Fear the Walking Dead producers offered new information about the upcoming The Walking Dead spin-off series from the Television Critic’s Association press tour in Beverly Hills on Friday. As a result we now know how many episodes will fill out Season 2, the rough timeline for Season 1, and whether a crossover with The Walking Dead has reached the drawing board.
Season 2 of Fear the Walking Dead was preemptively ordered months ago before Season 1 had finished production on its six episode run. AMC’s bullishness about the series was clear and a larger episode count for Season 2 anticipated, and that’s exactly what we will get in the summer of 2016.
Executive producer David Erickson confirmed that the Fear the Walking Dead Season 2 episode count will stretch to 15 total episodes. That works out to two more episodes than Season 2 of The Walking Dead and only one shy of current The Walking Dead seasons.
Per EW, the first season of Fear the Walking Dead will cover approximately three weeks worth of time. The season will end a couple weeks shy of when Rick wakes up in the hospital and the streets of Georgia are already barren save for wandering walkers.
Here’s Erickson’s full quote from TCA:
“By the end of season 1, we definitely know the world has changed, but we’re not at the same place where Rick woke up. There’s still a window of time, we’ll have some real estate left. Rick’s coma was about 4 to 5 weeks. If you track our story, we probably go three weeks over the course of our first season. There is a time that may come that we catch up, and there may be a season where we do a major time cut. The thinking right now in season 1 and the writers’ room for season 2 isn’t about how do we intersect them how or catch up with the original show?”
Nix any fantasies you may have about Fear the Walking Dead characters showing up in The Walking Dead or vice versa. If that happens, and that’s a big if, it wouldn’t transpire for at least another couple years.