Fear the Walking Dead was midway through filming on Season 6 when the coronavirus pandemic forced production to halt, but AMC is soldiering on, and has set a premiere date for the new season of the spin-off. Fear the Walking Dead Season 6 will premiere Sunday, Oct. 11, Chris Hardwick announced during the show’s Comic-Con@Home panel.
Before they shut down, they filmed enough to make a short trailer. A minute-long trailer released during the panel offers glimpses of Strand (Colman Domingo) and Alicia (Alycia Debnam-Carey) as prisoners, Sherry (Christine Evangelista) crying in the first footage of Dwight’s (Austin Amelio) long-missing wife on Fear, a mysterious man tasked with finding Morgan (Lennie James), dead or alive, and a close-up of a bloody red eye that belongs to Morgan, executive producer Andrew Chambliss confirmed. Remember, Morgan once said “All I see is red.”
So yeah, about Morgan… At the end of Season 5, things were not looking good for Morgan, who had been shot by Virginia (Colby Minifie) and left to die as walkers closed in on him. No one on the panel would say anything about Morgan’s fate, but we assume he’s alive!
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The first half of Season 6 is almost ready. Andrew Chambliss said that they were very close to finishing shooting the first half of the season when production shut down, and it’s almost ready to be delivered to the network, and writing on the entire season is complete. Now they’re just waiting to see when they come back.
The second half is scheduled to go into production soon. On a quarterly earnings call, AMC CEO Josh Sapan said that production on the second half of Fear Season 6 is scheduled to resume in Texas in late August, according to Deadline. He also said that production on The Walking Dead‘s Season 10 extension is scheduled to start in Georgia in October.
Will we see Isabelle (Sydney Lemmon) again? A highlight episode of Season 5 connected Fear to the larger helicopter mystery, as Al (Maggie Grace) met and formed a romantic connection with a soldier from the community named Isabelle. And The Walking Dead Universe chief content officer Scott Gimple confirmed that there will be more to that story. “We want to explore that story more, individually with those characters and potentially together,” Gimple said.
The season will take an “anthology format.” Executive producer Ian Goldberg said that tonally, Season 6 is “a darker season, no doubt about it,” and format-wise it will take an “anthology format” where episodes will focus on individual or pairs of characters, in the style of previous standout episodes like Season 4’s “Laura.” Chambliss said that each episode “kind of has its own flavor,” with various genres represented.
Lennie James directs an episode this season. “My first time ever,” he confirmed. He said the most exciting part was meeting people who work on the show he’d never met before, because he doesn’t interact with them in his capacity as an actor. He also said that Colman Domingo mentored him as transitioning from acting to directing. (Domingo will be directing his third episode of the show this season). He added that it was the scariest thing he’s ever done in his life, and might not ever do it again, but his castmates encouraged him to do it again, because he did a great job.
There will be a time jump. A fan noticed that John Dorie’s (Garret Dillahunt) beard in the trailer is longer, and wrote in asking if there will be a time jump. “Not only will there be a time jump, there may be time jumps,” Scott Gimple said.
Fear the Walking Dead Season 6 premieres Sunday, Oct. 11 at 9/8c on AMC. It’s available to stream on Hulu.
