Did 'Fear the Walking Dead' Step on Robert Kirkman's Toes?

By Dustin Rowles | TV | June 6, 2023 |

By Dustin Rowles | TV | June 6, 2023 |

For those who haven’t been keeping track, The Walking Dead is over, but there are three spin-offs coming. The first of which will arrive in two weeks is centered on Negan and Maggie, then one that follows Daryl to Europe, and finally one that brings back Rick and Michonne.

Meanwhile, the eighth and final season of the OG spin-off, Fear the Walking Dead continues to limp along, and the latest episode revisited—for better or worse—a classic The Walking Dead episode. TWD fans may remember the third-season episode, “Clear.” It was the one where Morgan (Lennie James) returned for the first time since the pilot episode. Rick and Carl stumbled upon him in his King County neighborhood, and he had lost his mind. He was writing incoherent things on the wall and did not immediately have any memory of Rick and Carl.

Morgan had lost his mind because he couldn’t force himself to put down the zombified version of his wife, and his son eventually went to his zombie mom and was bitten. Morgan lost his wife and his son, Duane. In this week’s episode of Fear the Walking Dead, Morgan revisits his old house with the intention of finally putting down his zombified son.

It’s not necessary to get into all of the specifics; the short version is that Morgan began to lose his mind again but managed to hang on to reality long enough to put Duane down before Duane bit Mo, Morgan and Grace’s adopted child. However, for one brief moment, Fear actually instilled fear in the viewer when a zombie popped up and attacked Mo. Grace saved her but was bitten in the process.

Morgan decided to take Grace to June because June had found a “cure” for the zombie virus. Last season, a character named Alicia managed to survive for months after being bitten by a zombie because she had been exposed to radiation. Mo, as a baby, was also allegedly bitten by a zombie and survived, likely because of the amount of radiation she was exposed to. After years of unfortunate trial and error, June had apparently found a way to use just enough radiation to kill the infection but not enough to kill the person. Her “cure” worked on a kid named Finch, the son of Dwight and Sherry (two characters who, like Morgan, also came over from The Walking Dead).

Morgan is hoping to get Grace to June in time to use the “cure” to save her. But is it a cure? Kind of, according to co-showrunner Andrew Chambliss in an interview with the Insider:

What [June] was doing on that train, what P.A.D.R.E.’s doing on that train, really is akin to kind of a more advanced form of amputation. It’s trying to remove the infected tissue before the infection can spread. So even if what they’re doing on that train ends up working, it’s not a cure. It’s not going to end the zombie apocalypse. It would certainly be a very useful tool to have to allow people to survive, particularly if you get bit somewhere where you can’t just chop off an arm or a leg.

So, it’s not a “cure,” but it does remove infected tissue without amputation? In other words, I guess, it’s a “treatment,” which sure seems like it goes against everything the creator of The Walking Dead believed. He was adamant about there never being a cure because he said it’s a “kind of a mythology-breaking proposition.” Maybe that’s why Chambliss is splitting hairs, stopping short of calling it a “cure.” Because even though Robert Kirkman seems to have washed his hands entirely of AMC’s The Walking Dead, no one probably wants to go against his direct wishes, so it’s a life-saving “treatment” and not a “cure.”