The call for help has been placed. At the end of season 5’s penultimate episode of Fear the Walking Dead, Morgan radioed to adversary Virginia for assistance after they had exhausted every other opportunity for survival. But what will be the cost of that call?
We spoke to Fear showrunners Ian Goldberg and Andrew Chambliss to get their insight and intel on what to expect on Sunday night’s season finale. What does the arrival of Ginny and the Pioneers mean? Where’s Dwight off to? Will things wrap up neatly or with a cliffhanger? Goldberg and Chambliss say to prepare yourself for a “game-changing” moment that could set the stage for a whole new show in season 6.
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Give me some words you would you use to describe the season finale.
IAN GOLDBERG: Western, Hope, Despair.
Andrew, what do you want to add to that?
ANDREW CHAMBLISS: Ah, Ian took all the good words. Let’s see: Soggy. I’m just going to go with soggy.
We saw Morgan place the call to Virginia at the end of the last episode, so what does that mean moving into the finale?
GOLDBERG: Episode 515 was a very emotional episode for our group, and in a lot of ways it was about them making a stand against Ginny, both in the documentary they were making, but also in the way they were going about getting to the Gulch. They took this detour in order to get medicine for Grace, which led to them having to cross that bridge. And then Tom ended up losing his life and there were all these sacrifices that the group made. Ultimately, they ended in a place where they got to the Gulch and it wasn’t the place that they hoped it would be. So it was a rather big defeat. It was the last thing anybody wanted to do was to have to call and ask Virginia for help. But it was sort of a born out of necessity for their survival.
So when we find a group in the finale, they’re going to be in a pretty despondent place because they’re kind of doing exactly what they’ve been hoping to never have to do, which to take help from Virginia and to accept what that help means on her terms. So that’s where we’re going to find them and we’ll see how that ends up playing out over the course of the episode. But it’s certainly not a great place to start from for them.
Andrew, what can you add to that?
CHAMBLISS: I think we’re going to really see everyone question what they’ve been doing and whether it’s a path they’re going to be able to continue to walk down once Ginny arrives. And a lot of it feels like it’s kind of a calm before a storm, but it’s something that they’re definitely going to have to face and really reckon with.
Well, the one person that is not there is Dwight. Obviously, he broke off from the pack and we see that. So what can you say in terms of what the finale holds for Dwight?
CHAMBLISS: Obviously, Dwight is really triggered by the idea of accepting help from someone who is going to impose their way of living, their values on you just because of the ghost of Negan and the Saviors that you can see in Ginny and her people in a group that really tries to control you and doesn’t let you value the things you may have value. And I think what Dwight is going to learn over the course of the episode is that perhaps the people he has been with care about him more than he thought. And maybe not just that they care about him more than he thought, but that maybe he cares about them in the same way. We’ll see Dwight come to an understanding of who he is in a bigger way than he may have realized.
What can you all say in terms of how the season will end? Are things going to wrap up neatly or are we going to have a cliffhanger?
GOLDBERG: Well, I believe it was at Comic-Con where we kind of hinted at the fact that we were hurdling toward a bit of a game-changing moment at the end of season 5. And this is the episode where that’s going to happen. And the audience is going to start to piece that together as they watch the episode. But by the end of it, you’ll really see what we meant when we alluded to it being a game changer because this finale is going to be very emotional. There’s going to be a lot of surprises and it’s also going to set up where we’re headed in season 6 in a lot of ways and you’ll see sort of the scaffolding for how those stories might play out. And you know, the way that we leave everyone will start to set up what season 6 is going to look like and you’ll see that it’s very different than a how season 5 played out.
CHAMBLISS: It really is reinventing the show. We’re always looking for ways from season to season or every half season to change up the narrative. And what we’re doing here is really trying to fundamentally change these characters and allow us to explore new sides of them we haven’t seen before. There is a big change coming.
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