Fear the Walking Dead has officially been renewed for season 8, with Kim Dickens set to return to the Walking Dead universe. The long-running zombie apocalypse drama has amassed a loyal following since its creation as the first spinoff series of The Walking Dead in 2015. The series has just aired its season 7 midseason finale, with the second half set to resume in April.
The Walking Dead franchise, spawned from the comic book series of the same name, follows an ensemble cast of survivors as they come to terms with the collapse of modern civilization amid a zombie apocalypse and the nascent human conflict that has emerged alongside it. Gaining prominence in 2011 with the original television series The Walking Dead, the franchise has since generated countless offshoots, from board games to amusement park rides, but the most successful of these has been Fear the Walking Dead. Initially, a prequel to the parent series, the AMC spinoff has since grown into a full-fledged series in its own right, running concurrently with the original show and even featuring crossover characters in its seven-season run.
Via Variety, the announcement of season 8 was made on Talking Dead, the TV aftershow dedicated to covering the franchise, following the finale of another spinoff series, The Walking Dead: World Beyond. It appears that Dickens will return to the series as Madison Clark, the character that she played in the series from season 1-4. Clark had seemingly sacrificed her life in an explosion in season 4, but will return in the second half of season 7, coming to AMC Plus on April 10 and AMC on April 17, 2022, and will continue into season 8 as a series regular.
The season 7 midseason finale ended with an unsteady Alicia Clark (Alycia Debnam-Carey) declaring war on Victor Strand (Colman Domingo). The pair prepare for a running battle amid nuclear chaos to conclude season 7, with an ailing Alicia holed up on the submarine and Strand readying in the tower. However, it seems likely that they both could meet their ends before season 8 hits the screen.
Reviews were mixed on the midseason finale, and there have been some rumblings that Fear the Walking Dead has run out of steam in recent years. But the return of a fan favorite from the early days of the series in Dickens may be an attempt to reconnect fans with the show. Madison Clark is a reminder of the show's origins and the reason many fell in love with the series when it began, but it remains to be seen if this will be enough to reinvigorate the series, or if Fear The Walking Dead will slowly run its course.
Source: Variety