Fear the Walking Dead has been very open about the fact that Madison returning to the series in Season 7. A recent trailer for Season 7 Part 2 even showed what might be her very first appearance on the show since Season 4. Now the showrunners, Ian Goldberg and Andrew Chambliss, are revealing which part of the season will finally have that big Madison reveal.
We Likely Won’t See Her Until the End of Season 7
The good news is that Madison’s coming back. The bad news is that Kim Dickens likely won’t be returning until the end of Season 7.
Chambliss told EW in an interview: “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. 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.”
So that sounds like it won’t be a tiny scene where we just see her for a second and then she’s gone. But it also won’t be happening in the first episode of Season 7 Part 2 either. It sounds like we’re still going to be waiting a while.
Madison Is Different Than When We Last Saw Her
Madison’s death was revealed in the mid-season finale of Season 4. She died off-screen, after leading the walkers into a ballpark and locking herself in with them so Nick and Alicia could escape. But because we never actually saw her die, fans have held out hope that maybe, just maybe, she survived. In The Walking Dead universe, we know all too well that unless you see a body, you should never assume a character is dead. And as it turns out, that’s very true with Madison too.
It’s kind of funny, since Chambliss had previously insisted that Madison was really, truly dead.
Chambliss once told The Hollywood Reporter: “There were thousands of walkers in that stadium that were feet away from her just before they went up in flames. So Madison died making that sacrifice for her family.” When asked to confirm specifically that she had died, Chambliss said: “Yes.”
But it looks like even though she’s alive after all, she’s not going to be the same Madison that we remember. So maybe part of her old personality “died,” in a sense?
Goldberg told EW in an interview: “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. And Madison has been on quite a journey since then, as have all of our characters. And we’re just really excited.”
He continued, “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. And we’re excited to reintroduce her to both fans and into the world of Fear as she kind of interacts with characters we haven’t seen her interact with before.”
Goldberg also shared that they’ll be exploring a mix of flashbacks and present-day-stories to explain just what happened to Madison since we last saw her.
Want to chat about all things post-apocalyptic? Join our Discord server here and our Walking Dead Fanatics Facebook page.
