Fear the Walking Dead showrunners explain that big premiere time jump

Warning: This article contains spoilers about the Fear the Walking Dead season 8 premiere, "Remember What They Took From You."

Fear the Walking Dead began its eighth and final season in jarring fashion. After a scene picking up where season 7 left off with Morgan (Lennie James) and Madison (Kim Dickens) infiltrating PADRE, we then jumped seven years into the future, where suddenly everyone was named after birds.

Madison (now Lark) was being kept alive in a cell with regular blood withdrawals by PADRE for mysterious reasons, but she escaped, taking an 8-year-old girl named Wren (Zoey Merchant) with her once she realized the girl was actually Morgan's daughter, Mo.

But surprise, surprise — Morgan was actually now working for PADRE under the name Nightingale, and was insistent on bringing Mo/Wren back and killing Madison in the process. Madison was able to disarm him, and the trip eventually ended up in a house on a swamp that had suspiciously familiar graffiti on the walls.

Eventually, Mo's mother Grace (now Heron, and also working for PADRE) showed up to save them all, but both Madison and Morgan were taken as prisoners. So yeah, it was a super awkward family reunion.

We spoke to showrunners Ian Goldberg and Andrew Chambliss to get the scoop on the big time jump, whether Morgan has gone "clear" again, and why the folks at PADRE are so insistent on keeping Madison alive.

Lauren "Lo" Smith/AMC Kim Dickens and Zoey Merchant on 'Fear the Walking Dead'

ENTERTAINMENT WEKELY: Tell me about the decision to do a big seven-year time jump?

IAN GOLDBERG: Well, there were a few reasons why we started to gravitate in that direction. And I think one of the biggest was we've been teasing this place PADRE since season 7, and really slowly unpacking what it is. Finally, in episode 716, through Madison, we realize who they are and what they're about, but we haven't yet [seen] what it's like from the inside.

We felt the best way to understand what it's like to grow up as a child at PADRE, in a place where you're kept from your family — where you're taught not to have connections with other people, certainly not with your parents — was to do it through the perspective of someone who actually grew up there. And the perfect character for that, of course, is Mo, who doesn't even know that her real name is Mo until this episode. She's grown up thinking she's Wren.

It just felt like the right lens to tell that story through. And also, it created a real rift and mystery about the rest of our characters, and it showed how life at PADRE had impacted all of them as well — both those who are still in each other's orbits, and those who aren't. But I think the big impetus for the time jump was just to show how much life at PADRE has impacted all of our characters and their way of existing in the world.

Lauren "Lo" Smith/AMC Kim Dickens on 'Fear the Walking Dead'

Was there any consideration about aligning timelines with other Walking Dead shows?

ANDREW CHAMBLISS: That wasn't the driving force behind it. It was really kind of a happy accident when we sat down and did the math. And then there were also some other, practical reasons, too. The two-year-old who was playing Mo was growing up way too fast for us. [Laughs] She was much older by the end of season 7 than the character should have been. So we were able to then cast a really talented young actor like Zoey Merchant, who could really bring the character to life. That was one of the other factors that came into play.

What can you say at this point in terms of why the PADRE folks are keeping Madison alive against her will at the start of the episode?

CHAMBLISS: In that very first scene when Shrike comes down and she draws Madison's blood, we see that there are marks and it seems like this is something that happens a lot. There maybe is a reason to take that risk beyond just wanting to punish Madison and torture her.

And it kind of points to PADRE's more nefarious side and some of the things that they're doing in the pursuit of survival that we will very quickly learn are pretty shocking and paint PADRE in a very different light from the idyllic summer camp that we see on that island in this episode.

Lauren "Lo" Smith/AMC Kim Dickens and Maya Eshet on 'Fear the Walking Dead'

What about all this graffiti on the wall in the house they go to? We see words like "Duane" and "Jenny" and "King County," and we know Morgan has a history of writing crazy stuff on walls, so what went down in that house that Morgan clearly — no pun intended — doesn't want to talk about?

GOLDBERG: We've certainly seen that style of graffiti before from Morgan's past on The Walking Dead when he did go clear. Now, whether that's what happened here again or not, we will see, but clearly something went down in that houseboat that he is loath to talk about.

A big part of his journey this season is reconciling the ghost of his past with the man he's become. And it's also this big question that I think this episode poses, which is: Why did Morgan return Mo to PADRE? Why did he feel he was incapable of protecting her? And why has he essentially become a loyal collector to PADRE?

This is someone who at the end of season 7 went in to take PADRE down from the inside and now he's become a cog in the machine, and he's beaten down under the weight of it all. And that graffiti on the houseboat is a huge part of what's going on with Morgan psychologically that he's going to have to overcome.

Lauren "Lo" Smith/AMC Kim Dickens and Lennie James on 'Fear the Walking Dead'

How many bird names did you all have to look up for this season? Did you make a big list? How did that work?

CHAMBLISS: [Laughs] Yeah, we kind of pulled a big list and then went through them and said like, "Oh, that's cool. That's kind of dumb. Oh, God, Lennie will kill us if we call him that!" So we kind of saved the ones we really liked and spread them out over the season. But really it was all about PADRE finding a way to strip everyone of their identity and make them a part of the community and have it be all about the community as opposed to people bringing all their individual wants and desires to this settlement. And we will learn there's actually some more reasoning behind it as we get a little bit deeper into the season.

This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.

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