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The following contains spoilers for Fear the Walking Dead Season 8, Episode 3, "Odessa," streaming now on AMC+.
Fear the Walking Dead co-showrunner Andrew Chambliss recently addressed whether Season 8 really introduced a cure for the mutation responsible for turning people into zombies in the Walking Dead universe.
Chambliss indicated that June Dorie (Jenna Elfman) hasn't actually discovered a permanent remedy for the Walker apocalypse in an interview with Insider. "Well, if she did [discover a cure] then she deserves a Nobel Prize," he said. "But the one thing we should say is that, what she was doing on that train, what PADRE's doing on that train, really is akin to kind of a more advanced form of amputation. It's trying to remove the infected tissue before the infection can spread. So even if what they're doing in that train ends up working, it's not a cure. It's not going to end the zombie apocalypse. It would certainly be a very useful tool to have to allow people to survive, particularly if you get [bitten] somewhere where you can't just chop off an arm or a leg."
This isn't the first time that Chambliss has fielded questions related to June since Fear the Walking Dead's eighth and final season kicked off in May 2023, either. Notably, he recently opened up about the process of writing Episode 2, "Blue Jay," with co-showrunner Ian Goldberg, in which Shrike (Maya Eshet) hacks off June's trigger finger. "Blue Jay" also sees Shrike manipulates a zombie into biting Finch (Gavin Warren), a brutal development Chambliss explained was meant to show "how committed to their endgame" Shrike and her followers truly are.
Fear the Walking Dead Boss on Season 8's Time Jump
Not all of Fear the Walking Dead Season 8's controversial developments have been as brutal as Finch getting chomped on by a zombie, though. The show's last-ever batch of episodes also takes several other, less graphic creative risks, such as shifting its narrative forward seven years. Goldberg justified Fear the Walking Dead Season 8's time jump in a recent interview, insisting it was the most effective means of depicting PADRE's influence on the spinoff's ensemble. "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," he said.
Chambliss and Goldberg may have a few more surprises in store for fans before Fear the Walking Dead wraps up, too. Specifically, Chambliss recently hinted that characters from the original Walking Dead series could show up over the course of Season 8's remaining installments.
Source: Insider