Spoilers below for The Walking Dead's Season 8 finale, as well as Fear the Walking Dead's Season 4 premiere, so be sure to watch before reading on.
Horror TV fans had quite a Super Sunday, with The Walking Dead wrapping up its All Out War and Fear the Walking Dead kicking off its highly anticipated crossover season, with Lennie Jones' Morgan making the trek. Fans were no doubt scratching their heads about the timeline, though, since it wasn't made entirely clear how much time had passed between the War's end, Morgan's self-exile, and the time when he meets up with his new Fear co-stars. Thankfully, comic creator Robert Kirkman is here to offer some wildly unspecific insight into where the timeline is. In his words:
It's real simple. Not really. [laughs] Yeah, there's been a lot of time that's passed since Fear 3, and since we've seen those characters. There's actually been some time that's passed since the last time we saw Morgan in Season 8, and we're catching up to him in Season 4. And you know, we'll vaguely explore exactly how much time that was without ever nailing it down.
At this point in this show's run, fans know better than to expect Robert Kirkman to offer comprehensive answers to questions about present and future topics. But without actually saying it, he draws attention to the fact that Fear the Walking Dead took the franchise's biggest time jump yet in its seasonal transition, and its own timeline actually surpassed that of the flagship series for the first time. (Remember when the creative teams were steadfast against bringing the timelines together?) For fans keeping track, that's a pretty crazy and intriguing concept, allowing for many more connections to come together, with the time-gap out of the way.
Robert Kirkman shared those thoughts on Talking Dead alongside now-former showrunner Scott Gimple, who had a slightly more precise way to go about gauging the timeline.
I mean, there was the amount of time to grow an eggplant.
Fans will likely remember that whenever Morgan is in the junkyard at the beginning of the Season 4 premiere, he's got plants growing inside a bathtub. One of them was an eggplant, which Morgan was chowing down on whenever Rick made his visit. Eggplants usually take between four and six months to harvest under decent circumstances, so he was presumably living in Jadis former home for at least that long before hitting the road. (Unless Jadis had already planted things earlier, of course.) Morgan then walked, ran and drove his way down to Texas, which had to have added another few weeks, if months, to the timeline.
So when Morgan first connected with Garret Dillahunt's John Dorie and Maggie Grace's Althea, it was roughly 6-8 months after The Walking Dead's finale events, which could have interesting implications for where Season 9 will pick up. Will that show play out to a point where Morgan ends up returning by the end, so that the two timelines can fully coincide with one another? We'll just have to wait six months or so to find out.
With The Walking Dead now on hiatus until the fall brings us Season 9, the zombie action has fully shifted over to Fear the Walking Dead and its completely refreshed narratives. Check out what we learned about new character Althea from star Maggie Grace, and then head to our midseason premiere schedule and our summer premiere schedule to see what other shows are on the way.
