Are they killing off Charlie on Fear the Walking Dead ?

Warning: This article contains spoilers for Sunday's episode of Fear the Walking Dead, "Mourning Cloak."

Awwwww… Fear the Walking Dead looked like it was getting all soft and mushy on Sunday's episode, "Mourning Cloak," as it told a tale of young love. Teenage Charlie (Alexa Nisenson) was on a covert mission to infiltrate Strand's Tower, but then wanted to abandon that plan and run away with a tower ranger in-training named Ali (Ashton Arbab).

There was kissing. There were butterflies. There was talk of big dreams and big fears and all the things that make people fall in love. And then it all went to hell.

Charlie got radiation poisoning while out on a mission for Howard (Omid Abtahi), and then Ali was thrown off the roof to his death after trying to take over Charlie's task of turning off the roof beacon to give Morgan (Lennie James) a path in.

Lauren "Lo" Smith/AMC Alexa Nisenson on 'Fear the Walking Dead'

So now Ali's dead and Charlie looks like she could be on the way. Or is she? Just two seasons ago we met Grace, who also seemed to be dying from radiation poisoning — until it turned out she was just pregnant. (Ezekiel on The Walking Dead also appeared to be destined for an early grave due to a cancerous tumor, but now he's all good.)

Is Charlie doomed? We got showrunners Andrew Chambliss and Ian Goldberg on the line to discuss that as well as the inspiration for the entire teen love story.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: What made you all want to tell a tale of young love?

ANDREW CHAMBLISS: It's something that we had been kind of toying with for a while in regards to Charlie. And we'd been talking to [Nisensen] for a long time about it. And she had expressed interest in playing opposite someone her own age and playing a romance. And it felt like if we're going to do that, we need to balance out kind of the innocence of that by putting it up against the nuclear apocalypse. So that's why this felt like the right time.

But really, in all seriousness, it was about giving Charlie this little glimpse into a life that she was denied by the apocalypse and all these rights of passage that you and I take for granted, having grown up before the zombie apocalypse struck. And kind of digging into that, we wanted to find a way to essentially give them kind of a first date in the nuclear zombie apocalypse. And that's how we ended up with all these kind of touchstones like the bowling alley.

It was fun to sit down and think about that. And in many ways it was also fun just to write two teenagers being able to be kids in the apocalypse. And granted, there's a lot of heavy stuff in the episode, especially when it becomes clear that Charlie suffered radiation exposure that's making her sick. But we wanted to find ways to balance that out, and leading to things like the butterfly room that Ali ends up making for her.

You brought up the radiation poisoning. Is Charlie dying?

IAN GOLDBERG: I'll just say that Charlie is very sick. And we mentioned earlier wanting there to feel like there's a cost to this world and this punishing nuclear landscape, and Charlie is definitely suffering because of it. And also, it's a symbol of the cost of the war with Strand [Colman Domingo].

And the divisions are a bit complicated in the sense that Charlie wanted so badly to have a normal life as a kid, and she really did want to have the normalcy that life in the tower would provide for her. And this was driving her, and now she's suffered consequences because of it. So it's going to be a difficult road for Charlie. Now we know that radiation poisoning is very serious.

Why does Charlie still want to turn the beacon off at that point, because she told Ali earlier she wasn't going to go through with it?

CHAMBLISS: For Charlie going into the tower, I don't think she was ever 100 percent sure what she was going to do, whether she was going to come through with Morgan or not. I do think a lot of what was driving her was the fact that she wanted to have a piece of normalcy, and she was able to justify what she was doing by saying she was doing this for Morgan and the group.

And then ultimately I think it's her choice at the end when she realizes that she may not have much more time left, that she makes the decision that she doesn't want to essentially have traded all her friends on the outside who are exposed potentially to what is making her sick to the same thing. So that ultimately is the thing that drives her to want to then pull through for Morgan.

Lauren "Lo" Smith/AMC Ashton Arbab andAlexa Nisenson on 'Fear the Walking Dead'

What about the flip side, then? Why does Ali agree to turn it off? Is this just puppy love, or is this a dying wish he's trying to grant? Why does he all of a sudden agree to go up there and turn it off?

GOLDBERG: I think Ali's gotten a real look behind the curtain at Strand and Howard, in particular, in this episode, and the things that he's been asked to do on their behalf. And Ali starts the episode as an absolute true believer in what Strand is doing, and by association Howard, because he so badly wants to climb the rungs in the tower organization.

But by the end, the bloom has come off the rose there and he realizes what's truly at stake, and he wants to help bring it down. Especially because he sees what's happening to Charlie. He feels he owes it to her and himself and everyone in that tower to do his part and topple the Strand regime.

Dorie says he needs to get in Strand's ear. June says she thought the same thing with Virginia, and it won't work. Who's right?

CHAMBLISS: Well, you're just going to have to keep watching.

GOLDBERG: There will be an entire episode about that coming up.

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