‘Fear the Walking Dead’ Showrunners Explain This Week’s Big, Shocking Death

Another week, another huge, shocking character death on Fear the Walking Dead. Ho-hum! Just kidding, of course, as the show has mostly foregone killing off main characters since Season 3 — yet with last week’s death of the beloved John Dorie (Garret Dillahunt), and the surprise reversal at the end of this week’s episode, “Things Left To Do,” the show is two for two since the midseason return of Season 6 with knocking off members of the cast.

Spoilers past this point, but in the episode written by Nick Bernadone and directed by Michael E. Satrazemis, after her life was miraculously spared by Morgan (Lennie James), Virginia (Colby Minifie) was executed in a last second twist by June (Jenna Elfman). As Ginny’s brains dripped out in a dilapidated church, the vengeful June put on her husband John’s hat, and walked out of the community Morgan has been building almost since Season 6 began.

“The battle between Morgan and Virginia has been brewing since Season 5, but in a more stark way since 6×01,” co-showrunner Ian Goldberg told Decider about the decision to off Virginia. “When Morgan threw down the gauntlet and said, ‘Morgan Jones is dead, you’re dealing with someone else.’ Now we knew this conflict was coming, but we also knew that there is another threat out there, independent of Virginia that we’ve been teasing since that episode as well, which is these people that are spray painting, ‘the end is the beginning.’ So just in terms of structure, we knew that the middle of the season was going to be where Virginia was going to meet her end and this other threat would rise to the forefront.”

Part of what’s surprising is the placement of Virginia’s death in the season (and for more on that, check out our interview with Colby Minifie on her exit). For several years now, Fear has been essentially split into two stories, one for each half of a season. Usually they’ll involve a different setting, and a different villain. Season 6, though, not only carried over the story from the back half of Season 5, but continued through the midseason break… Until now. And it turns out the Big Bad of the season wasn’t the despotic Virginia; it was the nihilistic, mysterious group that, as Goldberg mentions, has been painting “the end is the beginning” wherever they go.

“We’re going to explore that in the back half of the season,” Goldberg continued. “But in the same way that we wanted to break people’s hearts with John Dorie’s death, Virginia… We came from the same place… We’ve seen her be ruthless. We’ve seen her do despicable things. We’ve seen what she’s done to our characters, how she’s brought them to some really terrible places. And what we wanted to bring to the forefront in this episode is the answer. Why? What motivates her? What makes her tick?”

A large part of what makes Virginia tick is the Chinatown-esque revelation dropped in this episode that the sociopathic Dakota (Zoe Colletti), who killed John in last week’s episode, isn’t Virginia’s little sister — she’s her daughter. Everything that Virginia has done over the course of her time on Fear has been motivated by her parents’ ire over Virginia getting pregnant, and a desire to protect Dakota, no matter what the cost. Does that excuse everything she did, from threatening the pregnant Grace (Karen David), to manipulating June into saving Dakota, who ended up murdering June’s husband (which is why June ultimately killed Virginia)? No, of course not. But it is an explanation, if not an excuse.

“And at the end of the day, what we think is so interesting is she and Morgan are really two sides of the same coin,” Goldberg noted. “They both have built these places, these empires, if you will, to protect the people they love. Virginia is the cautionary tale of what can happen if that goes the wrong way. If in your effort to protect people, you do a lot of things that you regret, and the ripple effects that that has on those people — as Morgan sees for himself in this episode, what not to do, and the pitfalls to avoid, in addition to this heartbreaking revelation that comes out about the true nature of Virginia and Dakota’s relationship.”

Though Virginia’s death is the cliffhanger that ends the episode, it’s far from the only big event that happens. In a showdown earlier on, Morgan brings together several different factions with a rousing speech about how they can be better than Virginia by not executing her. Obviously June throws a little wrinkle there, but thanks to the speech the area around Morgan’s burgeoning community gains a few more members, including Grace. Fans of the pairing where surely expecting some sort of romantic reunion between the two, given Grace has been held hostage by Virginia, and Morgan was presumed dead. Instead, the long-simmering pair got a relatively collegiate hello, and walked off smiling with their arms around each other’s shoulders.

So what should a Grace-Morgan ‘shipper (#Grorgan? #Mace?) expect from the rest of the season?

“Grace and Morgan’s reunion here is an interesting one because Morgan has been fighting for Grace the entire time,” co-showrunner Andrew Chambliss told Decider. “But I think the fear he has in that moment when they are reunited is that Grace isn’t going to recognize the man he’s become, or that she is going to dislike the things he has had to do to get to this point. That being said, we definitely will see Morgan and Grace go on a very big journey together. They’ll end up taking some very large steps in their relationship. And whether that’s good or bad… People should watch.”

Hopefully we’re not in for a hat-trick when it comes to shocking deaths.

Fear the Walking Dead airs Sundays at 9/8c on AMC.

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