“Fear the Walking Dead” showrunners explain Alycia Debnam-Carey finale return

Ian Goldberg and Andrew Chambliss also mention other characters that almost made an appearance in this final run of episodes.

Warning: This article contains spoilers for Fear the Walking Dead series finale.

The final season of Fear the Walking Dead was about big returns from the seemingly dead. First, there was original series lead Kim Dickens as Madison Clark — presumed dead at the baseball stadium in season 4 — who reappeared. Then it was Daniel Sharman’s Troy Otto — presumed dead via hammer in season 3 — who somehow made his way back.

We also got a surprise appearance from Alexa Nisenson’s Charlie — who seemingly had terminal radiation poisoning — but then she pretty much immediately went and died again, this time for real.

However, there was one more return from the grave Fear fans were desperately hoping for, and they got it on Sunday’s series finale.

It turns out Alycia Debnam-Carey’s Alicia Clark was not, in fact, killed by the walker bite that took off her arm, nor by a vengeful Troy. Instead, she walked into a tent in the closing minutes of the finale to be reunited with her mother.

The series ended with the reunited mother and daughter joining their new adopted family member Tracy to begin their journey back to where it all began — Los Angeles. As the sweet sounds of Merle Haggard’s “Mama Tried” began unfurling, the trio jumped in their jeep and started heading west.

So how did the Fear team get their former star back on board? “Well, that was the showrunners’ dream,” Kim Dickens tells EW. “And they had no way of knowing because Alycia was gone. She was on to other things. She had run her course with Fear and her character. So they had pitched it to her like, ‘We just want you back for one scene,’ and she goes like, ‘Well, lose my number for a little while and then we'll see.’"

It was then that showrunners Ian Goldberg and Andrew Chambliss had to call in the big guns. "As it got closer, they were like, ‘Kim and Colman, can you guys call her?’" says Dickens. “And so Colman called her first, and honestly, she wanted to do it with us because she felt like we did: We'd started this thing together and it felt right to really finish it for ourselves, for the story, and certainly for the fans. It's just something she really wanted to do. She came back, and we had the best five days together that we could possibly have, and it was wild.”

EW spoke to Goldberg and Chambliss to get the scoop on bringing both Alycia and Alicia back, the meaning of that ending, the other characters that almost made an appearance, and the craziest ideas that never made it to screen during the entire series run.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Let’s start with that title card showing all the main characters over the run of the series. How did that come together?

ANDREW CHAMBLISS: After we cut the episodes, then the next question is: What do we want the title card to be? Usually, it's easy because it's who the episode was about, but this, the pressure was a lot more because it felt like we needed to come up with something unique to close out the series. And then we struck upon the idea of trying to show as many of the characters who contributed to this story as possible. So our wonderful post producer, Kenneth Requa, spent a lot of time going through everything he could to try to include as many characters as possible.

IAN GOLDBERG: I think Kenneth coined it the Sgt. Pepper's title card because of all the people that we used.

Obviously, the thing everyone hoped to see was the return of Alycia Debnam-Carey as Alicia, so how did you pull that off?

IAN GOLDBERG: We had the same hope as you and the same dream that the show would end with a reunion between Madison and Alicia. We knew season 8 was going to be the end, but we also knew that Alycia Debnam-Carey was not going to be a series regular in season 8. We knew that we had to start planning this story both for creative reasons and logistical ones, and it just felt like this show has been about Madison fighting for her family since season 1 and it just had to end with Madison reuniting with her family.

It's what the story wanted to be. So really we just crafted the whole season with that in mind. We kept in touch with Alycia Debnam-Carey, just keeping her in the loop on what we were thinking, keeping an eye on our schedule as our schedule came together and just everything aligned. We got lucky, but we did plan for it. There was a lot of meticulous planning.

What was the backup plan if the schedules didn't line up?

ANDREW CHAMBLISS: It's funny, AMC asked us the same thing.

IAN GOLDBERG: Andrew and I would've flown to Australia.

ANDREW CHAMBLISS: Yeah, we would've dragged her on a plane. But honestly, we didn't have an ending that we felt was nearly as satisfying and I think that was because deep down we knew this was the way the show needed to end.

So why end with them heading back to Los Angeles?

ANDREW CHAMBLISS: It felt like this was a show that started with Madison, the matriarch of a blended family in Los Angeles, so it felt like a fitting end to it would be Madison with a new blended family made up of her daughter, and then Alicia's surrogate daughter and Madison’s surrogate granddaughter heading back to the place it all started. And they’d be taking with them everything they've learned, carrying this new legacy that they're starting to spread across the apocalypse and just creating the anticipation of these incredible adventures that may lay ahead on the road to Los Angeles.

You brought a lot of characters back this season with Madison, and Troy, and Alicia. Was there anyone else you tried to get back for this final run of episodes, but it just didn't work out ?

ANDREW CHAMBLISS: One story thread that we had initially planned to address was seeing what happened to Sarah, Wendell, and Rabbi Jacob. And when we got into the planning of the final six episodes, we just didn't have the room for it. And looking back, it's a bummer to us that we didn't get to say goodbye to those characters, but it was always in our imagination that they are part of Luciana's crew out there keeping the roads clear between Texas and the East Coast.

I was wondering if we were going to see Althea pop up again at all. Was that something that you guys ever considered, or did you just consider the book on her story already closed?

IAN GOLDBERG: We did consider it. We talked about it a lot and ultimately it just felt like Al's exit with Isabelle in season 7 felt like the right exit for her. But the way that we've honored Al, even if it was in an indirect way, was through the idea of storytelling and how we framed Madison's sacrifice toward the end of the episode was in the story that Strand was telling Tracy, and the first episode of Fear that we did was called “What's Your Story?” That was Al's question. So as much as it's about Madison's sacrifice and hope and her philosophy, it is about the power of storytelling as well and how legacy lives on through story. And that feels like a vital element that Al brought to the show that lives on.

Were you guys actually on set for the finale?

IAN GOLDBERG: Not only were we on set, we are in the finale. If you look very carefully in the sequence when Madison is making her sacrifice and Strand is telling the story, you might notice a pair of walkers breaking through the walls at P.A.D.R.E. that are me and Andrew.

ANDREW CHAMBLISS: It's when Dove is standing in front of some netting and the walkers break through the netting. I'm the walker who goes after Dove and Ian is just behind me.

What did it feel like for you guys to wrap the series?

IAN GOLDBERG: It was incredibly emotional, and it came in waves because of the way that we were shooting. We would wrap one cast member and there would be tears and goodbyes and hugs, and then a lot of cast wrapped late in the middle of the night one night. It was when we were shooting out at P.A.D.R.E.. It was the final scenes for five or six of our cast members. So it was a series of goodbyes and they were all super emotional and surreal. And then there was the standing on set for the final shot, and that was another emotional thing. And even talking to you now is another period on the end of the journey of Fear. So it's been a lot of tears and a lot of joy.

ANDREW CHAMBLISS: It's been a very strange experience, because for us it's felt like it's been this year-long goodbye. But there've just been so many moments where I've paused and said, "Oh, this is the last time I'm going to do this with this person on Fear." And I think just those interactions are the thing I'm going to miss the most.

What was the last shot you guys wrapped the series on?

IAN GOLDBERG: It was a shot on the shore of walkers coming off the barge.

What’s the craziest Fear the Walking Dead idea you had that you never ended up doing for whatever reason?

ANDREW CHAMBLISS: We talked very seriously about doing a Milo and Otis style episode where Skidmark was with Wendell's dog — who he mentions in an earlier season — and we see two animals survive the apocalypse for an episode. And we talked about it, and then we talked to our line producer about it. He basically threatened to quit if we even pursued that idea.

Now, they wouldn't have been actually talking like Milo and Otis, right?

IAN GOLDBERG: There might've been a Look Who's Talking style voiceover. The other one that we talked very seriously about doing was a live episode.

Wait, what?

IAN GOLDBERG: We would shoot it tailor made for one location, that we would shoot like a live show. I think our idea was to do it in an abandoned TV studio, and it was about our characters sending out a broadcast. I think we talked about it in season 5, and it would've aired live on AMC and been shot that way with no cuts.

ANDREW CHAMBLISS: Part of the challenge of it was that we would've been airing the season after our entire crew had wrapped. So it would've been very difficult to get the cast and the crew together, and we never quite landed on the creative that felt right for it. Although, if I recall, it was going to be an Al-centric story — a journalist broadcasting.

Did any of that make it into another episode?

ANDREW CHAMBLISS: It may have morphed into the documentary episode we did in season 5. Some of the ideas might've made it over there.

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