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SYFY WIRE Fear the Walking Dead

‘Fear the Walking Dead’ showrunners tease Madison’s return will cause ‘huge ripples’ for Season 8

Madison is back, though she isn't the Madison we saw way back in Season 4. 

By Vanessa Armstrong
Fear The Walking Dead Season 7 Pt 2 Trailer Kim Dickens

We’ve known for a few months now that Kim Dickens, one of the original Fear the Walking Dead stars who played Madison Clark, is returning to the show in the backend of Season 7. The news was surprising, given that we all thought that Madison died during Season 4 when she was trapped inside a burning stadium full of the titular walking dead. 

So what has Madison been up to since that fateful Season 4 event?

The trailer for the show’s upcoming episodes gave us a teaser about what might have happened to Madison in the seasons since we last saw her. The last few seconds of the video show us a beleaguered Madison walking toward a seat in an interrogation room. Once she sits down, she takes a hit from an oxygen tank, covers some tattoos that spell Nick and Alicia on her wrists, and tells a voice in the wall that her name is Madison.

“Not anymore,” the voice says, though who she is now remains to be seen. Series showrunners Ian Goldberg and Andrew Chambliss, however, gave us a bit more as to what’s been going on with Madison since we last saw her. 

“She looked like she had some new tattoos to me. And look, without giving too much away, she's in a very different place than when we left her in the middle of Season 4 at the stadium,” Goldberg said in a recent interview he and Chambliss had with Entertainment Weekly. “Madison has been on quite a journey since then, as have all of our characters … Kim, I know, has spoken in interviews about this being Madison 2.0, and it really is. It is an evolution and a redefinition of Madison Clark, and it's going to be fantastic.”

Goldberg also hinted that we’ll most likely find out what’s been going on with Madison via retellings and possibly flashbacks. Whether that happens in Season 7 or when Dickens becomes a series regular in Season 8 is unclear, though Goldberg did shed some light on what her influence on the upcoming episodes will be. 

“She is going to be returning in a way that will impact the end of Season 7 and have huge ripples going into Season 8,” he said. “But that's not to say when we see her this season that it will be in a small role. It'll be in a very big, impactful way.”

The back half of Fear the Walking Dead’s Season 7 premieres April 17 on AMC. If you’re looking for some more top notch zombie content, you can check out Zombieland or Abraham Lincoln vs. Zombies on Peacock.