this show?
Regardless of our expectations, they did it. They really did it. And I think I can speak for most viewers when I say I’m extremely curious about what’s gonna happen now that Isabelle, Al’s girlfriend from the Civic Republic — those are the baddies from “The Walking Dead: World Beyond” — is apparently now taking an active role in events on “Fear.”
“Fear” has been dropping nods to the Civic Republic folks fairly regularly for the past two seasons, though they only actually appeared once: in the Season 5 episode in which we met Isabelle. Now, after we learned a lot about the CRM on “World Beyond,” Isabelle is back with a helicopter helping carry Al’s pals to safety.
The biggest obstacle to crossovers between the various “Walking Dead” shows, however, is that none of them is taking place at the same time. “TWD” and “Fear” briefly matched up so that Morgan and Dwight could switch shows, but then the main series took a six-year time jump, putting it more than a decade into the apocalypse. “World Beyond” is set a couple years before that, 10 years into the zombie situation, and “Fear” is still at least a few years before that.
The way this episode split up the cast feels like it provides an easy crossover opportunity, though. The folks who got on the helicopter — that’s Luciana (Danay Garcia), Daniel (Reuben Blades), Wes (Colby Hollman), Charlie (Alexa Nisenson), Rabbi Kessner (Peter Jacobson), Sarah (Mo Collins) and presumably Al herself (Maggie Grace) — can leave “Fear” and head to other corners of this universe, while everybody else stays behind. The helicopter crew could have their own personal time skip, and then perhaps pop up again when Iris, Hope and their crew finally make it to the place their dad is in New York on “World Beyond.”
That would be cool, but I’ve got a better idea. They could run into Rick Grimes.
Rick left the main series on a CRM helicopter before the big time jump, and that clearly puts him in play here — or at least it makes it hypothetically much easier for these characters to catch up with him. The problem is we haven’t gotten any updates in years on the movies that Rick is supposed to return in, but they’ve continued to lay the groundwork for that story with Michonne running off after him early on in “TWD” Season 10, not to mention the heavy focus on the Civic Republic in “World Beyond.”
All of this, presumably, will add up to something. The pandemic no doubt affected AMC’s plans for the big picture of the “Walking Dead” universe, and with none of these shows matching up on the timeline it was already pretty hard to figure out how these pieces fit together — especially as the Commonwealth enters the fray in the main series.
There are a lot of balls in the air. But the “Fear the Walking Dead” season finale seems to be pointing, at least, at some more crossovers between the shows.
