Warning: spoilers ahead for Fear The Walking Dead season 8, episode 1.Seven years pass during Fear The Walking Dead season 8's premiere, and plenty of offscreen action happens during that gap. Fear The Walking Dead season 8, episode 1, "Remember What They Took From You," begins in the immediate aftermath of season 7's finale, with Morgan and Madison busting into PADRE looking to reclaim the captured Mo. The story then quickly skips ahead seven years. Not only does this represent one of the biggest time skips in The Walking Dead franchise history, the jump also brings Fear The Walking Dead broadly in line with The Walking Dead's ending, finally lining up the two shows.

With Fear The Walking Dead's current run confirmed as its swansong, this seven-year time skip directly sets up the spinoff's ending. The trials and tribulations that have occurred during season 8's narrative gap will inevitably shape how the broader Fear The Walking Dead story will draw to a close. Exactly what transpired during those missing years is only revealed through hints and allusions, and many questions remain over Morgan, Madison, PADRE, and the various Fear The Walking Dead characters absent from season 8's premiere.

Related: Fear TWD Time Jump Will Finally Close Walking Dead's Timeline Gap

Morgan Returned To PADRE & Began Working For Them

Morgan in fear the walking dead season 8

Although only small glimpses of the mission are actually shown onscreen, Morgan and Madison successfully rescued Mo and escaped from PADRE after Fear The Walking Dead season 7's ending. Tragically, however, Morgan then failed to navigate the swampy wastelands on the mainland, and had no choice but to go running back to PADRE tail firmly between legs. Despite disagreeing with PADRE's philosophy and methods, Morgan knew he could count on this villainous community to at least provide Mo with food, shelter and safety.

In exchange, Morgan was forced to offer his services as a collector, and while he attempted to remain guilt-free by only taking children after obtaining their parents' permission first, this time skip is undeniably one of the darkest periods in Morgan's long The Walking Dead journey. Although Morgan had Grace for company during this time, a frostiness exists between them in "Remember What They Took From You," with the episode giving no indication that their romantic relationship is thriving - hardly a surprise given their work as collectors. Even referring to each other by their PADRE code names, Morgan and Grace appear barely more than friends from work at this point.

Fear The Walking Dead drops clues to suggest Morgan's defection to PADRE was about more than just a boggy swamp. Returning to the boathouse they took shelter in seven years prior, Mo discovers a wall of graffiti eerily similar to what Morgan wrote in The Walking Dead season 3, when his mental health was at its worst. The wall contains callbacks to Morgan's deceased son and wife, and the setting of The Walking Dead season 1, King County. Evidently, Morgan has experienced a relapse during Fear The Walking Dead season 8's time skip, and this might explain why he never made a second attempt to free his daughter from PADRE.

PADRE Has Been Experimenting On Madison During Fear The Walking Dead's Time Skip

Fear the Walking Dead season 8 Madison Clark with zombie bite mark on her arm

To let Morgan and Mo escape PADRE before the Fear The Walking Dead season 8 time skip, Madison stayed behind, holding the gun while Morgan fled. From Madison's perspective, this would have been self-sacrificial penance to repay for stealing children as a PADRE collector. In a flashback set at some unknown point during the time skip itself, Madison is seen attempting to take her own life, demonstrating how she no longer possesses a motivating goal. Madison remains unaware of Alicia's survival at this point, so between losing her own family and the guilt of breaking up other families, Kim Dickens' Fear The Walking Dead veteran obviously feels her story is over.

The most curious aspect of Madison's incarceration during Fear The Walking Dead season 8's time skip is the constant stream of blood samples PADRE is taking from her arm. While PADRE does test new intakes for illness and disease - as mentioned when Mo is first inducted - a single sample would be sufficient for this purpose, especially with Madison confined to a cell. There must, therefore, be a more sinister explanation behind the experiments Madison has been subjected to over the seven-year gap, and given the nature of The Walking Dead's universe, these experiments must inevitably concern stopping the zombie apocalypse.

Three overriding possibilities present themselves. PADRE may be using Madison as a test subject for some experimental drug, similar to tests carried out by the CRM in The Walking Dead: World Beyond. Alternatively, Madison may have been bitten and PADRE has been monitoring her body's reaction, just as Troy Otto did in Fear The Walking Dead season 3. Finally, PADRE might believe that Madison possesses some kind of natural resistance to the zombie virus, which is feasible after her daughter's survival in Fear The Walking Dead season 7 - even if Alicia's final episode did heavily suggest the infection was in her mind.

Related: How Can Alicia Return In The Walking Dead (Fear or Spinoffs?)

Where Fear The Walking Dead's Missing Characters Are After Season 8's Time Skip

Daniel aiming a gun at Victor in a scene from Fear the Walking Dead.

Aside from Morgan, Madison, Mo and Grace, no other Fear The Walking Dead characters appear in season 8's premiere, leaving their statuses unclear after the seven-year time skip. During Morgan and Madison's PADRE infiltration mission, the villains' mysterious unseen leader does confirm the fleet of passenger rafts was picked up after Fear The Walking Dead season 7's ending. These rafts contained the likes of Daniel, Charlie, Victor Strand, June, Dwight, Sherry, Grace, and Luciana. Given that Grace is a collector post-time skip, it seems likely that most of the above are now working for PADRE in some capacity.

However, Fear The Walking Dead does drop an intriguing hint that some major characters perhaps escaped PADRE's clutches. When Morgan is informed about PADRE finding the rafts, the mystery voice acknowledges there were fewer people aboard than expected. This could be a subtle clue that some of Fear The Walking Dead's main characters either escaped before PADRE took them prisoner, or their rafts drifted elsewhere. The existence of an anti-PADRE resistance has already been confirmed by Fear The Walking Dead's season 8 marketing, meaning the raft survivors could be split between these two camps after the seven-year time skip.

Fear The Walking Dead continues Sunday on AMC.